TABLE OF CONTENTS
Overview
Cost configuration gives domain administrators control over the way users interact with budgets and expenditures. Please keep in mind, this configuration only applies to "Kahua for X" (Owner, GC, K-12) customers, however, clients with custom extensions are able add this functionality to their extension.
Through cost configuration, administrators can:
- Limit budget and expense items to only use leaf node activity codes.
- Further limit expense items to only use activity codes that are in selected statuses in the project’s existing budget documents.
- Set up cost guards to prevent expenses for an activity code from exceeding the activity code’s assigned budget.
Enable Cost Configuration
To enable cost configuration, navigate to the Domain Settings app.
On the “Domain Defaults” tab, enable cost configuration and click save.
Once cost configuration has been enabled in Domain Settings, go to Configuration/ Cost tab.
General Tab
On the “General” subtab, checkboxes can be enabled to limit budget and expense items to use leaf node activity codes only.
When these checkboxes are enabled, only the last level of activity codes in the project’s WBS structure may be assigned to budget and expense items. In the example below, activity code 0001.02100.LAB, “Site Prep-Labor” is a leaf node and may be assigned to a budget/expense item, however activity code 0001.02, “Site Work” is further broken down into sub-codes and may not be assigned to a cost item.
Continuing on the General subtab, activity codes for expenses can be further limited to those with budget values in selected statuses, based on existing budget documents. In the example below, only activity codes with budget in “approved” status across the various funding documents can be selected for new expense items.
Cost Guard Tab
Cost guards are configured on the “Cost Guards” subtab.
Toggle the “Use Cost Guard” checkbox to enable or disable cost guards.
Use the table to constrain expense and budget item statuses protected by the cost guards. In the below example, all approved expense items must be less than or equal to all approved funding items.
The system guards per activity code, meaning each activity code must have enough assigned budget to cover the assigned expenses. The cost-guard algorithm is not currently configurable. Algorithm configuration will be available in the future.
Cost Guards in Action
Below is an example of cost guards in action. This project has cost guards set up for approved budget and approved expense items. The user approves a single item budget totaling $50,000.
The user creates a draft expense contract for $51,000. Since guards are enabled, when the user enters their total, a window will display showing the total funding (budget) available for the activity code. In this example, the entire budget of $50,000 remains.
The user moves the contract to “projected” status. This is allowed, because only costs in “approved” status are being guarded in the user’s cost guard configuration.
The user attempts to approve the pending expense contract. The guard is triggered, preventing the action. An error message displays.
The system does not allow the user to approve the pending $51,000 expense contract, as it exceeds the available budget of $50,000 for activity code 0001.02100.MAT, “Site Prep – Material”.