Kuluerä

Kuluerä is a Finnish accounting term referring to an individual expense entry or a batch of expenses that are allocated to a specific cost object, such as a project, department, or cost center. In bookkeeping and financial reporting, a kuluerä appears as a line item used to record costs and to support cost tracking, budgeting, and analysis. A kuluerä typically includes data such as the date of the expense, the amount, currency, cost category (for example travel, materials, services), supplier or payer, reference to an invoice or receipt, and the associated cost object (project code, department, or cost center). It may be recorded in an expense report, a travel reimbursement claim, or directly in a general ledger or accounts payable workflow.

In practice, kuluerä facilitates cost allocation and variance analysis. It allows managers to view costs by object and to compare actual costs against budgets. The term is commonly used in Finnish accounting software and ERP systems; the exact fields and workflow can vary by system and organization, but the concept generally corresponds to what is referred to in English as an expense item or cost entry.

Etymology and related terms: the word is formed from Finnish elements meaning cost or expense and batch or item. Related Finnish terms include kustannuserä (cost item) and menoerä (expense item), which are used in similar contexts to describe components of costs or expenditures.