The money on one cost code

The Cost Codes grid gives you a row per cost code — budget, orders, actual cost, variations. Clicking that row’s Cost breakdown button (or Budget on the Bill of Quantities, or All the money in an Earned Value row’s drawer) opens the window behind those figures: what makes each of them up, and the quotes, orders, invoices, timesheets and variations they came from.

What the six figures mean

Figure	What it counts
Estimate	The BOQ items filed under this cost code — quantity × rate. Items switched off are left out.
Quoted	Supplier quote lines coded here.
Ordered	Purchase order lines coded here — what you have committed to spend.
Invoiced	Supplier invoices and expenses coded here.
Labour	Approved timesheet hours × cost rate.
Variations	Approved variation lines that change this cost code. A removal is a negative figure.

Click any of the six to see the list behind it. Invoiced and Labour together are the Actual cost column on the Cost Codes grid, and each figure here is worked out the same way that grid works it out — so the drill-down always adds up to the row you opened it from.

Amounts are ex GST, the same as the BOQ.

Where you stand

Under the figures is the line that matters on site:

• Allowed — the estimate plus approved variations.
• Spent — invoices and labour.
• Still to come on orders — what is on the orders you have placed but has not been invoiced yet.
• Left, or Over by when the first three have passed the allowance.

Orders and invoices are deliberately not added together: an invoice normally arrives against an order, so adding them would count the same money twice.

This cost code, not the whole document

A purchase order usually covers several cost codes. The This cost code column is the part of that order coded here; Whole document is what the order is worth in total, and it only appears when the two differ.

This is what changed

The window this replaced put each document’s whole value in the money column and added those up. On one job in the field, a cost code with $74,092 of orders against it read $207,761. If you have ever looked at this window and thought a trade was wildly over, that is why — the Cost Codes grid was right and this window was not.

Getting to the document

Each row has an arrow that opens the quote, order, invoice or variation in a new tab, and a folder icon when a file is attached to it. Sort by any column heading, or use the search box to find a supplier or a number in a long list.

Seeing the lines inside a document

The chevron at the start of a quote, order, invoice or variation row opens the lines of it that are coded here — each with its own cost code, quantity and rate, and a total that matches the figure on the row. Underneath, it says how much of that document sits on other cost codes.

That is the quickest way to settle an argument about a trade’s spend: not “the order was $58,400” but “three lines of it, $37,940, are brickwork”.

Rolling up the cost codes underneath

On a cost code that has others under it, Include cost codes underneath adds the whole branch into every figure and every list — the same sum you would get by adding up those rows on the Cost Codes page. The lists then carry a Cost code column so you can see which code each item or timesheet entry is on.

Taking it to a meeting

Excel builds a workbook: the figures and where you stand on the first sheet, then a sheet per list — estimate, quotes, orders, invoices, labour, variations. It follows whatever you have on screen, including the roll-up.

When invoiced runs past ordered

If more has been invoiced against a cost code than was ever ordered, the window says so under the figures. It usually means one of three things: an invoice coded here without a purchase order behind it, an order that was never updated when the price moved, or an invoice coded to the wrong cost code. All three are worth a look before the job closes.

Things worth knowing

• A cost code marked Not required counts as a zero estimate on the Cost Codes grid. Its items are still listed here, and the window says so at the top.
• An invoice line with no BOQ item is coded straight to a cost code — it still counts.
• Variations that have not been approved yet are listed, marked, and not counted towards the cost code. The footer says how much is waiting.
• Costs are only visible to people with the See costs and rates permission.