Cost Data – An Overview

The cost data feature allows you to update records of the payments made and expenses that occurred during the progress of each task or deliverable you execute on a project. The details are used to identify the progress of your project with respect to the overall budget and the schedule. 

The metrics, statistics, and key performance indicators (KPIs) are dynamically shown on the dashboards and reports using the updated cost data values. You can track the financial performance, progress with respect to the schedule, and the overall health of your project tasks from the dashboard and make timely decisions to steer the project to be on track.

The cost data is also used to generate various reports.

The cost incurred is accounted for under the following accounting heads:

• Materials - The payments made for the procurement of materials to the respective vendors at different stages. The amount paid at each instance is deducted from the estimated material cost allocated for the task/deliverable so that you can see the amount remaining at each stage. 
• Subcontractor – The payments made to any external subcontractors who were not included as collaborators in Linarc. This includes skilled artisans, workers, etc., specially hired for particular work. 
• Overheads – The indirect expenses occurred, for example, office expenses, maintenance expenses, etc., related to the task. 
• Others –Any other miscellaneous expenses occurred, which could not be covered under the heads above, for example, payments made to drivers and machine operators hired on an ad-hoc basis.
• Equipment - The cost incurred due to the deployment of equipment and heavy machinery for the tasks. The data is fetched from the field updates given by the foremen through their mobile app.
• Labor - The wages paid to the field crew. The data is calculated from the time the workers spend on the task, fetched from their time card entries and salaries.

The cost data tool deducts the amount entered each time on a cost type from the estimate of that task. You can add cost data in two ways.

• Upload cost data for tasks and deliverables manually for each project
• Import cost data for tasks and deliverables in several projects in batches through a single file.

See the following sections to upload manually and see cost import to upload data in batches :

• Material cost
• Subcontractor cost
• Overhead and other expenses
• Equipment Cost
• Labor Cost