DIFFERENCE B/W COST CENTER AND ACCOUNTING UNIT

Here they're the same thing and are used interchangeably. Most traditionally call the Accounting Unit the "cost center" and call the Account the "expense code". It was a change for us too when we implemented Lawson.

Accounting Unit is a generic location within an organization's hierarchy. So a Cost Center is an Accounting Unit, but an Accounting Unit is not necessairly a cost center. Lawson uses the Accounting Units as a hierarchical representation of an organization where you have posting Accounting Units where you actually post transactions (most likely what you refer to as Cost Centers). It also allows you to create Summary Accounting units to facilitate rollup within the organization. A lot of it depends on how you define your organization. Some companies use Cost Center as the lowest, and then Departments are a group of Cost Centers, Divisions a Group of Departments, Regions a group of Divisions, etc. Each of those levels, Cost Center, Departments, Divisions, and Regions would be Accounting Units.

You will also run into issues just with the terms used by individual organizations. Many, especially those also using HR modules, will use Cost Center and Department to mean the same thing: a Posting Accounting Unit.

Hopefully that didn't confuse you further

Thank you for your reply,
can you please give me a simple example like where we use accounting Unit and where we use cost center.

Thank you for your reply,
can you please give me a simple example like where we use accounting Unit and where we use cost center.

They are the same thing. You will only ever see accounting unit in Lawson.