Gary:

Not sure what you mean by "designing separate departmental reports ie an account for department 1,2, 3" as you would normally have one setup and select the department to use this time from the drop down list or setup a Statement Group.

If you have it set up correctly then this should work:

=GLDESC("Transfer Expenses",0,$B22)

Where

"Transfer Expenses" is the Collapsed description
0 is the number of spaces to indent
$B22 is the cell with the account number

When the financial statement is expanded the actual description for the account-department will be used.