Everything about Cost Centres

Cost centres use Branches (required for Cost Centres) and Tracking Categories for focused tracking of expenses and purchases in your accounting partner.  This article covers what you need to know to set up cost centres and make them work for you .

Tracking categories

Cost centres can be set against Tracking Categories, which is a term known by different names depending on the accounting partner see the table below to match the Uptick name with the name used by your accounting partner.

Note: Tracking categories will only appear for the default accounting partner. If you only have one integration enabled and don't see the tracking categories on the Cost Centre configuration, click Control Panel > Accounting > Make default 

Creating a new Cost Centre

Depending on how your system is set up, a cost centre in the system may or may not be integrated with your finance system - but you would still be able to use the field

1. Click Control Panel > Cost Centres
2. Click Create new item
3. Fill out the following fields:
   

   Name	The name of the cost centre.
   Branch	Search and select from existing Branches. A Branch must selected in order for the Cost Centre to apply to tasks upon generation automatically.
   Task category	This will restrict the cost centre to only apply to the chosen task category
   Account Code	The code relevant for this Cost Centre, based on the accounting partner's chart of accounts.
   Tracking category	Tracking categories from your accounting partner
   Default	Toggle on/off. When turned on, this will apply the cost centre automatically based on: Branch Default Task Category on generation (i.e. manually created=callout, quoted=repair etc.) Any unique combination of the Branch/Task category (no Branch, no Category are also viable) Note: It there are 2 cost centres with the same Branch/Category combination only 1 can be default at any given time.

   
   
4. Click Save changes

Setting the Cost Centre manually on a Task

1. From a Task, click Update 
2. Select ‘Edit’ next to the task you wish to add the cost centre for
3. Under the Assignments section click on the Costcentre field and select from the drop-down list. You can type in the field to filter down your options.
   
   
   4. Click Save Task to update the changes.

Understanding cost Centres and Account Codes

Default income and expense accounts

The default account codes will track incoming and outgoing finances but will not make distinctions between the type of profit and expenses. When no cost centre is set against the task, invoicing will use the codes set as defaults in your accounting partner integration as viewed in Control Panel > Accounting.

Cost Centres

Cost centres allow you to set specific categories that will feed into profitability calculations, allowing you to have more precise overview of your business running costs. The benefits of a cost centre are:

• Associating each cost centre with a tracking category according to your accounting partner
• Setting specific income and expense accounts that are different to the default accounting settings

If the task has a cost centre applied, invoicing and purchase orders will use the respective income and expense accounts associated with the cost centre. 

Combining Cost Centre and Product Account Codes (Invoices Only)

Product account codes have the highest priority, so if you use a full account code number this will override the default account account code. You can however have your product account codes set up so that when a cost centre is applied to a task, the cost centre code and product account code will combine to form a new number, where the product account code overwrites the tail end of the cost centre account code. This number should match an existing account code that is part of the chart of accounts in your accounting partner.

See the diagram below to understand how these two numbers work together (examples are based on Xero). This allows you to get specific account codes when invoicing, allowing you to have more precise tracking and analytics in the accounting partner.

Invoices