Cost centres and budgets
A cost centre is the accounting bucket a purchase is charged to inside the customer's company. Carrying it correctly lets their finance team book an invoice without opening it; putting a budget behind it lets their controller stop spending that was never planned. This page covers what to collect from the customer and the first setup. The Cost centres and Budgets chapters of the procurement guide go into every field.
04711 and 4711 are two different values to every system downstream, so agree
the exact format too.Why it belongs on the line
One delivery routinely covers three departments: consumables for the workshop, a tool for maintenance, safety equipment for the warehouse. If the cost centre belonged to the whole order, the customer's accounts payable team would split the invoice by hand every time. So the cost centre sits on the order line, and one order can carry three of them.
1. Create the cost centres
Go to Procurement › Cost centres › Cost centres and select New cost centre.
| Field | What to enter |
|---|---|
| Code | The customer's code, exactly as their ERP has it. It is unique per tenant. |
| Name | What the customer calls it: Instandhaltung Halle 3. |
| Currency | Set once. Budgets under this centre are kept in this currency, and nothing converts. |
| Budget type | Monetary if a budget applies, Tracking only if the centre only classifies bookings. Cannot be changed later. |
| Organisation | The customer. Left empty, the centre is offered to every organisation. |
| Accountable contact | The person responsible. Approval rules with the approver type Default send requests to this person. |
A restriction on the centre narrows who may book to it: by contact, role, product, category, catalog or punchout account. Without one, everybody at the organisation may.
2. Give it a budget
For a monetary cost centre, go to Procurement › Cost centres › Budgets and
select New budget: the Cost centre, an Allowance (50000), the
Period starts date and the Period length in months (1, 3, 6 or 12). Tick
Recurring and the budget rolls into the next period on its own when the
period ends. Whether unspent money carries over is set on the budget through the
API, not in the Cockpit form; see Budgets.
The budget is reserved the moment a buyer submits a purchase request, and booked when an order is placed without one. A cancelled order gives its budget back. Every movement is a line in the budget's ledger.
A budget alone stops nothing. To refuse orders that exceed it, or route them to approval, add an approval rule on the condition Available budget, scoped to the cost centre. See Approval rules.
3. How a buyer picks the cost centre
At checkout each line gets a cost centre from the ones the buyer may use. If exactly one is usable, it is selected automatically.
On an order list each position can carry its cost centre. When the list becomes an order through Create order in the Cockpit, the cost centre lands on the order position, but that path skips the approval rules and books no budget. When the list goes into a cart with Add all to cart, the cost centre is kept in the line's details but is not the cart line's cost centre. See Order lists.
4. Carry it to the invoice
The cost centre on the order line only helps the customer if it reaches their invoice. Map the order-line cost centre into your order export and check the first real invoice against the customer's expectation, line by line. See Field mapping.
What to check
- Place a test order with a cost centre on one line and not on another, and open it under Orders: the line with a cost centre shows it.
- Open the budget and confirm the ledger shows the booking.
- Check the order as it arrives in the ERP, not only in the Cockpit.
Next
- Approval rules — who may authorise the spend.
- Reading the budget ledger — every reservation, booking and return.