Cost Centres

Overview

The Cost Centre module calculates Hourly Rates for Estimating.
Both direct and overhead costs can be linked to a Cost Centre to determine an hourly rate for services.
Overhead Costs are allocated to Production Cost Centres in proportion to the Monthly Costs of the Cost Centres.
You may override the Overhead Allocation.
Overheads can also be recovered by marking up the rates sufficiently to cover the overheads and make a profit.

Cost Centres are also used in the Production Planning and Tracking modules and these Cost Centres are often created only as Workstations.

Following is a description of the header fields used in the Cost Centre module.

Field	Description
Description	Describes the Cost Centre.
Code	A brief description used where space is limited.
Type	The type of Cost Centre.
Production	Checkbox. Checked if the Cost Centre is used in production. Hours/Week: The productive hours which should be approximately 80% of the actual hours. When multiple workstations are included in a Cost Centre, the hours must be the combined hours of all the Workstations. Weeks/Annum: The number of working weeks in a year. Allow for annual shutdown and public holidays which can be up to five weeks per annum which leaves 47 productive weeks.
Overhead	%: The percentage of overheads attributed to the Cost Centre. Amount: The total overheads. Fix: A checkbox. If checked, the overheads are fixed and not updated.
Monthly cost	Calculated from Direct Costs and Overheads.
Hourly cost	Calculated from Monthly Cost and Productivity (Hours/Week & Weeks / Annum).
Adjustment	Can be used to adjust the Hourly Rate (e.g. add a markup amount).
Hourly rate	The calculated hourly rate used for Estimating.
Fix	When checked, you can manually set the Hourly Rate.

Costs can be added manually or using the Cost Wizard.

Field	Description
Equipment	Add the Market Value of the equipment and a Market-related Term and Interest Rate assuming you were leasing the equipment to generate a virtual Monthly Cost for the equipment, even if it is already paid for (that is, it includes the replacement cost).
Operators	Add an average wage for Operators and Assistants assuming you were fully staffed.
Maintenance	Add a projected maintenance cost and click Finish (button) to complete the process.

Field	Description
Description	The description of the cost.
Type	Select Equipment, Labour, Maintenance or Other. The type separates and summarises Costs in the Cost Centre list view.
Weekly/Monthly/Annual	Allows costs to be captured for different periods. These are not calculation fields; all the entered costs are added and become the Direct Costs.
Total/month	All the costs converted to a monthly total.
Updated by	The user who last updated the Cost Centre. Displayed just above the footer. The fields are blank if the records are unchanged since they were created.
Updated	The date and time on which the Cost Centre was last updated. Displayed just above the footer. The fields are blank if the records are unchanged since they were created.

Displays a summary of the actual productivity and usage which can be used to update the costs. See examples below: