# Live Margins Live Margins is the real-time financial panel in the project sidebar. It adapts to wherever you are in the project — showing a real-time financial overview of the estimate when you're building or reviewing it, and live budget expense tracking when you're in the budget. Open it using the sidebar button in the top-right corner of the project. For the full financial view including all three panels and a combined breakdown across estimate and budget, use the [Project Finance](./Project-Finance.md) page. --- ## In Estimate Context When you're in an estimate, the sidebar shows the **Estimate Totals** panel. **Top-level figures** - **External** — total revenue being billed to the client - **Internal** — total projected cost to your organization - **Margin** — External minus Internal, shown in dollars and as a percentage **Breakdown** Switch between **Categories**, **Departments**, and **Items** tabs to see the financial breakdown at different levels of detail. Each grouping shows External, Internal, and Margin columns. Below the department/category breakdown, the **Totals** section shows how the estimate rolls up: - **Subtotal** — sum of all line item subtotals before modifiers - **Discount** — any discount applied at the estimate level - **Discounted Subtotal** — subtotal after discount - **Job Fees** — total of all markup amounts; individual markups appear as labeled pills before the Job Fees aggregate row - **Grand Total** — final estimate total inclusive of all modifiers --- ## In Budget Context When you're in the budget, the sidebar shows the **Budget Totals** panel. **Top-level figures** - **Internal** — total approved job expenses from the estimate (the baseline) - **Projected Job Expenses** — expenses in Draft status; planned but not yet committed - **Committed Job Expenses** — expenses in Confirmed, Posted, Requested, or Rejected status; money committed but not yet paid - **Incurred Job Expenses** — expenses in Approved, Payment Scheduled, or Paid status; money approved for payment or already paid - **Working Total** — the sum of Projected + Committed + Incurred - **Job Expense Variance** — difference between the approved Internal total and the Working Total; how much budget remains **Breakdown** Switch between **Categories**, **Departments**, and **Items** to see where expenses are accumulating. Each grouping shows Internal Total, Working Total, and Job Expense Variance columns — the same structure as the top-level figures, broken down by cost type. --- ## Reading the Numbers **Job Expense Variance tells you where the budget stands.** A positive variance means you're under the approved internal budget; negative means you've exceeded it. The breakdown by category or department shows exactly where the variance is coming from. **Working Total is your most honest operating figure.** It includes every expense regardless of payment stage — projected costs that haven't been committed yet, commitments that haven't been paid, and money already out the door. Nothing is excluded until a line is removed from the budget entirely. For Working Margin, Realized Margin, and the full cross-view of estimate vs. budget performance, see [Project Finance](./Project-Finance.md).