Create Cost Centers and Projects
Cost centers and projects are posting dimensions — extra tags you attach to ledger lines so you can later slice the books by department or by initiative. A cost center answers “which part of the hospital did this belong to?”; a project answers “which initiative did this belong to?”. This page shows how to create both.
Who / when: the Accountant and the Finance Manager maintain cost centers and projects; the Auditor reads them. You set them up once and then tag postings (automatically, by linked department, or by hand on a manual journal).
We will follow Tunde the finance officer, setting up a Laboratory cost center and a renovation project.
A few terms first
Section titled “A few terms first”- Cost center — a unit of the business (a department, a ward, a service line) you want to report on. Cost centers form a tree, like the chart of accounts: group nodes organise; postable nodes carry the tags.
- Project — a discrete initiative (a building works programme, a grant) you want to track across accounts and time, with an optional headline budget.
- Dimension — a tag on a ledger line (cost center or project) that the reports can filter and group by.
Create a cost center
Section titled “Create a cost center”-
Accountant — open Finance & Ledger → Cost Centers, then press New Cost Center.
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Accountant — fill in the Code (for example
CC-LAB) and Name (Laboratory). Leave the Group Cost Center toggle off for a postable centre; turn it on only to create an organising header. -
Accountant — optionally pick a Parent (Group) Cost Center to nest it, and a Linked Department — a searchable picker of your real departments. Linking to a department lets postings that originate in that department (for example a pay run split by staff department) carry the right cost center automatically.
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Accountant — press Create Cost Center. It appears in the tree, ready to tag postings.
Create a project
Section titled “Create a project”-
Accountant — open Finance & Ledger → Projects, then press New Project.
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Accountant — fill in the Code and Name (for example 2026 Theatre Renovation), set the Status (a new initiative is Open), and optionally enter a headline budget amount. Press Create Project.
Edit, disable or complete
Section titled “Edit, disable or complete”- Accountant — press Edit on any cost-center row to rename it, change its parent or linked department, or Disable it (it stays for history but takes no new tags). On a project, edit its status — for example move it to Completed when the initiative closes.
What happens next
Section titled “What happens next”With dimensions in place, your reports become sliceable by department and initiative. A common next step is to compare a department’s or project’s spend against a plan — see Compare a Budget Against Live Actuals.