Costs
Costs
Costs is the spending ledger: every cost and every sum received, personal, company and project money in one list. Each says what it was, how much, in which currency, which category and project it belongs to, and which vault, money source or payment method it came from. It answers what was spent, on what, from where, what each project really cost, and whether a category or project is running over.
In the sidebar under Money → Costs. Needs: Projects, Accounts and Vaults. Handles money: when an agent tries to change anything here, a person is asked to approve it first (Agents and approvals).
The Costs screen
The page has three tabs: Ledger, Insights and Projects. The tab you are on is kept in the address, so a link opens the same tab.
Ledger
- The controls sit in one bar across the page: the month with arrows for the previous and next month, the buttons that add a cost, then the filters and the currency.
- A switch shows every entry regardless of month, and From and To dates replace the month.
- Filters for whose money it was (Personal, Company or Project), category, project, account, payment method, vault, amount range and currency. Show removed lists removed costs too. Removed costs count in no total either way. Filters are kept in the address.
- Search looks through every cost, not only the ones on screen: description, notes, category, project and account. You can sort by date, amount or description.
- A Show in choice for the currency the totals are read in. Every money figure in the summary also shows the same total in a second currency under it: US dollars, or the home currency when the page is already in dollars.
- Counters for what was spent, what was received, the net, the average per day and the number of entries.
- The list: date, item, whose money, category, project, and the account, vault or card it was paid from, with the amount. A cost filed from a receipt opens its receipt.
- Each cost has History, Edit and Remove, or Restore on a removed one.
- Payees, Log several and Log a cost in the bar.
Insights
Spending month against month, in one currency, over 3, 6 or 12 months and for whose money you choose:
- This month so far, Projected this month at the usual pace, Usual month (the average of complete months, without one-off purchases) and the change against usual.
- Month by month: spending per month by category, as a chart or as a table.
- Categories: each category per month against its usual and its budget, marked On track to go over when it is.
- Where the money goes: the merchants paid most, with branches counted as their chain.
- One-off purchases: large costs unlike the same category's other months, left out of usual.
- What stands out: findings in plain sentences, most useful first.
Projects
What every project cost in one month, side by side. You need costs:overheads to see every project here. For each project:
- Servers & services: its share of each server and service.
- Domains: each domain's yearly price spread over the months.
- Staff time: hours logged on the project at each person's hourly rate.
- AI: AI calls made for the project, at the model prices set in AI spend.
- Overheads: its share of company overheads. These are company costs with no project, such as office rent and internet, except Salaries.
- Other costs: costs logged to the project that pay no server, service or domain.
A charge that is due but not yet paid shows as Expected: the recurring charge at its current price, until a cost that pays it is logged.
Overhead split sets each project's ratio from a month on. By default overheads are shared equally (ratio 1). Archived and internal projects get 0. A ratio is a number of zero or more, with at most four decimal places. You see each project's share before and after, and you can give a reason. Earlier months keep their split, and every saved split is kept in a history.
Set up project costs lists what a project's cost still needs that nobody has entered: Hourly rates for staff, Domain prices by registrar and Company categories (which categories are company costs by default). Without rates, staff time shows on projects as hours with no rate.
Who sees which costs
You see the costs you recorded yourself, and the costs booked against projects you created or are a member of. This holds for admins too: a cost marked Personal is somebody's own money, and being an admin does not show you everyone's. A receipt opens only for people who may see its cost. See Sharing and visibility.
What you can do
Log a cost
- Choose Log a cost.
- Fill in the Description, the Amount and the Currency.
- Pick the Project and Category.
- Say where it was paid from: Deduct from vault if it came out of a vault, otherwise a Money source. A Payment method brings its money source with it.
- Set Incurred on, the Kind (Money out or Money in) and Whose money (Project, Company or Personal).
- Tick Recurring and choose a Recurrence (daily, weekly or monthly) for something that repeats.
- Save. A cost paid from a vault moves that vault's balance at once.
Log several costs at once
- Choose Log several.
- Set what the rows share at the top: currency, whose money, category, project and where they were paid from.
- Choose Add row for each cost, with what it was and the amount. A row can override the category.
- Choose Log. Each row stands or falls on its own.
Split one receipt across projects
A receipt can be split, for example 60/40 between two projects. Each part becomes its own cost on its project, and all parts share the same kept receipt. The parts always add up to the total. This is done by an agent or in the chat when you file a receipt.
Correct, remove or restore a cost
- Choose Edit on a cost to correct it. Only what you change changes, and you are asked why. What it said before is kept.
- Remove takes a cost out of every list, total and the books. You say why. Nothing is deleted.
- Restore puts it back. It is booked again as a new entry.
