# Project Finance The Finance page is the full financial view for a project — the estimate baseline, live budget performance, and both cost tracks in one place. Access it via **Finance** in the project's left navigation. The page is organized into four tabs: - **Overview** — the headline read on whether the project is still making money - **Estimate** — what you sold and planned to spend - **Budget** — what you're actually spending against that plan - **Live Margins** — the full grid, broken down however you want it Finance is available before a budget is generated. Until one exists there's no spend to report, so PAI uses the plan: **Working Total** is the internal total of the approved estimate plus approved overages (or, before approval, of the reported estimate version), **Working Margin** equals the estimate's margin, and variance is zero. Once the budget is generated, Working Total switches to the sum of its expense lines. That's a useful starting state rather than an empty one: the Overview opens at the margin you planned, and every dollar of budget spend moves it from there. --- ## The Three Cost Tracks Every totals surface on this page presents its figures in the same three groupings, so you can read each cost track on its own and the two together: - **Blended** — in-house and out-of-pocket combined. The true cost and true margin of the project. - **In-House** — internal staff labor only, in dollars and hours. - **Out of Pocket** — external spend only: vendors, freelancers, rentals. In-house internal dollars are gated by the **View In-House Internal Cost** permission — see [Without View In-House Internal Cost](#without-view-in-house-internal-cost) below. --- ## Overview The **Project Performance** section answers one question: how is budget spend affecting the profit you estimated? - **External** — total approved revenue - **Working Total** — live spend so far - **Working Margin** — External minus Working Total, in dollars and as a percentage Beneath it, the **Working Margin** chart is a ring of External: the Working Total split by stage (**Projected**, **Committed**, **Incurred**) plus the remaining **Working Margin**, with the working margin figure at its center. A stage with nothing in it is left out of the legend. The split matters: projected spend is planned but not committed, committed money is agreed but not yet paid, and incurred is approved for payment or already gone. Two projects with the same working margin are in different positions if one is mostly projected and the other mostly incurred. This is the number to check first. If Working Margin has drifted from the margin you estimated, the other three tabs tell you where it went. --- ## Estimate The Estimate tab has an **Overview** / **Details** toggle. ### Overview Three sections, one per cost track. **Show Breakdown** on the blended section jumps into Details: - **Blended Estimate Totals** — External, Internal, Margin ($), Margin (%) - **In-House Estimate Totals** — the same four, plus **Estimated Hours** - **Out of Pocket Estimate Totals** — the same four ### Details **Blended Estimate Totals Breakdown** shows how the estimate arrives at its grand total, in External, Internal, Margin ($), and Margin (%) columns: | Row | What it shows | |---|---| | **Subtotal** | Sum of line item totals, including fringes | | **Discount** | Any discount applied — see [Modifiers](../02-Bidding-a-Project/Modifiers.md#discounts) | | **Discounted Subtotal** | Subtotal minus discount; the base markups calculate against | | **Markups** | Total markup amount, expandable to each markup individually | | **Grand Total** | Final total inclusive of all modifiers | Expand an individual markup and it splits into its **In-House** and **OOP** halves — useful when a markup lands differently across the two tracks, which is common once passthrough or internal-only percentages are in play. --- ## Budget The Budget tab carries the same **Overview** / **Details** toggle. ### Overview Three sections again, one per cost track, each with **Show Breakdown**: - **Blended Budget Totals** — Internal Total, Working Total, Working Variance ($), Working Variance (%) - **In-House Budget Totals** — the same four, plus **Assigned Hours** - **Out of Pocket Budget Totals** — the same four **Internal Total** is the approved baseline from the estimate. **Working Total** is live spend. **Working Variance** is the difference: positive means you're under the approved budget, negative means you've exceeded it. ### Details **Budget Totals Breakdown** puts the three tracks side by side as columns — **In-House**, **Out of Pocket**, **Blended** — and reads down through the expense lifecycle: | Row | What it shows | |---|---| | **Internal Total** | The approved baseline from the estimate | | **Working Total** | Projected + Committed + Incurred | | **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, Paid, or Refunded status; money approved for payment or already paid (a Refunded line is $0) | | **Working Variance** | Internal Total minus Working Total, in dollars and as a percentage | Reading across a row is the point of this table: it shows you whether variance is coming from in-house labor, out-of-pocket spend, or both. **Budget In-House Hours Breakdown** sits below it, because in-house labor is tracked by hours as well as dollars — internal staff aren't invoiced like vendors: - **Assigned Hours** — hours that have a staff member attached - **Hours Variance** — assigned against the estimated baseline --- ## Live Margins The fourth tab is the [Live Margins](./Live-Margins.md) grid at full page width, rather than squeezed into the sidebar. It works like any PAI grid: a view strip across the top, **Display Options** at the right, and **Expand All** / **Collapse All** for the grouped rows. Four views ship with it — **Resources**, **Categories**, **Departments**, and **Items** — but treat those as starting points rather than the menu. Grouping here works like it does in any grid: nest **Categories**, **Departments**, **Items**, and **Resources** (the cost track) to any depth, in any order. Categories then Resources, Items then Resources, Departments then Categories then Items then Resources — there are no disallowed combinations. Save what you build with **Add View** and it persists. The columns put estimate and budget side by side, which is what makes this tab worth opening rather than the two tabs before it: | Column | What it shows | |---|---| | **Estimate External** | Approved revenue for this group | | **Estimate Internal** | Approved cost for this group | | **Estimate Margin** | Planned profit, in dollars and as a percentage | | **Working Total** | Live spend for this group | | **Working Variance** | Estimate Internal minus Working Total, in dollars and as a percentage | Rows roll up to **Subtotal**, **Markups** (expandable to each markup), and **Grand Total**. This is where you find which department or category is driving variance — the Overview tells you the project has drifted, this tells you where. --- ## Without View In-House Internal Cost Users without the **View In-House Internal Cost** permission see the whole page with a banner at the top saying that figures including in-house internal cost are hidden, and every in-house internal dollar figure hidden behind an eye-slash. In the **Blended** and **In-House** sections, internal cost and everything derived from it is suppressed: margin on the Estimate tab; internal total, working total, and job expense variance on the Budget tab. The in-house **hours** figures stay fully visible, as does External. On the Overview, **Working Total**, **Working Margin**, and the Working Margin chart are blended, so they're hidden too. The **Out of Pocket** sections are unaffected and shown in full, as are the out-of-pocket columns in the Live Margins grid. These users can review the complete external and out-of-pocket picture without seeing what internal labor costs the organization. See [Users and Permissions](../01-Organization-Setup/Users-and-Permissions.md#view-in-house-internal-cost). --- ## Live Margins Sidebar vs. Finance Page The **Live Margins sidebar** is for quick, contextual monitoring while you're working. It shows one context at a time — estimate or budget, whichever you're in — and updates as you make changes. The **Finance page** is for review: everything in one place, both tracks and both contexts visible at once, with the breakdown tables behind each figure. Use it when you need to understand the full financial state of a project, present numbers to a stakeholder, or work out where variance is coming from.