Track project cost lines

All plansProject Manager or above to add and edit lines

Cost lines are a simple budget list on a project, kept like a spreadsheet: one line per item, such as “Electrical works 25,000”, “Engineering study 4,500” or “Storage container 18,000”. Each line says whether the money is expected, committed or already spent, and the Finance tab totals the lines against the project budget.

They suit teams whose purchasing lives in another system. You record what your ERP or purchasing tool says, and the project shows where the budget stands without timesheets or rate cards.

Add a cost line

Open the project and select the Finance tab (under More when it is not on the tab row).
Select the Cost lines section, then Add cost line. A link to the section is /projects/<project id>?view=finance&section=costlines.
Enter a Label (1 to 200 characters) and the Amount in the project’s currency, with at most two decimal places. Type the amount the way your language writes numbers: “4 500,50” in French, “4.500,50” in German and “4,500.50” in English all mean the same amount.
Choose a Status: Expected, Committed or Spent.
Optionally add a Category (the panel offers the categories the project already uses as you type), a Date, a Linked task and a Note.
Select Add line. The totals in the summary strip at the top of the Finance tab update straight away.

To change a line, select its pencil icon. The form opens above the list, with the line marked in the list below it; edit it and select Save (or press Enter). Esc closes the form without saving. Moving a line from Committed to Spent when the invoice arrives is the usual edit, and a line can move back again if a purchase order is cancelled.

The statuses

Status	Use it for
Expected	Money you plan to spend but have not committed yet, such as a quote you are still waiting on
Committed	Money you are bound to spend, such as a signed purchase order
Spent	Money that has been paid or invoiced

How the totals are computed

Once the project has a cost line, the summary strip at the top of the Finance tab shows the totals above every section: a bar with Spent, Committed and Forecast against the budget (each with its amount), then Budget, Spent, Forecast and Remaining, with Remaining after commitments under Remaining, then CPI and SPI from earned value. Hover over a figure for its definition. The bar needs a budget above 0; without one there is no bar, and Committed is shown under Spent instead.

Until the first line is added, the strip shows the earned value figures (budget at completion, actual cost and the rest) instead, because the totals would only repeat the timesheet labour that actual cost already holds. The exception is a project whose earned value has no cost figures yet (no rate card and no default hourly rate): its strip shows these totals from the start. The six totals read:

Budget: the project’s budget. It shows Not entered when the project has no budget, which is different from a budget of 0.
Committed: committed lines plus spent lines.
Spent: spent lines.
Forecast: every line, whatever its status.
Remaining: budget minus forecast.
Remaining after commitments: budget minus committed.

A worked example, with a budget of 50,000:

Line	Status	Amount
Electrical works	Committed	25,000
Engineering study	Spent	4,500
Storage container	Expected	18,000

Total	Value
Committed	29,500
Spent	4,500
Forecast	47,500
Remaining	2,500
Remaining after commitments	20,500

A negative remaining figure shows in red: the lines already add up to more than the budget.

Timesheet labour. When the project also has labour priced from timesheets and rate cards, that labour is money already spent, so it is added to Spent, Committed and Forecast, and a line under the summary strip’s figures shows the labour figure on its own.

Filter and subtotals. The buttons above the list filter it by status, and each shows that status’s subtotal. Filtering changes the list only; the summary strip always covers every line.

How spent lines feed earned value

Spent lines are part of the project’s Actual Cost on the EVM dashboard, beside timesheet labour, from the line’s date (or the day it was added, when it has no date). A spent line linked to a task also counts in that task’s row of the per-task table. So CPI, the cost variance, the estimate at completion and the S-curve all reflect the invoices you record. Expected and committed lines stay out of earned value: Forecast is the bottom-up total, and the estimate at completion stays the earned value estimate.

When money has been spent but no work has been earned yet (invoices often arrive before progress is recorded), CPI is 0 and the budget cannot be divided by it. The estimate at completion is then the actual cost plus the budget still to earn (AC + BAC - EV), so the estimate to complete is the unearned budget and the variance at completion shows the overspend.

The Actual Cost card in the Earned value section shows its split, for example “Labour 1,000, cost lines 5,500”, whenever spent lines are part of it.

Earned value still needs a planned cost per task, from rate cards or an imported Microsoft Project file. A project with neither keeps the EVM empty state in its sections, and the summary strip carries its money from the cost lines totals.

Where else the totals appear

Reports: the Report Builder’s Spent and Remaining columns use the same totals.
Dashboards: the budget burn widget plots each project’s spent amount against its budget.
Portfolios: the portfolio screen shows each project’s budget, CPI and SPI as before, and does not list cost line totals. The portfolio summary in the Onplana API and the portfolio_summary tool for AI assistants carry each project’s committed, spent and forecast totals, converted into your organization’s default currency.
AI: the status digest and the EVM narrative quote the totals as given, for people who can see the project’s cost.

History and deleting

Select the clock icon on a line to open its history: who added it, and each change to its label, amount, status, category, date, task or note, newest first. Deleting a line (the bin icon) asks first, removes it from every total and keeps its history. A line is not sent to the recycle bin; deleting the whole project does keep its lines with it in the recycle bin.

Who can see and edit cost lines

See the lines and totals: people who can see the project’s costs (the View project budget permission). By default that is the project’s owner and managers, and organization owners and admins.
Add, edit and delete lines: people who can both edit the project and see its costs, the same rule as editing the project budget.

Regular project members do not see the section. Permissions are set in roles and permissions.

Plan

Cost lines are on every plan, like the budget and earned value.

FAQs

Can I enter a line in another currency? No. Lines are entered in the project’s currency, so every total is in one unit. Convert the amount before you enter it. If the project’s currency is changed after lines exist, those lines are converted at your organization’s current exchange rates. A warning under the summary strip’s figures names any currency that has no rate: those lines are counted at face value until you edit them. Editing such a line’s amount re-enters it in the project currency.

Why was my amount refused? Amounts can have at most two decimal places and cannot be negative. Onplana refuses a figure rather than rounding it, so the line always holds the number you typed. Record a credit by lowering the line’s amount. An amount like “25,000” typed where a comma is the decimal mark (in French, for example) could mean 25 or 25 000, so Onplana asks which you meant: type it without the separator, as 25000.

Is there a limit? A project holds up to 1,000 cost lines. A longer list belongs in your ERP.

Do cost lines change the margin report or expenses? No. Expenses are claims people file for approval; cost lines are budget entries the project manager keeps. They are separate, and the margin report does not read cost lines.

Set budgets and currency, the budget the lines are totalled against
Read the EVM dashboard, where spent lines join actual cost
Configure rate cards, for timesheet labour

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