Real Estate Portfolio Management / Cost Administration / Cost Wizard

Approving and Adding Scheduled Costs

The Approve Costs tab show all Scheduled Costs for the lease, building, property, or account you have selected. If you have set a restriction to view only certain cost categories and types, the Approve tab uses this restriction.

From the Approve Costs tab, you can

Review Scheduled Costs
Edit or delete Scheduled Costs
Approve Scheduled Costs, so that they become Actual Costs that you have verified. Actual costs are finalized costs that the Chargeback Administrator can use to generate chargeback or the Invoice Administrator can use to issue invoices if the cost is a receivable.
Easily identify costs that are past due, as these costs are shown with a red background.

For example, to record a new income or expense item that is a one-time expense, you can add it as a Scheduled Cost from the Approve tab. When you actually receive the payment or pay the bill, you can verify the amount, adjust it if necessary, and approve it. Approving the cost confirms the cost and moves it from the Scheduled Costs table to the Costs table.

About Costs that Directly Bill

When lease costs are charged back, the system checks if there are Chargeback Cost Agreements for the lease for that cost category. However, lease costs whose cost category's chargeback definition is "All-None-Direct Bill" are not adjusted in this way because they are not charged back. They are directly applied to the lease you add the cost to. At the time you add Scheduled Cost records for leases that have this proration strategy, you should check if there are Chargeback Cost Agreements and use these agreements to determine the actual amount to assign to the lease. For example, determine whether the lease should be charged a portion of the cost. In these cases, you can manually enter the Scheduled Cost record to reflect the chargeback agreement. See View Lease Chargeback Agreements.

Adding Scheduled Costs

From the Approve Costs tab you can manually add a Scheduled Cost record, rather than adding a Recurring Cost record from which you generate Scheduled Costs.

The following are examples of when you might manually add Scheduled Cost records:

If this is a cost that does not occur regularly, you might prefer to enter a Scheduled Cost record, rather than entering a Recurring Cost from which you generate the Scheduled Cost.
If you discover that an approved Actual Cost is in error, you can create an offsetting Scheduled Cost record to cancel the error, and then approve that Scheduled Cost to make the adjustment.

To add new scheduled costs:

Select Cost Administrator/Cost Wizard for Leases, Buildings, or Properties, or Cost Wizard for Accounts, and then select the item you want to add a Scheduled Cost for.
From the Approve Costs tab, click Add Scheduled Cost.
The Add New (Lease/Building/Property/Account) Scheduled Cost dialog appears.
Enter the following required field:
Cost Category -- Select the Cost Category from the list. The Cost Category specifies the classification of the cost, such as snow removal, bathroom supplies, or rent. The cost category is important for summarizing costs, and rolling up and prorating costs. For information on completing this field, see About Cost Categories.
CAM Cost: By default, this is set to Non-CAM, but you can change this to CAM to indicate that the cost is a common area maintenance cost shared among tenants. See Recording Actual CAM Costs.
Complete the following recommended fields:
Date Due -- Enter the date that this cost is due.
Description -- Describe the cost.
Cost Status -- From the drop-down menu, select Budgeted if the cost represents an estimate or is being used for "what if" scenarios. Select Planned if the cost represents an exact amount that will occur.
Amount - Expense/Amount - Income -- Complete one of these fields to document whether the cost is an income or expense item. If you are using Scheduled Costs for planning and budgeting purposes, you can enter an estimate of the cost. Otherwise, enter the exact amount.
Date Paid -- Enter the date that this cost was paid.
The system automatically creates the following values:
Date Trans. Created -- The system completes the value with the system date at the time that you create the record.
Scheduled Cost Code: The unique identifier for this Scheduled Cost is system-generated after you save the record.
Repeat steps 2-4 for all Scheduled Costs you want to enter for this item.

Approve Scheduled Costs

To approve Scheduled Costs for the selected building, property, lease, or account:

Select the Cost Wizard for Leases, Buildings, and Properties or Cost Wizard for Accounts, and then select the item you want to manage costs for.
From the Approve Costs tab, select the costs you want to approve, and click Approve.
The costs are moved to the Review Costs tab.

When you approve a cost, the system does the following:

Creates a new record in the Costs table with the same values as the selected Scheduled Cost record, and assigns an auto-numbered key to the new Cost record.
Sets the Cost Status value of the Cost record to RECEIVABLE if the cost is income, or to PAYABLE if the cost is an expense.
Sets the Chargeback Status field of the Cost record to NOT CHARGED BACK.
Deletes the selected record from the Scheduled Costs table, so that costs are not duplicated.

Edit Scheduled Costs

You can change any information for a Scheduled Cost.

To edit a scheduled cost:

From the Approve Costs tab, click Edit in the row for the cost.
The Edit Scheduled Cost dialog appears.
Edit the fields. You can edit any of the fields except the system-generated fields. See Add New Scheduled Costs for a description of the fields.
Click Save.

Deleting Scheduled Costs

To delete scheduled costs:

From the Approve Costs tab, select the Scheduled Costs, and click Delete.
You are asked to confirm the deletion.
Click OK.
The Scheduled Costs are deleted.

After approving costs, you can review the approved Actual Costs from the Review Costs tab.