Costing and reports
Manage manufacturing cost centers
Create the cost centers your work centers belong to, rename them, and deactivate the ones you no longer use without losing their history.
2 min readLast updated
In this article
Manufacturing cost centers group your work centers by department or area, such as "Mixing", "Packing" or "Assembly line 2". Each work center can point to one cost center, so you can see which part of the factory it belongs to. Cost centers here are simple named records. They are kept separate from the cost centers of the accounting module.
Create a cost center
Open Manufacturing › Costing & Reports › Cost Centers and select New cost center.
Enter the Name. It must be unique in your company.
Leave Active on.
Select Save.
Then link work centers to it: open Manufacturing › Engineering › View Work Centers, edit a work center and choose its Cost center. See Set up work centers.
The list
The list shows each cost center's ID, Name, Company, Created by and status. By default only active cost centers are shown. Switch on Show inactive to see the deactivated ones too. Use the search box to find a cost center by name.
Click a row to open the cost center's page with the same details.
Rename or deactivate
To rename, open the row's actions menu, select Edit, change the Name and select Save.
To retire a cost center, select Deactivate and confirm Are you sure you want to deactivate this cost center? The message Cost center deactivated confirms it.
A deactivated cost center keeps its history. It is hidden from the default list. To use it again, edit it and switch Active back on.
Common questions
Can I delete a cost center? No. Deactivate it instead, so the work centers that referred to it keep their history.
Are these the same as accounting cost centers? No. Accounting cost centers are managed in the accounting module and are used on journal entries. Manufacturing cost centers organise work centers.