Working With Cost Centers

Cost centers allow you to track how much of your orders each of your clients is responsible for. You can use this information to run reports on how much business you do for each client, as well as to determine how much of each project to bill back to each client.

Working with Cost Centers

This section covers the following topics:

• How to Create a Cost Center
• How to Allocate Costs on Orders
• How to Run Reports on Cost Centers
• How to Make Cost Centers Visible to Suppliers

How to Create a Cost Center

You create cost centers at the workgroup level and then use them on individual orders.

1. Click the Admin tab, then click the My Group sub-tab.
2. In the Workgroup Options section, click Cost Centers.
3. In the Current Cost Centers section, click Create Cost Center.
4. Enter a Number for the Cost Center, and enter a description (optional).
5. Select Yes next to Active to allow workgroup members to use the cost center on their projects.
6. Click Create Cost Center.

How to Allocate Costs on Orders

You can either allocate cost centers on each individual order within a project, or you can allocate cost centers to all of a project's orders.

To create cost center allocations for an individual order within a project:

1. Navigate to the order.
2. At the bottom of the order, click Cost Center Allocation.
3. Click Edit Cost Center Allocation.
4. To add a cost center to the allocation, click Add.
5. Select a cost center from the Cost Center drop-down menu.
6. Enter the percent of the order you want to allocate to this cost center in the % Allocation field.
7. Repeat Steps 4-6 for each cost center.
8. Click Update Allocation.

To create allocations for all of a project's orders at once:

1. Go to the Project Home page.
2. Select Cost Center... from the Home drop-down menu.
3. Follow steps 3-7 above.
4. Select Apply to all existing orders to automatically apply this allocation to all orders.
5. Click Update Allocation.

How to Run Reports on Cost Centers

To create a report using cost centers, refer to How to Specify a Custom Report, and create a report of type "Order". On the Select Report Fields page, you can select fields from the Order Cost Center section to include in your report.

How to Make Cost Centers Visible to Suppliers

You can choose whether to allow suppliers to see the cost center information on projects awarded to them. Giving suppliers these privileges also enables them to edit the cost center information.

Making cost center information available to suppliers is a workgroup setting. Only managers can turn it on and off. If you turn it on, cost center information for all projects in your workgroup becomes available to the suppliers working on them.

To allow suppliers to view and edit cost center information on your work group's projects:

1. Click the Admin tab, then click the My Group sub-tab.
2. In the Workgroup Options section, click Cost Centers.
3. In the Cost Center Preferences section, click Edit Preferences.
4. Click Yes next to "Allow suppliers to view Cost Center information."
5. Click Update Preferences.