Projects and cost centres

Projects and cost centres let you see your books by more than account. A project is a client engagement or a grant-funded project: it can have a customer, start and end dates, and a funder reference. A cost centre is a permanent part of your company, such as a team, a department or a location. Tag revenue and costs with them, and the profit and loss report shows each project's or cost centre's share.

Tags are management information. Your VAT return (KMD), TSD and annual report don't use them, and changing a tag never changes a tax figure or an account balance.

Projects and cost centres are included in the Growth and Business plans.

Turning them on

Go to Settings → Projects and cost centres. There are two switches, Use projects and Use cost centres. You can use either one or both.

When cost centres are on, choose what you call them: Cost centre, Department, Team or Location. Arvello uses that word everywhere it names them.

Once one is on, it gets its own section in the side menu, after Reports: project profitability, the profit and loss split by project or cost centre, and a link back to these settings.

Switching a dimension off hides its pickers, report options and menu section. Tags already stored stay where they are and come back when you switch it on again.

Projects and cost centres

Add projects and cost centres on the same settings page. Each has a short code (up to 20 characters, shown in pickers and reports) and a name. A project can also have:

• Customer: on a sales invoice to that customer, their projects are listed first.
• Start and end dates: for your reference.
• Funder reference: the grant name and agreement number. The project is then marked Grant in the lists.

Archive a value you no longer use. It isn't offered for new documents, but everything already tagged with it keeps the tag, and the reports still show it. Delete works only for a value nothing uses yet.

Members who can manage sales or the ledger can add projects. Cost centres, the switches and the account requirements need ledger access.

Tagging your books

Once a dimension is on, a project or cost-centre picker appears on:

• sales and purchase invoice lines, credit notes and expenses (a picker at the top fills every line, and each line can have its own)
• received e-invoices, when you review them
• recurring invoice and expense templates
• bank payments booked as other income, and categorisation rules
• people (their default) and payroll runs (the split)
• fixed assets (where their depreciation is booked)
• business trips (where their daily allowance is booked)

Only revenue and expense lines carry a tag. Receivables, payables, VAT and bank balances never do.

To split one purchase across two projects, enter it as two lines.

Payroll

A person's default split sets the project and cost centre their pay goes to. On a payroll run, Split shares one person's pay across projects and cost centres in percent. Gross pay, social tax and the employer's unemployment insurance are split in the same shares. Approving the run freezes the split, so changing a person's default later only affects future runs.

Requiring a tag

In Settings → Projects and cost centres → Required tags, you can make a revenue or expense account require a project or a cost centre. Arvello then asks for one when someone finalises a document or categorises a payment to that account. Automatic postings, such as payroll, depreciation or a rule that auto-categorises a payment, are never refused. They show in the reports as untagged instead. A rule whose account requires a tag it doesn't carry doesn't run.

Changing a tag after finalising

A finalised invoice, a categorised payment and an approved payroll run can still change project or cost centre. Choose Change project or cost centre. Arvello doesn't edit the posted entry. It posts a reclassification entry on the document's date that moves the amount from the old project or cost centre to the new one, on the same account. Account totals, VAT and TSD don't change.

Some changes aren't possible:

• A locked year: unlock the annual report first. If the year's annual report is submitted, reopen it first.
• An invoice with a credit note: its project can no longer change, because the credit note reverses its revenue per project. A draft credit note counts too: delete the draft, change the project, then credit the invoice again.

Reports

• Profit & loss: filter to one project or cost centre, or compare them side by side. The comparison has one column per value, a column for untagged lines and a total that equals your normal P&L.
• Reports → Projects: revenue, costs and margin per project, for this financial year or since the start.
• General ledger: project and cost-centre columns and filters. The CSV export includes both.

Year-end adjustments, bank fees and exchange differences aren't tagged. They show in the No project column.

Grant-funded projects

Many grants that pay back actual costs ask you to keep the project's transactions apart, for example with a separate accounting code. A project tag on every cost, the profit and loss report for the project, and the general ledger export filtered to it give you that for revenue and costs. The grant itself, and assets bought for the project, are on balance-sheet accounts, which aren't tagged, so provide those records separately. Your grant agreement decides which costs are eligible.