Cost centers

Why using cost centers?

The cost centers were introduced, since many of our customers wanted to create a statistic about the object utilization on the group level to know which user group booked how many of objects in the past. This statistic could be user, for example, to create a usage based cost distribution between two departments.

Problem with user group

To make a good cost based comparison between two departments, we need a clean organigram. Which means that the users in department A are only members in a group DEP_A and the users in department B are only members in the DEP_B group. Unfortunately, this work only in the theory like this, in a daily business the groups are getting mixed up. Also, the users can have multiple groups at the same time, and the groups are also used to manage the access of the users to the objects, which sometimes leads to a very flexible group management. Users are added to one groups and removed from another (or not). Let's imagine the following situation:

If we want to compare number of reservations between Group A, Group B and Group C, then we will have problem with the users that are members of multiple groups. We would need to identify that users and decide which Group department should pay for their office usage. Also, it gets complicated more since, the group members could change at any time, user can leave the organization and their profile get deleted and many of our customer are using the anonymization feature as well.

Solution with cost centers

As described in the section above, we need a clear association between a department and a user or a cost center and a user. One user should have only one department or cost center. For this reason, we introduced the cost center module. You can create cost centers and assign the users to the cost centers. It's up to you how you define a cost center. It can be a department or anything else. You can change the cost center of a user at any time.

An upcoming reservation is associated to a user profile and gets anonymized after X days based on your admin settings. To prevent the anonymization of the cost center, which is a user specific field, we copy the current cost center of the user from the user profile to the reservation. This happens when the reservation starts. This can be considered as a buying transaction. The cost centers buy the reservation.

This way you change the cost center of a user at any time. After changing it, the new cost center will be copied to the reservations in the future. In case the employee leaves the organization, you can delete the use profile of the user.

Also, the anonymization feature is not a problem, since the cost center will be copied from the user profile to the reservation. The anonymization will detach the user profiles from the reservations.

Cost center statistics

Export reservations in CSV/XLSX

You can find an overview of the bookings made in the admin area under Dashboard > Bookings > All bookings. Here you can use the filter icon to filter by cost center as well as other filter options. You can use the download icon to download the current booking list in XLSX or CSV format for further evaluation. 

Precalculated statistics

Since the cost center will be copied directly to the reservation, a statistic can be made easily by, however first the data need to be collected. Once enough data is collected, you can export the reservations as an administrator in the Dashboard > all bookings 0r by using our REST API and create a statistics of your choice.

Configuration manual

The cost center user attribute can be configured and managed in multiple ways. You can create and manage them manually, or you can connect them with a SAML2 or SCIM attribute and let them synchronize from your identity provider.

Cost centers

Navigate as an administrator in Flexopus to Dashboard > Users > Cost centers. Here you can find all the cost centers.

All users are associated by default to the cost center called default. This cost center can not be edited.

Create cost center manually

You can add cost centers manually in the admin dashboard. The name of the cost center is required and need to be unique. After opening the cost center, the users can be associated with the cost center.

You can also open the user profiles in the admin dashboard, search for a user and change the cost center in the user profile manually.

SAML2 attribute

In case you use SAML2 for SSO, you can also manage the cost centers externally with your identity provider. Simply create a new attribute mapping with the attribute costcenter. This attribute expects a string to be sent.

Sending new cost center
In case you send a new cost center via this attribute, the system will create a new cost center automatically. You don't need to create the cost center manually.

Sending existing cost center
In case you send an existing cost center via this attribute, the system will match the cost centers based on the provided name. If there is a match, then the user will be added to the existing cost center.

SCIM attribute

The cost center can be configured and sent via the SCIM API. Connect the costcenter attribute in the attribute mapping with the corresponding field in your identity provider. In matter of fact, we recommend setting the SCIM synchronization, if your identity provider supports it. This way, changing the cost center will be done faster. The SAML2 attribute synchronization only happens, when the user initiates an authentication process. Which can take time depending on how you set the session time in Flexopus.