CRG Cost Allocator Helps United Way New York Complete Advanced Cost Allocations with Ease, Accuracy and Speed

United Way of New York City implemented Microsoft Dynamics® GP to meet their business management requirements. In addition to an enterprise resource planning system, the organization needed an advanced costing solution that would provide them with the ability to perform multi-level cost allocations, and seamlessly send journal entries for the allocated costs to Microsoft Dynamics GP as un-posted batches and/or budgets.

Cost Allocator from Corporate Renaissance Group (CRG) gives the United Way of New York City the ability to perform multi-level cost allocations.

After implementing Microsoft Dynamics GP, UWNYC determined that they required greater costing functionality. Requiring a costing solution that would:

•  Allocate shared costs to both support and functional departments; allocate the total costs (i.e. the direct costs plus the allocated shared costs) from the support and functional departments to cost allocation departments; &
• Allocate the total costs from the cost allocation departments to the appropriate departments and programs.

They also needed to accrue revenues to specific programs based on the balances of other accounts. These allocations needed to be completed on both a monthly and an as-needed basis. Moreover, they needed to be sent seamlessly to Microsoft Dynamics GP as batches (for review before posting) or Budget IDs.

Performing advanced, multi-level cost allocations was a key business requirement for the United Way of New York City; consequently, they investigated a number of options for satisfying their costing needs. With the help of Cole Systems, the United Way of New York City’s Microsoft Dynamics GP partner chose CRG Cost Allocator. Cost Allocator provided the necessary functionality that met and actually surpassed their costing requirements.

The CRG Team:

• reviewed United Way of New York City’s costing needs
• provided general training to the Accounting and IT teams
• finalized the implementation with the United Way’s IT Team

CRG Cost Allocator’s ability to perform unlimited multi-level cost allocations was used to satisfy the requirement for the allocation of shared costs to functional and support departments before allocating the total costs to the particular program or department.

Cost Allocator can perform advanced profitability analysis by segments, making it easy for the United Way of New York City to address its needs for revenue accrual to programs. The ability to import data from Microsoft Excel and other data sources made it easy to bring the cost driver data from Microsoft Excel for use in the allocations. With its full integration to Microsoft Dynamics GP, Cost Allocator automatically creates either an un-posted batch or budget in Microsoft Dynamics GP. The “trace and track” report in Cost Allocator provides a complete audit trail for every aspect of cost allocation.