Cost centers are a set of activities to which costs can be allocated. They answer the question "for which purpose/function is this spending made?". The Budgets feature relies on this concept. Admins and Account owners can set up a cost center on Spendesk.
You can have several CCs, and even a 100+ if needed, but we don't recommend it, to keep a smooth payment preparation process.
Set up a cost center
In the 'Settings' tab, you can go to the tab called "Cost centers", where you will be able to create your first cost center.
🔴 This information can be exported in a column of the exports you can get on the All payables tab and Export tab.
2. Choose a cost center name and a cost center owner, who will be accountable for this cost center (it will be mandatory for them to be in the approval flow) and for the related budget.
Example : the head of marketing is the best suited to approve expenses related to a 'Marketing' cost center.
Cost center owners # co-owners
Cost center co-owners have the same rights as the cost center owner but do not need to be in the approval flow.
They can see the expenses made under that cost center in the "Payments" tab even if they're not a cost center approver.
Define the approval flow
After choosing a cost center name and owner, click on Define the approval workflow (see previous screenshot).
You can define different approval thresholds, depending on the amount of each expense, by assigning a specific approval scheme to each threshold.
Example: One approver A below the 1000 euros threshold, one approver A and one approver B for expenses above the 1000 euros threshold.
For each threshold, you can decide whether the expense should be approved by any of the approvers, or by both approvers.
Note: if you define several approval flows for a cost center, for example approval flow 1 (with approver A) from 0 to 10000 euros, and approval flow 2 up to 20000 euros (with approver B), if a person submits a request for 8000 euros, approver A and all approvers above them will be able to approve the request.
For more details on creating role-based approval workflows and for viewing exception scenarios, click here.
Edit a cost center
You can edit the cost center owner and all settings at any time by clicking on the 'edit' tool in Cost centers next to the cost center owner's name.
Change the cost center on a request / payable / payment
You can change the cost center on a request / payable / payment in the tab where it's located, by clicking on the payment and editing the Cost Center field. This is possible until the payment is prepared+exported.
Delete a cost center
If you delete a cost center, you are asked to choose another existing cost center to replace it (only if it has requests, payables or payments associated).
That means that all requests, payments, payables, subscriptions, purchase orders previously assigned to the deleted cost center will be assigned to the new chosen cost center.
Hence, the approval flow of all requests not yet approved will be the one related to the new assigned cost center.
FYI, payables/payments that have already been exported won't see their cost center value changed.
