Tracking Actual Costs vs. Budget

How to enter actual costs, understand the variance column, and what over/under means.

The Budget page shows several different amounts for every line. They answer different questions. Reading one as if it were another is the most common way owner-builders misjudge where a project stands.

The budget itself

**Original** — quantity times unit price for the line. This is your starting plan.

**Changes** — the total of **approved** change orders on the line. Draft and pending change orders are not counted.

**Revised** — Original plus approved Changes. This is your current budget for the line, and it is the number every comparison below uses.

The agreement with your contractor or supplier

**Agreed Cost** — the accepted bid, contract or agreed purchase amount for the line. You enter it yourself, and it only applies once the line's status is **Committed**. It is not the same as your budget: the budget is what you planned to spend, the agreed cost is what someone has agreed to do the work for.

**Remaining Commitment** — the unused part of an active agreement: Agreed Cost minus Actual Cost, never below zero. It answers "how much of this agreement is still to come?"

Remaining Commitment is **not** every amount you still owe. A bill you have recorded but not paid has already reduced Remaining Commitment, because the cost is recorded. Unpaid bills are tracked on the Expenses page by payment status, not here.

A line that finishes under its agreed amount keeps showing a Remaining Commitment until you close it out. That is intentional — the agreement is still open. See [Working With Budget Line Items](/help/budget/budget-line-items).

What has actually happened

**Actual Cost** — every expense recorded against the line, **including bills you have not paid yet**. It is not "money paid". To see what has actually left your account, use the Expenses page and its payment status.

**Unspent Budget** — Revised minus Actual Cost. It answers "how much of the budget has not been used yet?"

Unspent Budget is **not** savings while work remains. A line that is half built will show plenty of unspent budget; that money is still needed. It only becomes savings once the line is finished and fully settled.

If Actual Cost is above Revised, Unspent Budget goes negative — that line is over budget. Either bring the cost down, lower another line's quantity or unit price and raise this one, or record a change order that raises the budget.

What you expect to happen

**Expected Final Cost** — your own forecast of what the line will total when it is finished, **including the costs already recorded**. It is optional and blank until you enter it.

Entering or changing a forecast changes nothing else: not your budget, not your expenses, and not any agreement. Lowering it does not release a Remaining Commitment. Blank forecasts are left blank; they are never treated as zero in totals.

When a forecast exists, the line's form shows **Projected Savings / Overrun** — Revised minus Expected Final Cost. Once a line is closed and fully settled, it shows **Final Savings / Overrun** using the final Actual Cost.

A worked example

A line with a $12,000 revised budget and a $10,000 agreed cost, finished and fully paid at $9,000:

| Amount | Before closeout | After closeout |
|---|---|---|
| Revised | $12,000 | $12,000 |
| Agreed Cost | $10,000 | $10,000 |
| Actual Cost | $9,000 | $9,000 |
| Remaining Commitment | $1,000 | $0 |
| Unspent Budget | $3,000 | $3,000 (now real savings) |

The agreed cost stays on the record at $10,000 after closeout.

Where these amounts also appear

The summary cards at the top of the Budget page total the same figures across the project, and group rows total the lines beneath them. Exports use the same calculations — see [Budget Exports](/help/budget/budget-reports).

Common questions

**Why is Agreed Cost or Expected Final Cost missing from my table?** They are optional columns. Turn them on under **View**.

**Why does a Planning line show no Remaining Commitment?** Nothing has been agreed yet, so there is no commitment to track.

**Which number should I trust for "how much is left to spend"?** Unspent Budget for the budget, Remaining Commitment for open agreements. They answer different questions and both are useful.

For professional builders

Actual Cost is cost-to-date regardless of payment state, so it behaves like committed cost incurred rather than cash disbursed. Remaining Commitment is contract balance to complete, not accounts payable; retainage held is tracked with the expense, not by reducing this figure.

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**Verification note:** Every definition here was checked against the shared calculation used by the budget table, summary cards and exports, and against the line-item form and closeout dialog as displayed in the app. The worked example matches the values the app produced in earlier testing of the closeout workflow.