Cost centres and budget periods

Overview

Two pieces of master data underpin budgeting, both in Settings → Module settings → Purchasing: cost centres (who owns spend) and budget periods (the fiscal windows spend is authorised in). Viewing budgets needs the "View budgets" permission; changing anything here needs "Manage budgets".

Cost centres

A cost centre is the internal owner of a budget, a team or project. Every requisition names exactly one; purchase orders deliberately carry none. Click Add cost centre and set:

• Code and Name: e.g. CC-100, Engineering.
• Budgets in: the currency this centre's budgets are denominated in. It locks once the centre holds budget, because every ledger entry is denominated in it.
• Owner: a real person. The owner matters beyond labeling: approval workflows can route a step to the cost centre owner of whatever requisition is being approved.

Cost centres are never deleted, only deactivated, history stays whole. Requisitions can't be raised until at least one active cost centre exists.

Budget periods

Periods are org-wide, so "FY26-Q1" means one thing across the company. Click Add period and give it a code, name, and start/end dates.

• A requisition finds its budget through the open period covering its need-by date, so open periods may not overlap: the app refuses an overlap and names the colliding period.
• Closing a period stops new allocations and reservations but never touches money already committed, open orders don't disappear at rollover. See The budget ledger, period close, and rules.