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Note: To account for burden cost codes separately, you also define unique expenditure types to link to burden cost codes. See: Storing and Viewing Burden Costs

Your company may have several different burden structures for unique business requirements. For example, you may use a different structure for internal costing than you use for government billing.

Note: If you change your burden structure and subsequently transfer an expenditure item burdened with the old structure, then the reversed amount and the amount charged to the new task each equals the original burdened amount.

Figure 1 - 21 illustrates the components of a burden structure.

A burden cost code represents the type of burden costs you want to apply to raw costs. For each burden cost code in the burden structure, you specify what cost base it is applied to, the expenditure type or types it is linked to, and the order in which it is applied to raw costs within the cost base.

You burden a type of cost with burden costs to obtain a more accurate representation of your company's operating costs. For example, each hour of employee time costed directly to a project may be supported by burden costs for benefits and office space.

You specify which costs are burdened through the definition of cost bases. A cost base is a grouping of raw costs to which you apply burden costs. A cost base assignment consists of expenditure types. You specify the types of transactions that constitute the cost base when you assign expenditure types to the cost base. These expenditure types assignments represent the raw costs to which you apply the burden costs of the cost base. If you exclude an expenditure type from all cost bases in a structure, the expenditure items that use that expenditure type will not be burdened (burden cost = 0, thus burdened cost = raw cost). In Figure 1 - 21, the cost base of Labor is comprised of the following expenditure types: Professional, Clerical, and Administrative.

Cost bases also consist of burden cost codes. While the expenditure types represent the raw costs, the burden cost codes represent the burden costs that support the raw costs. Cost bases may be different within the context of different burden structures. For example, you may use a different definition of a labor cost base in a billing schedule than you would use in an internal costing schedule.

In summary, cost bases are comprised of expenditure types and burden cost codes. Expenditure types represent the raw costs, and burden cost codes represent the burden costs that support the raw costs. Cost bases may be different within the context of different burden structures. For example, you may use a different definition of a labor cost base in a billing schedule than you would use in an internal costing schedule.

An expenditure type classifies each detailed transaction according to the type of raw cost incurred.

A burden structure can be additive or precedence based. If you have multiple burden cost codes, an additive burden structure applies each burden cost code to the raw costs in the appropriate cost base. A precedence burden structure is cumulative and applies each cost code to the running total of the raw costs, burdened with all previous cost codes. The table below illustrates how different burden structures using the same cost codes result in different total burdened costs.

Cost Type	Additive		Precedence
	Cost Amount	Formula	Cost Amount	Formula
Labor	100.00 (A)		100.00 (A)
Overhead @95%	95.00 (B)	.95 X A	95.00 (B)	.95 X A
Fringe @25%	25.00 (C)	.25 X A	48.75 (C)	.25 X (A + B)
G&A @15%	15.00 (D)	.15 X A	36.56 (D)	.15 X (A + B + C)
Total Burdened Cost	235.00	A + B + C + D	280.31	A + B + C + D

Note: The order of the burden cost codes has no effect on the total burdened cost with either additive or precedence burden structures.