Cost Allocation

As a user with the right permissions, you can manage cost allocation for your services in Cimpl.

You can view, add, modify, delete, and otherwise manage allocations for your entire inventory from the Allocations module, accessible through individual inventory items.

Note: You can only access the Allocations module if you have permission to access Inventory Management. View-only and editing permissions for Inventory Management can be set for specific user profiles under User Management in the Configuration module. Turning on or off this permission shows or hides the allocations button in inventory entries.

Depending on how your organization has requested the Allocations module to be set up, you may only have access to certain functions.

Once you've accessed the Allocations module, there are a variety of tasks you can perform. You can:

• Add single or multiple allocations for an inventory item.
• Edit or delete existing allocations for inventory items.
• Split the cost of your services by multiple allocations assigned to different entities, such as cost centers, accounts, GL (General Ledger) codes, etc.

Types of Allocations

There are 3 types of allocations which can be done from the service inventory in Cimpl:

• Single Allocation: is an allocation type, where 100% of the cost of the service should be allocated to a specific structure.
• Multiple Allocations with amount ($): this type of allocation allows allocation to multiple codes (GLs, Cost Centers, etc), with multiple currencies and amounts. It is a fixed allocation cost allocated to different codes (or, code-types)
• Percentage Split: allows a service's costs to be split by percentage (%) to different cost centers. This type of allocation is only applicable to percentages.

Each of these allocations models can be set as independent tabs in the allocations section that can be configure at the Service Category level.

Example: Wireless services can use a split allocation for chargeback (one tab) and Codes for account payable (another tab). Wireline services can use codes (one tab). IT assets can use chargeback (one tab).

Cost Allocation Set-up

The Allocations module can be configured based on how cost allocation is managed by your organization. To do so, you'll need to make an allocations set-up request. This way, specific groups, such as project codes, GL codes, account numbers, divisions, cost centers, and so forth, can be configured so that your allocations module matches your organization's financial requirements.

You can request allocation families or tables:

• Allocation families, or tables, divide your allocations page into several tabs.
• Each of your allocation families can be set up with their own configurations, including the number of fields, values, whether they support split allocations, multiple allocations, and so forth. Note that an allocation families is link to a service category.
• This comes in handy when you want to separate different types of allocation models (e.g. Accounts Payable and Chargeback).

You can request specific allocation rules for your families or tables to follow:

• You can request support for multiple allocation or single allocation - meaning your services or devices can have multiple allocations associated to them, or only one allocation per inventory item.
• You can request split allocations - meaning that your services or devices can be split up between different entities (e.g. GL codes, cost centers, departments, etc.).

Note: Split allocation is not compatible with multiple allocations, therefore you can't set both of these rules under one family or table.

Finally, you can request specific allocation attributes for each of your families or tables:

• You can request specific fields or headers to show, so that you can properly allocate costs and services based on the data that's used by your finance department (e.g. divisions vs. cost centers).
• For each of your fields, you can define specific data types or attributes, as well as the possible values which can be entered into each of the fields.

Note: If no allocation set-up request has been made, you are unable to access the Allocations module upon clicking the Allocations button. Instead, you will see blank page saying "No configuration has been set-up for cost allocation at this time. Please contact Cimpl in order to place an allocation set-up request."