Cost Center
How Nabu organizes and displays your full business cost structure — payroll, overhead, supplies, and equipment.
What the Cost Center shows
The Cost Center is a complete view of everything your business spends. Where the Profitability dashboard slices costs by service and provider, the Cost Center looks at the same dollars from the top down — organized by cost category. It answers the question: where does the money go?
Cost categories
| Category | What's included |
|---|---|
| Payroll | Provider base labor and variable pay rules from People & Payroll, plus non-provider staff costs |
| Fixed overhead | Rent, utilities, software subscriptions, insurance, and other recurring monthly costs from Business Costs |
| Supplies and consumables | Cost of products used to deliver services — calculated from supply costs × appointment volume |
| Equipment | Device lease payments and maintenance costs |
| Marketing costs | Ad spend, agency fees, and other marketing investments entered in the Marketing Costs section of Setup |
Each category shows the total for the selected date range and its share of total costs, so you can see at a glance which categories are the biggest drivers.
Cost Center vs. Profitability
These two dashboards look at costs from different angles:
- Cost Center shows the total cost picture — all dollars spent, organized by category. Use it to understand your overall cost structure and spot trends.
- Profitability shows costs allocated per service and per provider — the same dollars, redistributed so you can see what each revenue source actually costs to deliver.
If your total supply costs jump month-over-month in the Cost Center, you can then go to Profitability to see which services are driving that increase.
How to use the Cost Center
Spot categories growing faster than revenue. If revenue grew 10% this month but payroll grew 20%, that's a signal worth investigating. The Cost Center makes this visible at a glance.
Identify the biggest overhead drag. Sort by cost amount to see which line items are largest. Rent and payroll are almost always the biggest fixed costs — but software subscriptions and equipment leases can add up faster than owners expect.
Track cost trends over time. Change the date range to compare this month vs. last month or this quarter vs. last quarter. A steadily rising overhead line with flat revenue is an early warning sign.
The "Cost per appointment" view
The Cost Center includes a cost-per-appointment calculation: total costs for the period ÷ total appointments performed. This tells you the minimum each visit needs to generate just to cover your fixed and variable costs.
Example: If your total costs for the month are $30,000 and you performed 200 appointments, your cost per appointment is $150. Any appointment that generates less than $150 in net revenue is contributing negatively to your bottom line — even if it looks like a sale.
This number is useful for evaluating pricing decisions, package discounts, and promotional offers. If you're discounting a $200 service to $120 for a promotion, and your cost per appointment is $150, you're losing $30 on each discounted booking.
Frequently asked questions
Why doesn't my payroll total match my actual payroll run? Nabu calculates payroll from the compensation rules and productive hours in People & Payroll, plus appointment and sales data when variable pay is involved. It is a cost model, not a record of what was actually processed through your payroll system. Think of it as a way to understand what labor costs should be and compare against actual payroll as a check.
Where does "marketing cost" come from? Marketing costs are pulled from the Marketing Costs section in Setup, where you enter your ad spend, agency fees, and other marketing expenses. Nabu treats these as a financial cost input — it shows you what you're spending on marketing as a line item in your cost structure, not as a performance or ROI analysis.