Reports and compliance

A shared cost spread by a rule, and what one company owes another

Head office pays the electricity for four hotels: a rule spreads it by occupied rooms, revenue, headcount or a fixed share, reads the driver from the books, and posts. What one company of the group owes another is then settled and eliminated.

Menu → Allocations. One hotel pays a bill the whole group uses — the electricity, the shared marketing, head office's own salaries. Splitting it by hand every month is how it stops being split. A rule does it, from the books.

The allocation rules: the source hotel and account, the hotels it spreads over, and the basis it spreads by.

Do this

A rule — the hotel and the account whose cost is shared (and a cost centre, if only part of it is), the hotels it goes to (named, or every hotel of a company, or of a city), and whether the source keeps a share of its own.
The basis: revenue, rooms, occupied rooms, headcount, bookings, a fixed percentage per hotel, an equal share, or a formula — a weight per hotel, which is how floor area or a meter reading is used.
Save it. It spreads nothing until it is run.

The run

A run for a month: each hotel, its driver, its share and its rupees, before anything is posted.

Pick the month and the rule. The driver is read from the books and never typed — revenue from the ledger, occupied rooms from the night audit's own count, headcount from the payroll, bookings from the bookings made — and the run shows each hotel's driver, its share and its rupees before it posts. The last hotel takes the rounding, so the pieces add back to the whole. Post it, and the source hotel's cost is credited and each target's debited, every line carrying its department and cost centre. A run can be reversed; its rule, its month, the source amount and the entries it made are kept together.

Between two companies

Intercompany: what one company of the group owes another, and the settlement.

A journal belongs to one legal entity — that has been the rule since the group statements were built — so a cost that crosses two companies is two linked journals: *due from* on one side, *due to* on the other. This tab lists them, lets one company charge another (a shared service, a management fee) and lets them settle — the payment that clears the balance. At consolidation the two sides net to nothing and the group statement shows them eliminated, which is what an auditor looks for.

See also One ledger, many dimensions, which is what an allocation writes onto every line it posts.

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