About cost centers

• Modified on: Thu, 20 Aug, 2026 at 10:46 AM

What is a cost center?

A cost center is a way to group employees for accounting — separate from their department. In Celery, one employee can only have one department. But that same employee can be split across several cost centers.

Why use them?

• Track costs by branch, customer, role, or experience level
• Get reports split by these groups
• See wage costs divided up automatically, based on the percentages you set per employee

The one rule to remember

Each employee's cost centers must always add up to 100%.

• Above 100%? Too much wage cost gets booked for that employee.
• Below 100%? Some wage cost is missing from the report.
• Either way, Celery shows a warning on the employee's page.

How to set them up

1. Go to Employer → Cost centers
2. Click Add to create a new one (you can make as many as you need)

Tip: If a cost center will stop being used later, put "XX" in front of its name instead of deleting it. This keeps old records correct.

How to link a cost center to an employee

1. Go to Employees → pick the employee
2. Open Employment details
   
   
   
3. Under Cost centers, add one or more
   
   
4. Check that the percentages add up to 100%

How to run a report by cost center

1. Go to Reports → pick your report
2. Choose Cost center under "group by"
3. Pick one cost center, or all of them
4. Click Apply