Explaining Committed vs. Actual Costs

There are various areas and reports within eSUB that refer to Committed and Actual costs. These two topics are a vital aspect to Project Management and cost controlling of projects. They allow contractors to forecast and analyze costs which affect the cash-flow of a project.

IMPORTANT: Please note that the processes and steps outlined below may be different if you are using any accounting integrations to Sage 300, Viewpoint Vista, and Key2Act. 

Committed Costs

Committed Costs are costs of a project which are expected to be paid out to employees, vendors, subcontractors, etc., but have not been paid yet by accounting. eSUB allows user to track anticipated payments in order for your project management team to understand how their expected expenses are comparing to the project budget. 

Exploring Committed Costs in eSUB - The Cost Details Report

Committed Costs and breakdowns in eSUB can be found by accessing the Cost Details report. To access this report, a user must be granted "Full Access" to Reports > Cost Details in their user access settings.

1. Select a project
2. Select Reports and Graphs in the toolbar
3. Select Cost Details under Job Cost Reports

All Committed Costs will be divided out to the applicable Cost Types and respective Cost Codes for which committed costs apply. The following Total Committed Cost Types are pulled from various modules within eSUB.  

For additional information please refer to the following articles regarding:

• Cost Details Report
• Job Costing Setup

Project Summary - Committed Costs

A user must have access to "Cost Details" to view the following information. 

For a brief summary of committed costs to a project, a "Job Costs" widget is located on your project's home screen. The widget is broken down by totals per Cost Type and will automatically default to show committed costs.

There are three different styles of viewing the committed cost summary: Table, Chart, and Pie:

At the bottom of the table and chart formats, you have the option to "Switch to show Actual Costs". 

Actual Costs  

Actual costs to a project are those costs that were at one point tracked as committed costs and are now actualized through accounting in the form of an invoice, bill, payroll, or any other transaction representing a cost being deducted from your project's budget.

Exploring Actual Costs in eSUB - The Cost Details Report

After you have determined that committed costs need to be actualized in your project budget, navigate to the Cost Details Report as explained above.

Select Copy from Committed in the Actual Cost column and make any necessary adjustments to the fields. This will set your actualized costs equal to your committed costs and will calculate the Project Additional Costs. For Projected Additional Costs to accurately calculate, ensure that budgets are added in Project > Configure Project > Add Job Cost Estimates.

For more information regarding the calculations completed in the Job Cost Details reports please refer to: Cost Details Report.

Next Steps: eSUB's Cost to Complete Report

It is good practice to actualize your project's committed costs to track the financial health of a project from start to finish. After actualizing costs, the next step is to compare the actual project costs with revenue expected from an Owner or General Contractor per your executed contract. 

The Cost to Complete report can also be referred to as Projections, C2C, Forecasts, etc. and is a vital tool to determine key financial metrics on a project, as well as analyzing opportunities to increase margin for your project.

For more information regarding the Cost to Complete report, please refer to the following article: Cost To Complete Report

Project Summary - Actual Costs

As explained above in Project Summary - Committed Costs, you may view a summary of actual costs in the Project Summary widgets in both the table and chart views. To accurately display your actual costs in the Project Summary widgets, it is necessary that the actual costs noted in the Cost Details Report are pulled into the Cost to Complete Report. The Project Summary widgets pull actual costs directly from the Cost to Complete Report.