A Cost Account allows you to direct your employees' hours and costs to a specific cost centre. You assign them to your employees, but you can change them in transactions. You can also assign a specific Cost Account to an addition, deduction or leave reason or split an employee's cost between accounts. See Employee Costing Splits for more information.
Cost Accounts are broken down into positions (sections), where each position represents part of the organisation's costing, e.g. department, state, project, employment type, etc. And each position has a nominated number of characters. The makeup of the Cost Account is known as the Cost Account Structure and is determined by the organisation. When you add a new Cost Account, you start with the first new position in the structure and add all positions from that point. For example, if your structure is state, department, project and you need to add a new department, you would use an existing position one and add positions two and three.
Cost Account structure
You establish the cost account structure during implementation and determine the number of positions and characters. When you create a new Cost Account, you must follow the existing structure. If you need to update your Cost Account structure, raise a case online and request Consulting Services (chargeable or billable service).
To find the structure:
Go to Payroll, Maintenance, General, General Parameters.
Select the Cost Accounts tab.
This will list the Positions within the Cost Account and includes the Description, Separator and Length. The page will also include the Default Cost Account, which is the cost account assigned to an employee if none are specified on their record.
Add a new Cost Account
The steps below create a new Cost Account starting at position one using an example structure that consists of two positions, State and Department. You will need to adapt this process to accommodate your structure and the position you need to start with. For example, if you needed to add a new department to an existing state, skip adding position one and start with adding position two. Or if your structure consists of the three positions, you would need to add positions two and three.
Add Position One
Go to Payroll, Maintenance, General, Cost Accounts.
Click Add.
Select 1 for Position.
Cost Code shows the cost account code. You can't enter or select anything in this field. It is populated by what you select and enter for the following positions.
Enter the code. The field name differs for each database and uses the description from the cost account structure. In our example, the field is State, and we enter WA.
Enter the Description, e.g. Western Australia.
Click OK.
Add Position Two
Click Add.
Select 2 for Position.
Cost Code shows the cost account code. You can't enter or select anything in this field. It is populated by what you select and enter for the following positions.
From the drop-down, select your position one code. The field name differs for each database and uses the description from the cost account structure. In our example, the field is State and we select WA.
Enter the code. Again, the field name differs for each database. In our example, the field is Department, and we enter 60.
Enter the Description, e.g. Consulting.
Click OK.
For more information, see Cost Accounts in MicrOpay (pdf).