Building a cost-centre tree, and splitting a cost by percentageبناء شجرة مراكز تكلفة، وتوزيع كلفة بالنسبة المئوية

Cost centers explains what the three dimensions are for and why a company sets its own names for them. This guide covers the two things that guide leaves out: how a tree is actually built node by node, and a screen that splits one posted value across several cost centers automatically instead of you typing a line per center.

1. Building the tree: New chart, not New detail

Open Cost Centers, pick the Type you want to build under, and select the row the new node should sit under - the parent comes from whichever row is selected when you open New, not from the account code you type.

The ribbon's New button is a split button with two choices, and only one of them creates a node:

New chart is the node-creation dialog. It carries Account, Description and a Linked to warehouses checkbox. The account code is free text - it only has to be unique, and its shape does not decide where it nests. Select the parent row first, then open New chart and type a code; the new row appears under the parent you had selected. Try to save a code whose parent was never created and Libra answers «Please create father account first» - so the fix is to select the real parent row, not to change the code.

New detail looks like a second way to add a node, and it is not one. Its Account number field is a lookup into nodes that already exist - type a code that is not there yet and it autocompletes to the nearest one that is, ready to attach your Description to the wrong node if you save. Use New detail only to set Start date, End date, the Default / Stopped / Closed radio, or General operations on a node New chart already created - never to create the node itself.

2. A worked example: property, building, apartment

A business that manages property is the clearest case for a deep tree, and it is worth building before you decide your own company needs one. Model it as:

• a node for the project (the property as a whole);
• a building node under it, one per building;
• an apartment node under each building, one per unit;
• a General node under each building, for a cost that belongs to no single apartment - a lift repair, a shared entrance light, cleaning the shared stairwell;
• one more General node at the project level, for a cost shared across every building the project has.

Post each cost against the node that actually caused it. A repair inside one apartment goes on that apartment's own node; a cost nobody can attribute to one unit goes on the building's General node instead, and one that spans every building in the project goes on the project's own General node. At year end, spread each General node's balance across the apartments it covers - evenly, or by each apartment's own floor area if some units are larger than others. Which of the two you pick is a decision about your own building, not something the tree forces on you.

3. Splitting a cost automatically: percentage distribution

Typing the same split by hand every month - the same three cost centers, the same three percentages

• is exactly the kind of repetition a cost-centre tree is supposed to remove. **Percentage

distribution on cost centers** is the screen for it: configure the split once, and every future posting to the account can carry it without a line being typed per cost center.

The screen opens on a Period field, marked required. Below it sits a grid of General op / Description rows - this is where the accounts to be split are listed - and a checkbox, Apply Calculation to All Distributions. A second grid below that carries PID, Plan and Currency columns, for the cost centers and shares each listed account splits across. The ribbon carries Edit, Save, Cancel, Delete, Period, Calculate and Print.

Some companies' own navbar list under Cost centers management draws only Switch cost centers; when that is the case for yours, open Percentage distribution on cost centers through the navigation pane's Search box instead, the same way as any screen your own company's menu keeps off its list.

Next: Cost centers for what Type and the three dimensions mean, and Paying a supplier in a different currency from their invoice for paying a supplier whose invoice sits in a different currency from the cash or bank account settling it.