Actual Costs

The Actual Costs page allows you to record all actual expenses the Folio incurs during its execution.  It allows you to visualize the expenses as well as the team members that are currently or have been active since the Folio started and their calculated cost to date.  Refer to Folio Team chapter to learn how to add team members and unassigned team positions to a Folio.

Expenses are added to one of three main Categories: Operational expenditures (OPEX), Capital expenditures (CAPEX) or Financial expenditures (FINEX). Actual expenses can be single occurrence or recurrent ones.  The Salaries group lists the team members that are currently active.

Information entered here will be used to provide project health metrics on the Overview page and used to calculate the forecast chart displayed in the Forecast page.

 

Team members

Team members are actual, filled positions.  They are positions that are associated to JIRA users identified in the Folio Team.  They represent the salary expenses you already spent during the Folio execution.  Team members are grouped by title (e.g. Developer, Architect, Q&A). You can collapse (or expand) a group of team members by clicking the triangle icon  () next to a team member title.

Adding a team member

Refer to Adding a Team Member  section to learn how to add team members to a Folio.

Editing a team member

Select a team member to edit by clicking on it and then either click on the ... menu on the top-right part of the position details view (on righthand side of the screen) and select the Edit option or hit the e (for edit) shortcut key.  This brings up the team member edition dialog.

Refer to Editing a Team Member section to learn how to edit team members of a Folio.

Deleting a team member

Refer to Deleting a Team Member section to learn how to delete team members from a Folio.

Team member costs

The Actual page shows the calculated actual cost for each team member and team member groups (by title) to date.  The actual cost of a team member is calculated based on her worked hours and her (possibly varying) cost rate. 

Cost = sum for p in periods(Worked hours(p) x Cost rate(p))

Worked hours of a team member are deduced from her allocation information and optionally, from the explicit worked hours entered for that member (this data is entered in the Folio Team page). The worked hours table displayed in the team member details panel in the Team page gives the detail of how the total worked hours are calculated.  In that table, each row corresponds to a period of time for which a number of hours has been either automatically computed or entered manually.  For each of these periods, we multiply the number of hours by the cost rate for that period.  The sum of each of these terms gives us the actual cost of the member at the current date.  The detail of each calculated term is shown in the Costs to date section in the details panel for team members.

Refer to the Allocations, Cost rates and Worked Hours sections in Team chapter for more in-depth information about how this information is calculated and used for forecasting.

Capitalizing a resource effort

By default, in Tempo Folio all resources efforts are considered as "Operational" expenditures.
Only the effort done on issues that were labeled as capitalized will be considered as a capitalized expenditure.

Refer to the  accounting section of the folio's configuration for more information.

Team member details

When selecting a team member, more information on that position is displayed in the details panel on the right.  This panel shows the following information: 

  • Name and avatar
  • Title
  • Current cost rate
  • Worked hours to date
  • Calculated total cost to date
  • Reporter (the user who added the team member)
  • Description
  • Detailed costs to date information
  • Attached files

You can also select multiple team members or even a mix of team members and expenses at once by selecting multiple lines (by pressing and holding the Control key while clicking the team members and expenses).  This gives you an aggregated view showing the total costs of the selected expenditures.

Attaching files to team members

Refer to Folio Team to learn how to attach files to Team members.

Expenses

Expenses are the all the expenses incurred during the Folio's execution. The Actual Costs page shows the calculated cost for each expense and expense groups (by type). You can collapse (or expand) a group of expenses by clicking the triangle icon ( ) next to an expense type.

See the Expenses page for more information on expenses and how their cost is calculated.

 

Booking an expense

To add an expense, either click the Book Expense button or hit the "a" (for add) shortcut key.  This brings the expense edition dialog.  Refer to the Editing an Expense section to learn how to fill the edition dialog. Check the Plan another box at the bottom of the dialog in order to create many expenses in sequence. 


Editing an expense

Select an existing expense to modify by clicking on it and then either click on the drop-down menu on the top-right part of the expense details view (on righthand side of the screen) and select the Edit option or hit the "e" (for edit) shortcut key.  This will bring up the expense edition dialog.

Name

Name of the expense. 

Examples: Rent for 222 Main Street, IDE licenses, Printer toner, Web hosting fee 

Amount

Amount of this expense.  Note that in the case of a recurrent expense, the amount of the payments for that expense will depend if it is amortized or not.  If the cased of an amortized expense, the amount entered here will be evenly split on the number of payments defined in the recurrence definition.  Otherwise, the amount of each payment is the amount entered in this field.

Category

Category of the expense.  See section Categories for more details on each option.

Type

Type of the expense. It is used to classify expenses and for filtering in reports.  While typing in this field, types entered previously for other expenses that match what you type will be suggested to you for completion to help you avoid typos and duplications.

