Costs
/costs. Needs module.costs.
Understand where repair money goes. Costs recorded when you close out repairs are rolled up here.
The page
Section titled “The page”Pick a Year and what to Group by. The page then shows three panels:
- Annual spending: repair costs, purchases and the total for the year, with a bar showing how the total divides.
- Recovered vs absorbed: family charges recovered or approved, recorded as paid, absorbed by the school and waived, with a bar showing recovered against absorbed. Recovered is not the same as cash received.
- Repair spending by your grouping: a chart and a table. Months and terms show as columns, repair types and coverage as bars. Share switches the chart to a donut, where the six largest keep their own colour and the rest become Other. The table has a share column.
Hover a bar, column or slice for its exact figure, or focus the chart and use the arrow keys. Legend keys switch a series on and off.
The breakdowns
Section titled “The breakdowns”| By | Answers |
|---|---|
| Repair type | What is breaking |
| Coverage | Warranty against insurance against chargeable |
| Month or term | When it is breaking |
You can group by your own terms as well as by calendar months. A school year
does not start in January, and a report that assumes it does gets re-done in a
spreadsheet. Manage periods, beside the filters, sets your terms and needs
cost.manage.
The questions it answers
Section titled “The questions it answers”The ones schools ask:
- How much did we spend on screen repairs this term?
- What share of repairs were under warranty? In other words, are you getting value out of the AppleCare you bought.
- Is Year 9 more expensive than Year 7? Which informs where the next conversation about device care should happen.
- What did last year cost? Which is the number that goes into the budget submission.
Making the numbers honest
Section titled “Making the numbers honest”Cost analytics is only as good as what gets recorded, and three things make the difference.
Configure coverage properly. A school with no warranty lookup tends to record everything as chargeable and then wonders why the numbers look bad. Connecting GSX or Dell means the coverage is answered rather than guessed.
Keep the parts list priced. Ticking parts on a repair adds their prices up automatically. A parts list at zero produces repairs that cost nothing.
Type over the total when it is wrong. A part sourced in a hurry, or supplied free under warranty, means the sum is wrong. What you type wins. See workflow.
Term dates
Section titled “Term dates”Grouping by term needs term dates, which come from your student information system where it provides them, or are configured here.
Exporting
Section titled “Exporting”Export to CSV for finance. Requires cost.export, which is separate from
cost.view so you can let people look without letting them extract.
Asking ad hoc
Section titled “Asking ad hoc”The assistant answers cost questions in sentences:
- How much did we spend this year?
- Purchases this week
Useful for the question somebody asks in a meeting, where opening a chart and configuring a grouping takes longer than the answer is worth.
Permissions
Section titled “Permissions”| Permission | Allows |
|---|---|
cost.view |
See the analytics |
cost.export |
Export to CSV |
cost.manage |
Manage reporting periods |
Related
Section titled “Related”- Submissions where costs are recorded.
- Workflow for coverages and the parts catalogue.
- Damage charges for what a family is asked to pay, which is a different question from what a repair cost.
- Reports for scheduled delivery.