In large organisations, payroll and finance don’t always see eye-to-eye. Payroll teams want accurate, timely, compliant pay runs. Finance wants detailed cost allocation across departments, projects, clients, or business units.
The problem? Finance often demands more cost centre splits than the payroll system can handle.
For payroll managers, this creates a serious headache:
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How do you keep gross-to-net calculations clean while meeting finance’s reporting needs?
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What happens when an employee legitimately works across five, ten, or even twenty different cost centres?
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How do you avoid payroll becoming a bottleneck – or introducing errors into financial reporting?
This is where the right payroll cost centre splitting solution makes all the difference.
The cost centre challenge: why payroll hits a wall
Most payroll systems are built with strict limits – often three to five cost centre splits per employee record. That may work for simple organisations, but not for large enterprises.
Complex organisations face:
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Employees working across multiple projects and clients
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Costs needing to be shared across divisions and business units
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Finance demanding 100% accuracy, often at a more detailed level than payroll was designed to handle
When payroll systems can’t support this granularity, teams resort to messy workarounds – manual journals, Excel spreadsheets, or shadow systems. These add risk, waste time, and undermine confidence in the data.
How Affinity Payroll handles multiple cost centres
Affinity was designed for enterprise payroll in Australia and New Zealand, where complex costing is the norm. It offers four flexible ways to handle more cost centres than standard payroll systems allow:
1. Five Cost Centres by Default
Each employee can be assigned up to five cost centres, with splits totalling 100%. This covers most allocation needs.
2. Costing via Timesheets
Base costing (up to five splits) covers an employee’s “home” department or default allocation. But work isn’t always the same as the base costing.
With Affinity’s workforce management tools, employees can record their hours against timesheets with up to 12 additional elements per entry.
For example, an employee’s base costing might split 50% Marketing / 50% Sales, but their timesheet could allocate specific hours to a campaign or client. Payroll costing then reflects both the default allocation and the real-time cost of work performed.
3. Informational Pay Elements for Extended Splits
For employees who don’t use timesheets but still require allocation across many cost centres, Affinity uses informational pay elements. Each element represents a cost centre with its percentage split. This approach allows virtually unlimited cost centres while maintaining 100% accurate allocation.
4. Finance Integration for Advanced Control
Affinity outputs structured costing files and journals that can be fed directly into your ERP or finance systems. This enables finance to apply advanced allocation rules and reporting while keeping payroll focused on accurate calculations. Learn more about payroll system integrations.
The plan for payroll leaders
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Stop firefighting – Don’t manage complex allocations manually.
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Use payroll for what it does best – Accurate calculations, clean data, and structured costing outputs.
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Rely on Affinity’s flexibility – Whether timesheet-driven, element-driven, or ERP-integrated, there’s a scalable path forward.
The outcome: clarity for payroll, confidence for finance
With Affinity Payroll, payroll managers no longer have to choose between accuracy and complexity.
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Finance gets the detailed allocations it needs
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Payroll avoids manual workarounds
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Compliance and accuracy stay intact
Payroll teams stay focused on efficiency, while finance gains clarity and confidence in the numbers.
Don’t let payroll cost centre splitting slow you down. Talk to Affinity today to see how we can help your organisation handle even the most complex costing requirements.
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