Cost Centers – Distribute Staff Costs by Department

Cost centers are an accounting principle where costs are split by department or business area. In a restaurant, you often want to know exactly what Kitchen costs vs. Bar vs. Floor – both for budgeting and to see where margins lie.

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What a cost center is:

A cost center is a label attached to costs so you can filter and sum in reports. In Vendion, cost centers are primarily tied to:

• Labor costs per department (primary use case)
• Goods purchases (if enabled in the Order module)
• Sales per station (used for profitability analysis)

The cost center then flows with you when you do a SIE export to Fortnox or Visma, meaning the bookkeeping is automatically split correctly.

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Typical cost centers in a restaurant:

Code is used internally for sorting in reports; account number is what's sent to Fortnox/Visma in the SIE file.

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Create cost centers:

1. Go to Staff → Settings
2. Click the Cost centers tab
3. Click Add
4. Fill in:
   • Name – clear department name (e.g. "Kitchen")
   • Code – short code (3 digits, optional)
   • Account number – Fortnox/Visma account for labor cost (often 7010 or 7210)
   • Account for social fees – typically 7510
   • Description (optional)
5. Save

Change order: Drag and drop to sort in reports.

Deactivate: Sets the cost center as inactive. Historical data is preserved, but the cost center can't be selected for new shifts or employees.

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Assign cost center:

Three levels of assignment:

Per employee (default):

1. Open the employee's detail page
2. Select Default cost center from dropdown
3. All shifts for that person go to that cost center

Per shift (override):

1. Open a shift in the schedule
2. Select Cost center in the shift dialog
3. The shift gets this cost center instead of the employee's default

Use per-shift assignment when a chef temporarily works in the bar, or a server helps in the kitchen.

Per role (automatic):

1. Link a role to a cost center in Roles → Settings
2. Everyone with that role automatically gets that cost center
3. Can be overridden by employee's default

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Cost centers in payroll data:

When you open payroll data (Staff → Payroll), costs are shown per employee. Click By cost center to see the total per department:

• Kitchen: 145,230 SEK (of which OB 12,400 SEK)
• Bar: 52,110 SEK (of which OB 8,200 SEK)
• Floor: 98,770 SEK (of which OB 5,600 SEK)

This is the exact layout that's sent in the SIE export.

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SIE export with cost centers:

When you export payroll data to Fortnox or Visma:

1. Open the payroll data
2. Click Export → SIE
3. The system generates a SIE file with:
   • Vouchers per employee
   • Account numbers per entry (salary, social fees, vacation supplement)
   • Cost center on every row
4. Upload the SIE file to Fortnox or Visma
5. Bookkeeping automatically creates vouchers where each row is marked with the correct cost center

In Fortnox it looks like this:

Voucher L-2026-04-01
Row 1: 7210 Floor    Cost center 300  98,770
Row 2: 7010 Kitchen  Cost center 100 145,230
Row 3: 7010 Bar      Cost center 200  52,110
Row 4: 7510 Social   (distributed per gross)

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Analysis and reports:

Cost centers are the basis for several reports:

• Labor cost per department (Analytics → Staff)
• Labor productivity (sales per work hour, per department)
• Profitability per station (compare sales vs. labor cost per department)
• Monthly summary (exportable to PDF for budget meetings)

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Tips for a good cost center structure:

1. Keep the list short – 4–6 cost centers is enough. More becomes hard to assign correctly
2. Match the bookkeeping accounts – talk to your accountant so SIE export matches existing chart of accounts
3. Same structure for all locations (chains) – cost centers must be consistent across restaurants for fair comparison
4. Use cost centers early – starting only after 6 months means reclassification work. Better to set up from day 1