Result Center Structure

Grouping cost centers into areas makes reading by sector simpler: you analyze by AREA (Operations, Sales...) and open the detail down to the leaf center whenever you want. It's the "where it comes from / where it goes" by area of the company.

A center can be marked as a PROJECT. Its transactions are then classified as INVESTMENT in the cash flow, regardless of the category — buying a machine under the "Suppliers" category is capex, not operations. By linking the center to a project in the Projects module, the Capex view compares the project's budget with the center's actuals.

A node WITHOUT children is a DETAIL account (leaf) — it's where the entry goes. As soon as it gains a child, it becomes a SUMMARY account (group) and starts only ADDING UP the children, no longer accepting direct entries.

Create the centers in the normal registry (Cost/Profit Center). Here you use "Move" to place a center inside a group (parent), or "Make root" to take it out of the group. As many levels as you want.

It's not possible to turn into a group a center that ALREADY has entries (including allocation lines) — otherwise the entries would end up on a summary node. Reclassify the entries to a leaf first. It's also forbidden to choose a descendant as the parent (avoids a cycle).

Indirect centers (maintenance, production planning, quality) can be allocated to direct ones by percentages that add up to exactly 100%. The rule is a LENS over the by-center views: the ledger is NEVER changed, no fake entry is created, and the grand total doesn't change by a cent (the rounding remainder goes to the last slice). In the budget's by-center view, the lens applies to budgeted AND actual at the same time — both sides of the comparison must wear the same lens.

By default the center applies to all companies in the group — that's the common case and costs nothing. If you tick companies under visibility, only those can see and post to that center: that's how centers of a specific unit stay out of the other units' entries.

The center's name is unique within the company and among siblings under the same parent — not across the group. In other words: each of a group's 22 companies can have its own "Administrative" and "Sales", and reports keep comparing apples with apples. The rule used to apply to the whole group, and the workaround was to cram the company name into the center name ("RAW MATERIAL WAREHOUSE - COMPANY A", "RAW MATERIAL WAREHOUSE- COMPANY B"), which spoils any comparison and turns a typo in the suffix into a new center. In different branches of the same company the name can repeat too: "Maintenance" at Plant A and "Maintenance" at Plant B are distinct centers. What doesn't repeat is the CODE, which is the business identity and is what the spreadsheet import matches on.

In the Financial Transactions screen (the rule of posting only to a leaf applies to BOTH center AND nature) and in reports/filters by center. Allocation by center keeps working — always on detail centers.