Chart of Accounts

[sinker]

I am setting up a new company and have the opportunity to re-do my COA in a way that will best facilitate report writing (version 9.0 Complete). Previously, we segmented the account number so that departmental numbers appeared after the natural-class account. What I've found with Peachtree is that this makes it cumbersome to write certain reports where you want to have departmental totals appear on a row. I can't seem to use the mask function to define a row, only what appears in a column.

Any thoughts out there? Is this something I can deal with in my COA structure or do I have to look to Crystal reports and/or an upgrade?