What Is a Cost Centre?

In Jobpac, a cost centre is the core unit for managing project budgets and costs. It combines a cost code and a cost type to describe both what the work is and what kind of cost it is.

Cost codes and cost types

A cost centre is made up of two parts:

• Cost code – identifies a specific part of the work breakdown structure, such as a section of the project or a type of activity.
• Cost type – identifies the nature of the cost, such as labour, materials, subcontract or plant.

When you put these together, you get a cost centre. For example, one cost centre may represent subcontract costs for demolition, while another represents materials for the same demolition work.

What you do at cost centre level

Jobpac tracks most project controls at the cost centre level.

For each cost centre you can:

• set and review budgets
• record commitments from purchase orders and subcontracts
• record actual costs from invoices, payroll and journals
• calculate incurred and accrued costs
• update forecasts and measure performance against budget

This level of detail helps you understand not just how much a project costs, but exactly where and on what type of resource the money is being spent.

Why cost centres are important

Cost centres are important because they:

• link the project’s work breakdown structure to financial information
• provide a consistent place to compare budget, committed, actual and forecast costs
• support detailed analysis of performance by work type and resource type

When cost centres are set up and used consistently, they give project managers and finance teams a clear, shared view of where the project budget is going.

Cost centres and reporting

Many Jobpac reports use cost centres as the main level of detail. For example, cost reports can show:

• budget and actual cost by cost centre
• committed cost and remaining budget by cost centre
• forecast final cost and expected gain or loss for each cost centre

This helps you drill down from job level performance to the specific parts of the project that are driving results.