Examples: Rent, Office furniture, Licenses, etc.

Recurring

By default, an expense occurs on a single date.  To change the date of occurrence of that expense or to make the expense recurrent (and possibly amortized), click the Edit link.  This brings up a dialog allowing you to define the recurrence for that expense.  As you change the values in that dialog, you are presented with a phrase explaining the recurrence, in the text area located just above. 

Refer to Recurrence for more details.

Amortized

Specifies if the payments for that expense be should split over a period of time or not. This option appears under the Recurring field when the Repeat value in the Recurrence definition dialog is changed to something else than Once.  When amortized, the this expense gets evenly split into payments occurring on dates defined in the Recurring field.

Labels

JIRA Issue Labels to associate the expense with

Refer to Labels for more details.

Description

An optional, free form description of the position.

Deleting an expense

Select an existing expense to delete by clicking on it and then either click on the ... menu on the top-right part of the details panel (on righthand side of the screen) and select the Delete option or hit the d (for delete) shortcut key.  This brings up a dialog to confirm expense deletion.  Click the Delete button to confirm the deletion, or Cancel link to abort.  Deletion is permanent, thus make sure you really want to delete an expense before proceeding.

You can delete multiple expenses (even a mix of expenses and positions) at once. Refer to the Multiple Selection to learn how to perform a batch deletion.

Attaching files to an expense

You can attach files to an expense in order to keep related documents handy (invoices, quotations, etc.). To attach files to an expense, select it and then click button Attach Files in expense details panel on the right.  This will bring up a dialog where you can pick a file (or multiple files simultaneously, if your browser allows it) and enter an optional comment.

Viewing Expense details

When selecting an expense, more information on that expense is displayed in the details panel on the right. Note that you can also select multiple expenses (or even a mix of expenses and positions) at once by selecting multiple lines.  This provides you an aggregated view showing the total cost associated with these expenditures.

Searching for expenses

You can search for expenses by their name using the search box located at the top left of the screen.

Consulting History

Tempo Folio records all changes that occur on Folios and their data for auditing purpose. When an expense, revenue or team member is selected, the details panel shows a History sub section, quickly accessible by clicking the corresponding icon () in the details panel's navigation bar.  The History section displays a table listing all changes that occurred on the selected item and their associated data, such as attachments, wages, allocations and worked hours. Changes displayed include creations, updates and deletions and are sorted from the most recent to the oldest. An update is recorded for each modified field, so a single edition of an Expense can possibly add many rows in the History table. Also, if the table holds more than five entries, then some entries will be hidden by default: click the row showing ellipses (...) to expand the table and show all changes.

The History section is visible only to users who can edit the Folio, a.k.a Folio administrators.

 

TimestampDate and time at which the change occured.
AuthorAvatar of the JIRA user who performed the change. Hovering the avatar brings up a tooltip with more info on the user. Clicking it takes you to the user's page.
Change

Description of the change. It ends with the database ID of the modified item between square brackets.

Hovering the description of updates brings up a tooltip showing the value before and after the change.

Custom Fields

If you have Custom fields defined in the Folio configuration, those will be show in the edition dialog box when creating or editing an expense.

 

 

Custom field accept values of up to 255 characters. Custom field values are displayed in the details column under the Extra Information section.

Expenses and Positions Timeline

The Timeline View is displayed when the right part of the toggle button located at the top left of the Expenditure Browser is pressed . It shows each expense payment as well as team member costs over the Folio's timeframe, as of today, as an interactive timeline chart. Each element displayed for an expense (shown in blue) on the timeline reflects a payment for that expense. Positions (shown in green) are show as periods, covering the actual activity period for each team member.

Timeline charts in Tempo Folio offer various controls to navigate and focus on certain periods of time. Please refer to the Timelines page to learn more on available ways to interact with the Timeline.

 

 

All operations described above can be executed directly from the timeline, including edition, deletion, search, multi-selection, etc.

Hovering one of the timeline elements shows the date or time period corresponding to that element as well as its summary information, such as its name and actual cost.

 

Import / Export

Tempo Folio Allows you to import and export your data in CSV (comma separated values) format.

Importing Actual Costs

To import data from an existing CSV file, click on the ... button and select Import data. Alternatively, you can type the keyboard shortcut to open the import dialog. Please refer to Importing Data from CSV and Actual Costs Import to learn more about importing Actual Costs.

Exporting Actual Costs

To export data to an external CSV file click on the ... button and select Export data. Alternatively, you can type the keyboard shortcut to instantly export data. Exported CSV file includes both only expenses as actual positions are exported from the Team page. See Actual CSV Export Detail to learn more about exported data.

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