Managing Costs

A cost is money an initiative expects to spend, or has spent, to deliver its work — such as infrastructure, licenses, or staff. Each cost tracks its budget, and where enabled, its forecast and actuals over time, so you can see whether spending is in line with what was planned. Costs are created on initiatives and listed on each initiative's Costs Register.

Before costs of a given type can be created, they need to be configured and enabled — see Configuring Cost Categories (Advanced Model) or Configuring Cost Categories (Simple Model).

Creating a cost

1. Navigate to the initiative where you want to create the cost, click the Create menu, and select Cost.

   

2. Select a cost category from the Classification drop-down.

   

3. Enter a Name.
4. Select a Start Date and End Date.
5. Assign an Owner, who's responsible for managing the cost.
6. Click Create.

   

Custom fields mapped to the cost category also appear on the form.

Finding your costs

There are two places to find costs:

• Costs Register — every cost under an initiative, including costs on the initiatives below it. Navigate to the initiative and select Costs in the side menu.
• My Costs — every cost you own, across all initiatives. Open your Personal Dashboard and select My Costs in the side menu.

See Register Views for the register's views. Click a cost to open its page.

The cost page

A cost's page, also called its Cost Profile, opens on its Dashboard tab. It has two tabs, and a set of controls at the top right:

• Dashboard — the cost's properties and a chart of its values over time.
• Plan — the cost's values. See Recording cost values.
• Edit — the cost's details. See Editing a cost.
• Timeline (clock icon) — a history of changes to the cost, and its comments.
• Menu (three lines) — includes Archive Cost…. See Archiving a cost.

Adding a comment

1. Click the Timeline (clock) icon. The cost's history opens.
2. Type your comment in the comment box.
3. Click Post Comment.

Recording cost values

A cost needs its values kept up to date until it ends. Values can be recorded in two places:

• The cost's Plan tab — one cost at a time. Described below.
• An initiative's Cost Ledger — every cost under the initiative, in one grid. Switch the Costs Register to its ledger view. It's quickest when you're updating several costs for the same period.

The series you can enter — Budget, Forecast, and Actual — depend on the cost category. Where the category replaces budget or forecast with actuals, recording an actual for a period overwrites that period's budget or forecast.

To record values on the Plan tab:

1. Open the cost and click the Plan tab.

   

2. Click a period's value and enter the new value.
3. Click Save, or Undo to discard your changes.

   

Where the cost category has variance turned on, the ledger can color Actual and Forecast values by how far they are from Budget. Turn on Bowler Chart in the ledger's Settings menu — see Register Views.

Editing a cost

A cost's Edit page changes its details, grouped into Details, Values, and Additional Information. It doesn't record values for individual periods — see Recording cost values for that.

1. Open the cost and click Edit. The Edit page opens.
2. Change the fields as needed.
3. Click Save.

Archiving a cost

1. Open the cost and click the Menu (three lines).

   

2. Click Archive Cost….

Archived costs can be restored or permanently deleted from the Costs Register's card view.