Category & Excel export configuration
Who can use it: account owners (Settings → Category & Excel Configuration, at /admin/settings/categories). Everyone else sees the result of your choices without being able to change them.
What it does
Two lists control how your cost information is grouped and presented:
Categories. The cost categories your estimates and invoices are grouped under — "Carpentry - Materials & Labour", "Electrical", "Plumbing & Gas Fitting", and so on. For each one you set:
- the display name — what your team and your clients actually see on the deal page,
the Cost Tracking table and the Excel export;
- the order — the top-to-bottom sequence categories appear in everywhere;
- whether it's enabled — a disabled category disappears from the pickers, so nobody
can file new costs against it.
Excel export columns. The four financial columns of the Cost Tracking workbook (Total, Variations agreed, Invoiced to date, Percentage Complete) — same three controls: rename, reorder, turn off.
There's a Reset to defaults button for each list, which puts your organisation back to the 56 standard categories and 4 standard columns.
Your list is yours
Every organisation has its own copy of both lists. Renaming "Dranage" to "Drainage", turning off categories your business never uses, or reordering to match how you actually run a job affects only your organisation — no other account on the platform sees the change, and nothing another account does reaches you. That includes Reset to defaults, which resets your list and nobody else's.
If you've never opened this page, you're on the standard 56 categories and 4 columns — they're created for you the first time anything needs them, so a brand-new account already has a sensible list on day one.
Where the settings show up
- Deal page → Cost Tracking — rows appear in your configured order; disabled
categories aren't offered when reassigning a line item.
- Estimate and variation category pickers — only enabled categories can be chosen.
- Excel export (Cost Tracking workbook) — Summary rows follow your category order.
- Invoice line-item categorisation — the dropdown lists your enabled categories.
Notes
- Disabling a category doesn't delete any existing costs filed against it — those rows
still appear and still count. It only stops the category being chosen again.
- "Invoiced Directly" is always available and isn't in this list; it's a built-in
behaviour rather than a category you configure.
- Changes take effect within about 30 seconds across the app.