Enable Costs and Define Cost Category Types

Costs are automatically enabled for your program.  Amplify defines Costs by its group and Cost Category. Every cost category belongs to a specific cost group. For example, the cost category 'Daily Expenditure' may belong to a cost group named 'Opex'.Cost groups can be created and maintained by the Amplify system administrator globally or defined while creating a cost category type locally. 

By default, an inbuilt cost category is available within every program. You are free to modify its settings to fit your site's requirements. However, if the users would require to add different types of costs, you will need to create multiple cost categories.

The Costs page allows you to create new cost categories. Categories defined under the program can be used to track costs across all projects.

This article discusses:

• Creating cost categories
• Enabling external identifier for the cost category
• Defining custom fields
• Removing a cost category
• Modifying cost categories
• Disabling costs for the program

Create Cost Categories

To create cost categories for your program:

1. Access the Program.
2. From the side nav menu, select Configuration.
3. Click on the Costs menu item.
4. Click on the New Cost Category Type button.
   This will display the New Cost Category form.
   
5. In the General tab, fill in the details as appropriate.
6. Type in a name for the category.
7. Select the Cost Group as appropriate.  This selection field allows you to choose a cost group defined at the global level or create a new group, which will be available to all cost categories in the program. 
   
8. If you want to display the cost group on the Cost's profile, enable the Show Cost Group on Cost Profile setting. 
9. 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.
10. To prevent modification to a particular series, toggle on the Prevent Modification setting for the desired series.
11. 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. 
12. Click on the Save button for the changes to take effect. 
13. Once you have saved the general settings, you can configure the required settings in the Properties and Advanced tabs. Refer to the following sections for information. 

Options on the Properties tab

Enable External ID

The Properties tab has options for enabling the external identifier. Learn more about external identifiers here.

Create Custom Fields

If you want to define separate custom fields on Cost forms, you can do so using the Properties tab. Follow the steps listed in: Define Custom Fields to be Used by all Projects in the Program.

Options on the Advanced tab

The Advanced tab displays only after you've saved the cost category.

Delete a Cost Category

The Advanced tab allows you to remove the cost category. 

Modify a Cost Category

To modify the attributes of an existing category:

1. Access the Program.
2. From the program menu, select Configuration.
3. The Configuration menu opens.
4. Click on the Costs menu item.
5. Locate the category that you wish to edit.
6. Click on the pen "Edit" button.
7. Make the necessary changes.
8. Click on the Save button.

Disable Costs for the Program

Costs are allowed to be added to all projects with your program if the Enable Cost setting is toggled on. If you do not want any kind of cost records for your program, you can disable this setting. The Cost menu will not display for the program or the projects within, in this case. However, it is worth noting that you cannot disable costs for a single project alone because this setting is available only at the program level and is applicable program-wide.