Cost usage by category (the client's cost chart)

Who can use it. Clients see it on the Financials tab of their project, once you've turned Financials on for that job and made at least one cost tracking version visible to them. Staff see exactly the same chart in the deal's Client preview, and can flick between saved versions.

What it's for

It answers the one question a client asks all the way through a build: *how much of my job have I actually been billed for so far?*

Each row is one part of the job — kitchen, bathroom, carpentry, and so on. The bar shows how far that part has been billed against what was agreed for it, so a client can see at a glance which parts are finished and paid, which are part-way, and which have gone past their agreed figure. The dollar columns beside it show the estimate, any agreed variations, and what's still projected to come.

The chart is a snapshot, not a live feed. It reads the cost tracking version you chose to share, so the figures a client sees are the ones you signed off, and they don't move under them until you share a newer version.

Sharing more than one version

Tick Visible to customers on as many saved versions as you like — sharing one no longer un-shares the others. When a job has two or more shared versions, the client gets a Showing picker above the chart and can flick between them, so they can see for themselves how the figures moved between the version you issued in March and the one you issued in June.

The client opens on the newest version you've shared. The money tiles above the chart — Projected to Come, Invoiced + Projected, Difference — belong to whichever version is picked and move with it, so the tiles and the chart are always the same snapshot.

To stop sharing a version, untick it; the others stay exactly as they are. Untick everything and the chart disappears from the client's Financials tab.

How to use it

On the deal in Pipeline, open the Client Costs tab. Its banner at the top offers a one-click Publish update to client (or Publish to client the first time) button — it freezes today's figures into a new version and makes it visible in a single step. Prefer to do it by hand instead? Use Save draft version in the Version history at the bottom of the same tab, then tick that version Published. Tick any earlier versions you also want the client to be able to look back at.
Turn Financials on for that client on the deal's Portal tab.
The client opens their project and goes to Financials — the chart sits under the money tiles.
To check what they're seeing first, use Client preview on the Cost Tracking or Client Costs tab; it renders the same chart from the newest saved version, and tells you which version clients currently open on. A version's own Preview link in the Version history shows that specific version instead.

The Preliminary and General row

Your prelims are priced as a loading spread across every other category, but they're invoiced separately, under their own "Preliminary and General" line. The chart now matches that.

Every work category is measured against what it's actually invoiced for — its estimate without the prelims loading, plus its agreed variations. So a category that's been fully billed reads 100%, not the ~92% it used to stop at.
The prelims taken out of all those rows are gathered into a single Preliminary and General row, pinned at the bottom of the table, measured against the prelims you've actually invoiced. It's the same money, shown in the place it's billed from — nothing has been added to or taken off the job.
If the same job also has a prelims category of its own (someone added one by hand, or it came across from your estimating system under a slightly different name), it's merged into that one row rather than shown twice.

The percentage on your account is whatever you've set under Admin → Estimating settings; the chart uses the rate each version was saved with, so an older version keeps reading the way it did when you shared it.

Reading a category that's gone over

The bar's full length is whatever is bigger: the agreed total (estimate + variations), or what's actually been invoiced. Under budget those are the agreed total, and the bar reads exactly as it always has — green fill, grey remaining, blue variations.

Once a category is billed past its agreed total, the bar re-scales so the whole billing fits on it. The agreed total shrinks to its share, and the rest is red. So a category 2% over shows a sliver of red and one 25% over shows a quarter of the bar in red — you can now tell them apart at a glance instead of reading the tooltip. The percentage in the middle of the bar is still invoiced ÷ agreed total, so it still says 102% and 125%.

A category that was never estimated but has invoices against it has no budget to fill at all, so the whole bar is red, labelled with the amount billed.

What it affects

Only what the client (and the Client preview) sees. The cost tracking sheet you export, the staff Cost Tracking tab, and /financials are untouched — the workbook still shows the full estimate and its own prelims working columns.

Because the chart is rebuilt from the saved version each time it's opened, versions you shared in the past now read the corrected way too — you don't need to re-save or re-share anything.

Good to know

The estimate column on the client's chart is now the figure without prelims, so it will read a little lower than the "Total" column on the staff cost tracking sheet. The difference is exactly what's in the Preliminary and General row.
Invoiced Directly categories are deliberately left alone — the client paid that supplier direct, so the full amount stays on the row, it carries no prelims, and it reads exactly 100%.
A job priced with no prelims loading at all simply has no Preliminary and General row.
If a category's credits come to more than its estimate, there's no meaningful bar to draw, so it doesn't get a row — but the prelims charged on it still show up in the Preliminary and General row.
Unless you've already invoiced against it. If some of that work was billed before the credit landed, the row stays on the chart so the client can still see their money. There's no budget left to fill, so instead of a percentage the bar is labelled with the amount billed — the bar goes fully red when that amount is a charge, and stays unfilled when the invoicing nets out to a credit in the client's favour. A credited-away category you never invoiced at all still drops off, as does a cost saving.
The chart only appears when the shared version has categories in it. If a version can't be read, the chart is hidden rather than showing wrong numbers.