# Cost centers and cost distribution

> How Aragro assigns costs to fields, machinery, infrastructure and warehouses, how to build your hierarchy, and how to split shared costs.

Source: https://resources.aragro.com/en/cost-centers/
Language: en

Relative links and media resolve against the source URL.

A **cost center** is where a cost accumulates: a field, a machine, a warehouse, a plant or an administrative area. With good cost centers you can see profitability by field, by crop and by cycle.

## What Aragro assigns on its own

Aragro creates cost centers for your **fields**, **machinery**, **infrastructure** and **warehouses**, and assigns costs automatically by document:

- **Work order:** labor, inputs and machinery go to the order's **fields** (or assets). If fertilizing was done on fields 1 and 2, the cost is split between those two.
- **Machinery:** usage is costed with each machine's **standard cost** (per hour or kilometer) times the hours recorded on the order. Without a standard cost, the machinery report stays empty. The operator's wage is a separate labor cost.
- **Payroll:** if the structure has accounts assigned, completing it splits the cost across the period's work orders.

## Costs that don't belong to a single field

| Case | How to record it |
| --- | --- |
| Supervision, security, kitchen | **General** work order, picking every cost center that benefits. Aragro splits by the days and hours recorded. |
| Fixed-salary supervisors | Record them on work orders. Otherwise their salary stays as an unassigned cost. You can duplicate the order each day and only update attendance. |
| Maintenance by your staff | **Infrastructure** work order on the asset (road, fence, warehouse). |
| Supplier or contractor invoice | [Expense order](/en/expenses/), splitting the amount across the affected cost centers. |
| Inputs for a period without detail by activity | Work order with a generic *Input consumption* activity, picking the cycle and field. |
| Administrative expenses (stationery, office) | Expense order assigned to an administrative cost center. |

See [Work order types](/en/work-order-types/) and [Contractors, services and costs outside the work order](/en/contractors-and-services/).

## Build your hierarchy

You can create your own structure in **Finance → Cost centers**, for example with your accounting codes:

- **Parent** centers, such as *Administration* (code `10`).
- **Child** centers linked to the parent, such as *Stationery* (code `1001`).

If you don't want a center tied to a fixed category, leave the **Link cost center to** field empty. You then choose the center on each transaction.

### Ideas that work

- **One center per field** to see crop stage changes and cost per field.
- **Plants and mills as infrastructure** (for example, *Wet mill*), with their machinery recorded individually (*Pulper 1*, *Pulper 2*), to see the real processing cost.
- **Central operations as their own farm** (for example, a sawmill or a shared workshop), if you don't want their costs charged to the farm where they are located.

## Reviewing costs

- Cost reports by field, activity and machinery show what was assigned to each center.
- For payroll detail by activity, export the detailed report and use a pivot table in Excel.
- If a cost doesn't appear, check that the document is **completed** and that your [accounting setup](/en/accounting-setup/) is ready.

If you have a question this guide does not answer, contact us in the Aragro chat or write to [hola@aragro.com](mailto:hola@aragro.com).