Maintaining Cost Centres

A cost centre is a part of an organisation to which costs may be charged for accounting purposes.

Clients and Jobs are linked to cost centres to allow for the tracking of work, not only by client or job, but by cost centre as well.

Cost Centre Scope

Cost centres are created either with org-scope or lab-scope. An organisation or laboratory can contain multiple cost centres.

Properties of a Cost Centre

A cost centre can have:

  • A biofield group—A cost centre can be linked to a biofield group so that when a job is linked to the cost centre, then the biofields in the group are added to the job.
  • A default owner user—A cost centre can be linked to an owner user so that when the cost centre is assigned to a job, then the owner is assigned to the job also.
  • A default signatory user
  • Sales and marketing details—Used for corporate cost management.
  • Report template—Used as the default report template for report requests linked to the cost centre, where a report template cannot be obtained from the report request's linked client.

Use of Cost Centres

Whilst a job must link to a client, it can link, optionally, to a cost centre for use in custom queries and reports. This is typical when the laboratory is a production laboratory, such that, the clients are the operational segments of the overall operation, and one or more of those operational segments can be assigned to separate cost centres.

Creation and Maintenance of Cost Centres

At organisation level, users with Organisation Manager privileges can create corporate cost centres. Cost centres created at this level can be associated with all laboratories that fall under the organisation.

At laboratory level, users with Laboratory Manager and Office Manager user privileges can create and maintain cost centres.

Cost centre records can be created and maintained using the CCCOST—Cost Centre application, which is also accessed using the Registration Setup » Cost Centres menu option.

Dependencies and Restrictions on Cost Centres

Cost centres must be active for jobs to be associated with the cost centre. This requires the Is Active check box to be checked in the cost centre record.

The following information is required for each cost centre, and can be specified using the CCCOST—Cost Centre application:

  • Whether a cost centre is an organisation client, or laboratory client
  • The unique code to be applied to the cost centre
  • The cost centre name
  • Whether or not the cost centre is active in the system.