Daily work
Project costing and draws
The schedule of values, adjusting a line without a change order, and requesting draws.
In short
Project costing is the schedule of values: what you originally budgeted, what it is now, and what you have spent. Draws bill the difference as the work goes.
The Project Costing tab on an active job is the schedule of values: every category with its original amount, adjustments, revised amount, what you have spent, percent complete and the balance left.
Original stays fixed; adjustments show as their own column.
- 1What the signed contract said. This column never moves on its own.
- 2Approved change orders and any adjustment you type land here, so the change is visible.
- 3Original plus the adjustment. This is the figure you bill against today.
Original against revised
Two columns do most of the work here.
Original is what you contracted for. It does not move.
Revised is where the job is now, after approved change orders and any adjustments you have made. The difference between them shows in the adjustment column, so the story of how a job grew is legible at a glance rather than buried in a diff of the estimate.
This is why adjusting a budget here is different from editing the estimate on the Budget tab. Editing the estimate moves both columns together, which is right when you got a number wrong. Adjusting here moves only Revised, which is right when the job changed.
Adjusting a line
Type a signed amount straight into a line's adjustment cell. What you type is that line's total departure from Original, so typing over an existing adjustment replaces it rather than stacking. Clearing the cell puts the line back to its original amount.
Moving budget between two categories is one adjustment down and one adjustment up.
Note
None of this creates a record the client sees. If a change needs to be visible and agreed, draft a change order on the Change Orders tab instead.
Fee lines work differently, because a fee already moves on its own as the work it is based on changes. Choose the fee's adjustment cell and you get three options: leave it automatic, set a flat amount, or set a percentage of the categories you pick. If you set a rule and the underlying costs move later, the line tells you what the rule would produce now and updates in one click.
Draw requests
A draw request bills the client for progress. The current request is what you have spent and categorized, less what has already been funded.
Uncategorized spending is deliberately left out. If it counted, the bottom line would not tie to the table above it, and you would be billing against charges you have not yet looked at. A banner tells you what is waiting and links you to it.
Raising a request freezes a snapshot. The copy you send the client keeps its numbers even as the job carries on, which is what makes an old draw worth keeping.
When the money lands, mark the draw funded and a client payment is recorded against the job automatically. That payment's amount and type stay tied to the draw, so they cannot be changed on the Payments tab; its date, note and change order tag can. To correct the amount, unfund the draw here and mark it funded again. Delete it here too rather than on the Payments tab, so the draw and the payment stay in step.
Source of funds
Below the schedule sits its mirror: where the money comes from. The source of funds table carries the same columns as the schedule above it, original through revised, with funded-to-date in place of spent, so the two read as one statement: use of funds on top, source of funds underneath.
Under it, payments received are listed oldest first with a running cumulative, and any draw requests still waiting to be funded follow with their own cumulative that continues from the funded total, showing where you land if they fund. A draw that has been funded already appears as a payment, so nothing is counted twice.
All three sections also print on the draw sheet you share with a client. If you would rather keep funding detail off that document, turn off Source of funds & draw requests in the sheet's display options, per job or for every job under your company defaults.