Cost Groups

Use the Cost Groups function to create pre-defined definitions of cost areas. Cost groups enable you to group BOM costs into specific assigned areas. Each cost group is summarized on the General tab of the Bills of Material screen. Each BOM element can be assigned to a unique cost group.

Cost Groups allow you to break the bill of material down into user-definable “Cost Groups”. You can choose to set up one cost group and simply assign it to everything. This essentially negates the use of cost groups but makes the setup process somewhat easier. Typically users will assign cost groups related to labor to labor areas, machine-related costs to machines, subcontracting to subcontracted process, materials to components, etc. One could take this a step further and have different cost groups for different machines, or labor types, etc.

The cost groups are used primarily in the report, Summarized Bill of Material, and the Cost button on the setup screen for the bills of material. These functions break the bill of material’s costs down by these cost groups showing specific costs for each area. This can be very useful when the total estimated cost of a bill seems too high or low. Cost groups show exactly where this total cost is derived from and can aid in getting to the bottom of a troublesome costing issue.

NOTE: Cost Groups are not related to the GL Account references made by the different costing areas within a BOM, although they could be used to track similar information.

Once set up, these cost groups will then be available for use in the setup for bills of material, work centers, machine groups, labor types, and subcontracted operations.

Creating a Cost Group

  1. Click the New button, on the toolbar, to open a blank cost group record.
  2. Enter a new cost group ID in the Cost Group ID field.
  3. Enter a description of the new cost group in the Description field.
  4. Click the Save button, on the toolbar, to save the new cost group.

Editing a Cost Group

  1. Select a cost group to edit from the Cost Group ID field.
  2. Edit the Description as necessary.
  3. Click the Save button, on the toolbar, to save any edits made to the cost group.

Deleting a Cost Group

  1. Select a cost group to delete from the Cost Group ID field.
  2. Click the Delete button, on the toolbar, to delete the selected cost group.
  3. Click Yes at the "Are you sure you want to delete selected record(s)?" prompt.

Produce a Cost Groups List

  1. Select the print preview button () to preview the list.
  2. The preview report screen appears.
  3. Select the print button ( ) in the toolbar to print your list.