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Cost Centres

Not available in AccountRight Basics

Cost centres are like labels which you can assign to transactions. A cost centre might be a separate department or office within your company, or another business segment. For example, a business could use cost centres to represent different divisions such as accounts, marketing, sales and operations.

When entering a transaction, you can allocate one cost centre to it. You can then run reports for each cost centre.

Cost centres can be assigned to the following transaction types:

  • spend money

  • receive money

  • transfer money

  • general journal entries

  • sales

  • purchases

  • build items

  • inventory transfers

  • inventory adjustments

  • payroll processing (Plus and Premier, Australia only)

  • pre-conversion sales and purchases.

You cannot allocate cost centres to some transactions

You cannot allocate a cost centre to these transactions: Pay Bills, Receive Payments, Prepare Bank Deposit, Settle Returns and Credits/Debits and Pay/Receive Refunds. When entering these transactions, the cost centres assigned to the original transactions will be used. For example, the cost centres assigned to purchases appearing in the Pay Bills window will also be assigned to the payment.

You can access cost centres from the Lists menu:

AccountRight Cost Centres List

To enable cost centre tracking

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  1. Go to the Setup menu and choose Preferences.

  2. Click the System tab.

  3. Select the Turn on Cost Centre Tracking option.

  4. If you want to make the selection of a cost centre mandatory for all transactions, choose Required from the list.



To create a cost centre

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  1. Go to the Lists menu and choose Cost Centres. The Cost Centres List window appears.

  2. Click New. The Cost Centre Information window appears.

  3. In the Cost Centre ID field, type a code that will be used to identify the cost centre and press Tab.

  4. In the Cost Centre Name field, type the name of the cost centre.

  5. In the Description field, type a description of the cost centre or notes relating to the cost centre.

    Cost Centre Information window

  6. Click OK.

You can now assign cost centres to transactions.

Assigning a cost centre to a Spend Money transaction

You can assign a dummy cost centre to transaction types you don't want to report cost centres on. For example, you can create a NOT APPLICABLE cost centre for Spend Money transactions. Then, when you run Cost Centre reports, you can filter out the NOT APPLICABLE cost centre.



To delete a cost centre

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If your cost centre tracking preference is set to Required (see To enable cost centre tracking above), a cost centre can't be deleted if it has been assigned to a transaction. To delete the cost centre you'll first need to set the cost centre tracking preference to Not Required. Alternatively you can make the cost centre inactive.

To delete a cost centre

  1. Go to the Lists menu and choose Cost Centres.

  2. Locate the cost centre you want to delete.

  3. Right-click the cost centre and choose Delete Cost Centre.

    Delete Cost Centre greyed-out? Your user role needs to be set up with permission to delete. If you need to regularly change transactions, ask your administrator to add this permission to your user role.

To make a cost centre inactive

  1. Go to the Lists menu and choose Cost Centres.

  2. Right-click the cost centre to be made inactive and choose Mark Inactive.

  3. Read the displayed information.

  4. Click OK.

  5. If you later need to activate the cost centre:

    1. Go to the Lists menu and choose Cost Centres.

    2. Select the option Show Inactive.

    3. Right-click the cost centre to be activated and choose Mark Active.



Cost Centre reports

AccountRight has a set of reports to gain insights into your cost centres. View these reports by going to the Reports menu > Index to Reports > Accounts tab > Cost Centres. Learn more about the cost centre reports.