- History shows every state a cost has been in, who changed it, when and why.
Teach it what a bank payee is
- Choose Payees.
- Type the payee as the bank prints it, pick a category, and optionally say what it is.
- Add it. From then on, every bank line printed that way is filed under that category. Numbers, dates and card words are stripped, so other branches and days match too.
- Remove a payee rule to stop filing by it. Costs it already filed keep their category.
A payee rule can also mark lines as a fee, as cash taken out, or as a transfer to one of your own vaults. A payee also remembers its project for each person.
Set a budget for a category
- In Insights, under Categories, set what a category may cost in a month and the currency of that budget.
- Insights then says when the category is on track to go over.
A project's monthly budget is set on the project in Projects. Costs checks it every day.
Move card costs to their card's account
Costs paid by card can sit in the books as paid personally if they were recorded before the card was mapped to an account. With costs:admin, an agent or the API first lists what moving them would do, card by card, and then moves the chosen ones. Each cost is corrected with a reason.
Re-file many costs at once
Many costs can be given a new category, project, account, card, vault, scope or rate in one step, through an agent or the API. You first see how many would change. Choosing nothing is refused, never read as everything.
Who can do what
| Permission | Lets you |
|---|---|
costs:read — View costs | Open Costs and Insights, see history, receipts, payees, budgets and overhead splits. |
costs:write — Manage costs | Log, split, edit, remove and restore costs, manage categories, payee rules and budgets, re-file costs, and save an overhead split. |
costs:admin — Move card costs already in the books to their cards' accounts, many at once | List and move card costs. |
costs:overheads — See every project's costs and set how company overheads are shared | Use the Projects tab across all projects and set the Overhead split. |
Roles and how permissions are granted are explained in People, roles and permissions.
What happens on its own
| Job | When | What it does |
|---|---|---|
over-budget | Every day at 09:00 UTC | For each project with a monthly budget, adds up this month's costs in the budget's currency. If they pass the budget, it notifies the project's managers, or the workspace admins when it has none. Each project is told once a month. |
ledger-catch-up | Every hour, at minute 11 | Puts into the books every cost that is not there yet, for example because no rate existed for the day or a month was locked. An entry whose cost is gone or removed is reversed. A disagreement with the books is recorded as a finding. |
recurring-catch-up | Every hour, at minute 23 | For each recurring cost, works out when the next entry was due. A week past that with nothing logged, it raises a finding on the dashboard. The finding closes when the entry arrives, when the cost stops recurring, or when the series is taken to have ended. |
Notifications reach people as described in Notifications and alerts.
How costs reach vaults and the books
- A cost with a vault records its own movement in that vault.
- Every cost that is not Personal and not removed is booked in Books: the category on one side, and on the other the vault, the money source, or "paid personally", flagged for review.
- Personal costs are never booked.
- Other modules file costs here too. Extraction turns receipts and statements into costs, Bank feeds files card spends, and Domains records renewal costs. Projects shows each project's spend from here.
Needs
Projects, Accounts and Vaults switched on.
What agents can do
This module handles money. A change goes to a person for approval first, unless the agent's policy denies it. One exception: a cost or a split that an agent logs from your own message in the chat runs straight away and says so, with an Undo that takes it back out of the books. From any other run it asks, as before. Changes an agent made without asking (a category, a payee rule, a budget, a re-file) can be undone with undo.
Read and report (read-only)
list: costs over a period, with search and sort.report: what was spent over a period, by category and by project.insights: month against month, usual spending, budgets, top merchants and one-offs.history: every state a cost has been in.receipts: the receipts kept for a cost, with a link that opens each.categories,options(vaults, money sources and payment methods),payeeRules,budgets.projectsMonth: what every project cost in one month, confirmed or expected.overheadRatios,overheadHistory,previewOverheadRatios: how overheads are shared, every saved split, and what a new split would do.retagSelection: which costs a re-file would change.cardMoves: which card costs are still booked as paid personally.
Log and correct
log: record one cost. Sending the same request id again answers with the cost already recorded.logSplit: record one receipt split across projects.import: record several costs in one call.amend: correct a cost.remove: mark a cost removed. Destructive.restore: put a removed cost back.undo: reverse one change an agent made without asking.
Categories, payees, budgets and overheads
addCategory,removeCategory(destructive),setCategoryScope(make a category company, project or personal by default).rememberPayee,forgetPayee(destructive).setBudget.setOverheadRatios: save how overheads are shared from a month on. Always asks you first, showing the before and after.
Re-file and card moves
retag: re-file many costs at once. Destructive.moveCardCosts: move the listed costs to their card's account. Destructive. Needscosts:admin.
Over MCP the same tools are named costs__list and so on (API keys and MCP access).