How to Manage Cost Centres

To set up cost centres, please navigate to “Company Settings”, “Payroll Settings”, and then “Advanced Settings”. Under "Timesheet Input Format & Preference", you can enable specific cost centres to show up in employees’ timesheets.

If you are setting up all your employees to be dedicated to one department or branch, then you do not need to tick either of those boxes. If they were working for different branches or departments, it would be worth checking each option. If you have particular job types, enable "Job Type". If you have particular job types with customers, you can enable "Job Number".

Navigate to “Company Settings” and then “Cost Centres”. This area allows you to set up Cost Centres to allocate costs, for reporting purposes, over different Branches, Departments, Job Types or Jobs (by Customer, etc.) - and allocate Administrators for each Cost Centre.

If you would like to set up a department or branch, then select “Add”. You can set up individual bank accounts here and modify the display sequence how you want them. Below is a rundown of what each code is used for in Crystal Payroll.

  • Cost Centre: Reporting Purposes. The only compulsory code field.
  • Department or Branch Code: Additional identifier.
  • Account Code: Used for exporting to accounting systems.
  • Sub Code: KiwiSaver code.

If you have Job Type or Job Number enabled, select into their menu respectively and select “Add”. These are primarily self-explanatory when setting up, except Job Number, in which case you may want to set up a customer by selecting “Setup Customer” on the right-hand side.

Suppose you would like an employee to be dedicated to several different cost centres and intend to keep them that way. In that case, you can use the “Cost Centre Allocation” button to dedicate a percentage of their employment to each desired cost centre. If you would like to set up an administrator in your system only to manage specific departments, you can also do that by selecting “Department Administrator”.

To set an employee to a default branch and department, please return home and then to “Employee Settings”, “Employee Details”. Select an employee from the left-hand side, and set their branch or department under “General Details”.


If you enabled one of the options for the timesheet in your advanced payroll settings, you would notice that there are new fields that you can enter for each employee in “Process a Pay”, “Time & Income”.

We have now covered just about everything you need to know about setting up and using Cost Centres within Crystal Payroll. If you get stuck during one of these processes, please do not hesitate to contact us.