Profit centers must be able to act independently in a market-oriented and cost-oriented manner. It has to clarify which tasks assign to the profit center and remain central. In the following text, we explain what you should pay attention to.
The Primary goal of Profit Center is to speak to a free authoritative subunit that works autonomously in the market, bears obligation regarding its expenses and income, and can extend turn into a speculation community or treat a Company inside a company. The Profit focus approach typifies the expanding re-foundation among interior and outside bookkeeping, working as an associating join between two Accounting ideas.
The arranging process is anything but a one-time movement, but instead an iterative procedure, which acts in a few steps. Profit focus arranging is an indispensable piece of your general organization arranging. Benefit focus arranging is a piece of short-term business arranging and, in this manner, includes a range of one financial year. During the benefits, the community arranging process and Individual arranging regions consolidate into a coordinated arranging system.
Requirements for profit center organization
If a profit center is to be set up and is to function, three prerequisites are essential:
Market orientation
The profit center must offer commercial service and have direct contact with customers.
“Customers” can also be internal customers within the company or group; In addition, sales intermediaries such as retailers or notable sales organizations can be customers of a profit center.
Responsibility orientation
The management and employees in the profit center must have sufficient skills and responsibility to design their services and be able to influence costs. Therefore, the profit center decides on the use of resources, technology, process design, the scope of services, product quality, or marketing – depending on what it is set up for and what goals it should achieve.
Controlling support
The company’s control must support the profit center structure by assigning realistic goals and providing procedures to allocate costs and revenues to a profit center.
The profit center should be large enough to integrate different functions and tasks geared towards the market and customers. It is sort of like organizing a “company within a company.” Therefore, it should permanently generate sales with its customers and have a more significant number of (potential) customers. To fulfill all tasks as a “company within a company,” a sufficient number of employees is required.
Note: Profit center for internal services
It can delimit organizational areas, but they do not provide external services for a market. Examples are the human resources department or accounting. They are therefore not immediately suitable as a profit center in the narrower sense.
However, such indirect areas and supporting tasks can also organize “companies within companies.” Here one speaks mostly of shared service centers.
Establishment of a profit center in the division organization
Companies already organized by division can set up profit centers relatively easily. It becomes more difficult for companies to classify according to functions. Organizational units must first create that meet the requirements and criteria for profit centers.
Other profit centers do not have to do all of these tasks. Depending on the synergy and cost effects, individual jobs can be carried out centrally and made available to the profit centers as an “internal service” or shared service.
Functions outside the profit center
In addition, individual functions will remain in a central location. They have a service or support function for the profit centers as internal areas. Examples include accounting, law, human resources, purchasing, and marketing. Which tasks remain at a central location and transfer to the profit center depends on the size of the company and the profit center and the economic effects (synergies, economies of scale) of central task fulfillment.