Cost accounting with automatic allocations

Can projectfacts allocate costs automatically?

Since release 2026.3, projectfacts distributes costs on its own. Salary costs, overheads and internal services land on cost centres, projects and customers automatically through allocation rules, in addition to the postings that already arise from times, expenses and documents. This means the contribution margin is up to date daily, while the project is still running.

The push came from practice: management consultancies in particular had long asked for a proper split of salaries, one that counts holiday and sickness as well.

What an automatic allocation takes off your hands

An allocation passes on costs that do not belong to a project directly, following a fixed rule. Until now that was manual work in a spreadsheet, once a quarter and with figures that were already out of date when they were compiled. Now you store the rule once and projectfacts applies it as soon as anything is booked.

• Distributing overheads: rent, software or administration go to the business areas according to your rule and on to the cost objects from there.
• Moving costs internally: an internal transfer shifts amounts between cost objects without touching a customer invoice.
• Charging internal services: when one department works for another, the work is charged internally instead of disappearing into the overhead pot.

The salary cost centre

The most important change for service companies is the salary cost centre. An employee’s salary sits there first. Booked hours relieve that cost centre and charge the project in question. What remains, namely holiday, sickness and idle time, is allocated to the projects according to your rule.

This answers a question that hourly rates alone cannot: what does a project really cost once you carry the time in which nobody was productive?

Before and now

Before

• Primary postings only, from times, expenses, documents and bookings
• No internal transfers and no allocations
• No dedicated list and no detail manager for cost centres, cost objects and cost types
• Contribution margin from directly booked costs only
• No planning in cost accounting, only values as at a key date

Now, with 2026.3

• Primary and secondary postings: internal transfers, allocations and internal activity charging
• Salary cost centre with allocation of unbooked time to the projects
• Dedicated tiles, lists and detail managers for cost centres, cost objects and cost types
• Contribution margin per project, customer and business area, as CM I and, after internal charging, as CM II
• Planning with plan, actual and variance per month and cumulatively since the start of the year
• Evaluations over time: monthly figures per cost centre, cost object and cost type, with actual, plan and previous year side by side in the overview

Three examples from everyday work

• The loss-making project: it shows up in the month it happens, not a quarter later.
• The customer as a whole: one project runs well, yet the customer still costs money, for instance because many quotes were written. projectfacts brings all cost objects of a customer together and shows the full picture.
• The shared hotel: a consultant visits two customers on one trip. The hotel bill of 640 euros sits with the first customer at first. An internal transfer moves 320 euros to the second, purely internally and without changing the travel expense report or the customer invoice.

None of this needs extra data entry: the figures come from the data that your day-to-day work already creates in projectfacts. How the profitability of a single project is shown is covered on the project controlling page, while the controlling page gives you the overview of margin, utilisation and hourly rates.

What cost accounting is not

It is not financial accounting. Cost accounting shows the internal view of your company, in other words where costs arise and what for. The view required by commercial law remains the job of your accounting team, to whom projectfacts passes the data through financial accounting.

It is meant for managing directors, heads of department and project managers at service companies, in other words everywhere that working time is sold and the question is: which project pays its way, and which customer is worth it? How cost types, cost centres and cost objects work together for this is explained in detail on the cost accounting page.

Frequently asked questions about allocations and cost accounting

What is an automatic allocation in cost accounting?

An allocation distributes costs that cannot be assigned to a project directly across cost centres and cost objects, following a fixed rule. In projectfacts you store that rule once; after that the system passes salary and overhead costs on by itself, in addition to the primary postings from times, expenses and documents.

How are salary costs distributed across projects?

An employee’s salary sits on their salary cost centre. Booked hours relieve that cost centre and charge the project in question. What remains, namely holiday, sickness and idle time, is spread across the projects according to your allocation rule. That way every project also carries its share of unproductive time.

Does cost accounting replace financial accounting?

No. Cost accounting is the internal view of the company: where costs arise and what for. The view required by commercial law remains the job of financial accounting, to which projectfacts passes the data on. Cost accounting adds to it, it does not replace it.

Setting up cost centres and allocations

What cost centres, cost objects and allocation rules should look like for your company depends on your structure. That is exactly what we are happy to discuss with you before you start booking.