Where cost comes from
Know every place a cost enters the platform, what each one costs and what happens when a figure is missing.
Updated 23 September 2026
- Why
- A margin is only as true as the cost under it.
- What
- Every cost is built from something with a source: a cost field, a received price, a rate or a stock movement.
- How
- Each product that does work brings its own cost, listed below.
The sources
| What is costed | Where the cost comes from | Set in |
|---|---|---|
| A catalogue product | The cost field, from an import or an accepted supplier price | Cost and margin |
| Goods received | The landed unit cost on a posted goods in, which moves the stock line's moving average | Goods in |
| Stock | The moving average on each stock line | Items and balances |
| A serviced item | Rates and standard minutes, then the minutes actually recorded | Cost against time |
| A machined job | The machine, the person and the material the run consumed | Costs |
| A line from a saved design | None: the design module's rates set its price, so the line carries no cost and shows no margin | Rates and stock |
Rates
A rate (labour an hour, machine an hour, overhead and the rest) is held for the organisation, a centre, a station, a machine or an operator, with the dates it applied. A rate rise never rewrites last month's costs.
There is no default labour or machine rate. A Machinist cost with a missing rate reads No rate, and a line with no cost shows no margin: missing is said as missing, never as zero.
Who sees cost
Costs and margins in Servicing, Machinist and Suppliers' prices are for the engineer role and above. An operator never sees a price, a cost or a margin.
Related
- Cost and marginGive your products a cost so every quote line shows its margin, and know where that cost can come from.
- CostingKnow where the cost behind each margin comes from, and who can see it.
- Margin reportingRead margin by line, by service, by job, by customer and by month, from the one definition the whole platform uses.