Each cost type may have different behaviour, or you may want to allow different types of attributes for each cost type. For example, for Infrastructure costs, you may not want to enable actuals data capture, just recording the budget would be adequate, whereas, for Salaries, you may want to record actuals and budget.

This is why you should create cost categories. 

Cost Categories feature enable you to define different cost categories with different settings, so you can use each type differently to fit your organisational need.  

It is also possible to map custom fields to each cost category.

This article describes the following functions:

• Creating cost categories
• Enabling a particular cost series for the classification
• Preventing users from editing cost values
• Substituting data in a series

Creating Cost Categories

To apply unique settings to different types of costs, you will need to create cost categories. For example, you might create different cost categories with varying settings for different projects.  For example, you might create a Cost Category named  "Capital Expenditure" with the 'Forecast' series enabled. At the same time, there might be another category called "Professional Fees" where you don't want to capture the forecast and keep it disabled.

Remember, the cost category properties are enabled at the classification level,  not at the individual project level, which mean the features will be the same across all projects(initiatives) where it is utilised. The prerequisite for creating a cost category is to have cost groups and cost classifications in the system.

To create a cost category:

1. From the upper-right corner, click on your user name or avatar and then select Administration from the list of options.
2. Select the Cost Groups & Categories tab.
3. Click on the New Cost Category button.
4. Type in a name for the category.
5. Select the Cost Group and Cost Classification.
6. If you want to display the cost group on the Cost's profile, enable the Show Cost Group on Cost Profile setting. 
7. To enable data capture of a series, put a tick mark next to the desired series in the Enabled Series section. You can enable or disable budget, forecast or actual series for a specific cost category in this way. However, please note that if you disable a series for a cost category that is being used in a few initiatives, all existing costs defined for the category will be permanently deleted.
8. To prevent modification to a particular series, toggle on the Prevent Modification setting for the desired series.
9. If you want to substitute data in a series with the data in another series, you either or all of the below options, as required.
   • Replace budget with actual values - Enabling this setting will replace the data in the budget series with the data entered in the actual series. 
   • Replace forecast with actual value - Enabling this setting will replace the data in the forecast series with that in the actual series. 
10. Click on the Save button for the changes to take effect.