Cost Centers
What a cost center is for
Accounts and cost centers answer two different questions. An account says what kind of cost it is — surveyor, repair, spare parts. A cost center says what it was for — a damage case, a dry docking, a project. Both are recorded on every document, so both questions can be answered: "What did this case cost us?" and "What have surveyors cost us in total?"
Typical uses are insurance cases, dry dockings, conversions and any other undertaking whose costs you want to keep together across several accounts.
Cost centers are optional. If you do not use them, nothing changes in your daily work.
Creating a cost center
Cost centers are created in Administration → Accounting → Cost Center. See Accounting for the details.
Two things are worth knowing before you start:
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Name and code are both mandatory and both must be unique. If you assign a vessel, the code must be unique per vessel.
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The code field holds 10 characters. Longer reference numbers do not fit. Keep the full reference in the name and use a short abbreviation as the code.
Assigning a vessel is optional. If you leave it empty, the cost center is available for all vessels.
Assigning a cost center
While creating a document — requisitions, requests for quotation and purchase orders all contain a Cost Center field. The selection list shows all cost centers that are not closed.
Afterwards, including after an order has been sent:
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Select the order in the list
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Choose Additional → Cost Center → Assign Cost Center (Clear Cost Center removes it again)
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Pick the cost center and confirm
The same is available through Accounting Details → Change Cost Center, which uses a separate right. This allows you to control separately who may still change orders that have already been sent.
What to expect:
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The assignment is voluntary. No check rejects a document that has no cost center.
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It can be changed at any time, including after an order has been sent. The change is passed through to the invoice and the booking, and the invoice records a history entry with the old and the new value. Assigning a cost center after the fact is a normal way of working, not a workaround.
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It travels the whole chain: requisition → request for quotation → quotation per supplier → purchase order → invoice → booking.
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On board, the field can be hidden through a configuration setting if assigning cost centers is meant to be an office task.
Reviewing costs
Purchase → Reports → Cost Center Overview (requires its own right) lists every document belonging to one cost center. Select the cost center and choose Load.
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Included: purchase orders, requests for quotation and requisitions. Rejected documents are left out.
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Not included: invoices and bookings. There is also no total beneath the list — this overview is a document list.
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For totals, use the budget analysis. There the cost center is a reporting dimension across bookings, with a totals row, and it can be combined with the account. This is where "all costs for case X, broken down by type of cost" actually comes out. The cost center is also available as a column in Invoice Registration.
Closing a cost center
When the undertaking is finished, close the cost center using Close. It then disappears from the selection lists in Purchase but remains in every report, so past documents stay complete.
Deleting is only possible while a cost center has never been used. For anything that has been worked with, closing is the right way.
What cost centers do not do
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There is no automatic link between a document and the underlying case. The connection is made by assigning the cost center, which depends on the diligence of whoever creates the document.
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Budget checking is unaffected. Budgets are held against account, period and vessel; the cost center plays no part in it. Documents carrying a cost center are checked against the budget exactly as any other.