How do cost centers work in Remote and how do I assign employees to them?

This article explains what cost centers are in Remote, how they work across payroll and reporting, and how to create and manage them. Customers should read this to set up budgeting and reporting correctly.

A cost center is a label you can use to group spend by team, department, project, or location. In Remote, cost centers help you track compensation, employer costs, and expenses by group for budgeting and reporting.

• Examples of groupings: Finance, Engineering, Project Apollo, Portugal, or On-call program.
• Typical uses: Budget ownership, department variance analysis, project tracking, and internal chargebacks.

Cost centers do not change legal employment, entity, or tax treatment. They are a reporting and workflow control tool.

Default permissions
By default, Owners and Super admins can create, edit, archive, and assign cost centers.

Customizing permissions
Your organization can configure who has view and edit rights to cost centers in your permissions settings:

• Go to Company settings > Permissions to review which roles can view and edit cost centers
• If you cannot access Company settings > Cost centers, contact your admin team to request the appropriate role

Example: Finance admins can be granted edit rights to create and maintain cost centers, while department managers have view-only access for reporting purposes.

• Payroll reports include cost center columns to break down gross pay, employer costs, and benefits by group
• If a team member is not assigned, their costs show as Unassigned. Add an assignment before payroll cutoff to include them in the correct group
• Archived cost centers remain on historical reports but cannot be selected for new assignments

1. Go to Company settings.
2. Under Organizational structure, Select Cost centers.
   
3. Click on Manage cost center; a choice of add a single one or add multiple in one go (bulk).
4. fill out the details to add a new cost center.
5. Click Save and you can add team members by selecting from a list or uploading a CSV file

Once the cost center is created, you can assign employees to it. Multiple cost centers with split percentages per team member are supported.

Option 1: From cost center settings (bulk assignment)
Go to Company settings > Organizational structures > Cost Centers > select the cost center > Add team members > choose Add by selecting from list or Upload from CSV
Best for assigning multiple team members at once

Option 2: From employee profile
Go to the employee's profile > Job tab > Cost Center section under Employment details > Edit

Option 3: During onboarding
Assign cost centers when completing the new hire onboarding form
Best for new employees

• Edit
• 1. Go to Company settings > Cost centers.
  2. Select the cost center and click Edit.
  3. Update the name/description or Managing entity then Save.
• Archive
• 1. Go to Company settings > Cost centers.
  2. Open the cost center.
  3. Click Archive cost center

It is recommended that you manually re-assign all the employees currently assigned to that cost center to others before you click 'archive'. If not, it will automatically un-assign them in the archive process.

• Payroll overview and payroll exports
• Employer cost breakdowns

Tip: Download payroll exports to analyze spend by cost center across months and compare plan vs actuals.

If you see errors when assigning an employee to a cost center:

• Check permissions: Only owners and admins can assign cost centers.
• Confirm the cost center is active: You cannot assign an archived cost center.
• Save order: Make sure you clicked Save on the profile after changing Cost center.
• Payroll timing: Changes after cutoff appear in the next cycle.
• Name conflicts: If two cost centers have similar names, consider renaming for clarity.

If issues persist, contact us via live messaging.

• Can a team member belong to more than one cost center? 
  Yes, multiple cost centers with split percentages per team member are supported.
• What happens if I delete a cost center? 
  Use archive instead of delete, so historical reports remain consistent.
• Do cost centers affect invoices? 
  Cost centers change reporting, not pricing. Invoices reflect aggregated totals, while exports show breakdowns.

See also: Error messages when assigning cost centers