Purpose
This article explains how Cost Categories organize your project's financial data.
Who Uses This
Project managers and administrators setting up and managing project budgets.
How It Works
Cost Categories break a budget down into meaningful groups — like labor, materials, permits, or contingency — so spend can be tracked and reported at a granular level.
Cost categories can typically be standardized across projects or customized for a specific job.
Best Practices
Standardize cost categories across projects where possible for easier portfolio-level reporting.
Keep categories broad enough to be manageable, but specific enough to be useful.
Review your category structure periodically to ensure it still matches how your organization tracks costs.
Troubleshooting
If a cost doesn't appear where expected, confirm it was logged under the correct category.