Asset Costs

Asset Costs is where a machine's dollar figures come from: what it costs to own per day, what its servicing costs per hour, and how much fuel it burns. These rates are what turn a machine's logged hours into a cost row in the Budget Ledger — no rate, no cost, even if the machine worked all day.

Who can use it — You need "view budget tracking" permission to open the page. Editing rates, adding overrides, or managing fuel rates needs "manage asset cost profiles"; without it the edit and create actions are hidden and you see the figures read-only. The Settings tab additionally needs "update tenant settings" to save. See Roles & Permissions for how access is set.

Where to find it — Costs & Budget → Asset Costs in the sidebar.

How to use it

The page has three tabs:

Cost Rates — the default view. Cost Rates by Category at the top, Per-machine overrides underneath.
Fuel Rates — price per litre by fuel type, used to cost the litres/hour figures set above.
Settings — tenant-wide toggles for depreciation and which hour source wins for asset costing.

Cost Rates by Category

This is the primary table, one row per active asset category (e.g. "14t Excavators"). Every machine in a category uses its category's rates for budget costing unless it has its own override profile — so a fleet typically needs a handful of category rates, not a profile per machine. Each row shows:

Category — name, with its type (Plant, Vehicle, Attachment, Equipment) underneath.
Fuel — litres/hour.
Service — either a $/hr figure, or Per-asset service records if the category is set to derive it from each machine's own service history.
Ownership — either a $/day figure, or Per-asset compliance if set to derive it from each machine's registration, insurance, finance, and lease costs.
Coverage — how many machines in the category are priced: green when every machine is covered (by the category rate or an individual override), amber when some machines have neither.

Use Edit rates on a row to open a slide-over with:

Ownership Cost Source — Manual ownership daily cost (enter a figure) or Compliance records (per asset), which pulls each machine's own registration, insurance, finance, and lease costs automatically instead of a flat number.
Ownership Daily Cost — minor units (cents), only shown when the source is manual.
Service Cost Source — Manual service hourly cost or Asset service records (per asset), which derives an hourly rate from each machine's logged service costs and readings.
Service Cost Per Hour — minor units, only shown when the source is manual.
Fuel Litres Per Hour — average burn for the class, priced against the matching Fuel Rate for each machine's fuel type.

Use records for all categories (header action) flips every category's Ownership and Service source to the per-asset "records" options in one go — useful once you've got registration/insurance/finance/lease and service-cost data entered on your assets and want the budget to track it directly rather than a manual estimate. Machines with no such records logged will cost $0 for that component until records are added.

Override a machine (row action) jumps straight to creating a per-asset cost profile for that category — see below.

Manage categories (header action) opens the full Asset Configuration Categories list. Use a category's row Edit action there (not the quick slide-over) to reach its Checklist Assignments tab, where prestart checklist templates are attached — that's a separate concern from cost rates but lives on the same category record.

Per-machine overrides

The Per-machine overrides table below is the Asset Cost Profiles list — the exceptions where one specific machine's costs genuinely differ from its category rate. Each profile has:

Asset it applies to.
Ownership Daily and Ownership Source (manual or compliance records), same options as the category level but scoped to this one machine.
Service Hourly and Service Cost Source (manual or asset service records).
Already Included in Ownership Cost — tick Operator wages, Fuel, and/or Servicing if the ownership figure already bakes in that component (e.g. a fully-inclusive lease). Ticked components are suppressed from this asset's budget rows so they aren't double-counted.
Effective From / Effective To — the date range the profile applies for. Ranges can't overlap another profile for the same asset.

Fuel burn (litres/hour) isn't set on the profile — it's resolved separately per asset via a ladder: the asset's own average burn, then its linked global model's default, then its category's default.

New Cost Profile and Edit are only available with the manage permission. Deleting a profile is a bulk action with a confirmation — the asset falls back to its category rate (or is left uncovered if the category has none) from that point; already-posted ledger rows aren't touched.

Fuel Rates tab

A simple list of Fuel Type (Diesel w/ AdBlue, Diesel, Unleaded, 2 Stroke, or blank for an all-types fallback) and Price Per Litre, each with an effective date range. Adding a new open-ended rate for a fuel type automatically closes off the previous open-ended rate for that same type the day before, and tells you it did so. Deleting a rate leaves budget posting with $0 fuel cost for any date it no longer covers — posted ledger rows aren't touched.

Settings tab

Two tenant-wide toggles that affect how asset costs are calculated everywhere, not just here:

Include Asset Depreciation in Budget — off by default. When on, assets with a depreciation method configured contribute their daily depreciation to ownership cost in the ledger.
Asset Hour Source Precedence — which source wins when both exist for a machine on a given day: approved timesheet entries (default) or prestart end-meter readings.

How this feeds the Budget Ledger

Every day a machine has logged hours, the budget engine prices that machine using, in order: its own cost profile if one is effective for that date, otherwise its category's rates. If neither exists, the machine's ownership/service/fuel all cost $0 for that day and it's flagged in the Budget Overview readiness panel as "machines with hours but no cost profile." Fuel is resolved and priced separately — a machine burning fuel with no matching Fuel Rate is flagged there too, and costs $0 for fuel until one is added. The resulting ownership, depreciation, service, and fuel figures post as line items against the machine's job in the Budget Ledger.

Connected pages

Budget Ledger — where these rates land as posted cost rows against jobs.
Budget Overview — the readiness panel that flags machines missing a cost profile or fuel rate.
Asset Configuration — categories live here too; Manage categories on this page opens the same list, and a category's Checklist Assignments tab (prestart templates) is reached the same way.
Asset Manager — where an asset's category and fuel type are set, which decide which category rate it falls back to.

Tips & common mistakes

A machine's costs show as $0 in the budget. Check its category has a rate set (Cost Rates by Category) or the machine has its own override profile — the Coverage column flags any category with uncovered machines.
Ownership or service shows "Per-asset compliance" / "Per-asset service records" but the budget is still $0. That machine has no matching compliance record (registration/insurance/finance/lease) or service record with a cost logged — records-based sourcing needs the underlying data entered, it doesn't estimate.
Fuel cost missing even though litres/hour is set. There's no Fuel Rate covering that machine's fuel type (or a blank fallback rate) for the date in question — add one on the Fuel Rates tab.
Set a manual ownership figure but also ticked a compliance source elsewhere? The source toggle decides which one is used — manual figures are ignored once you switch a category or profile to a records-based source.
Double-counting a lease that already includes fuel or servicing? Use Already Included in Ownership Cost on the per-machine override to suppress those components rather than editing the category rate for one machine.
Looking for prestart checklist setup? That's the Checklist Assignments tab on a category's full edit page in Asset Configuration, not this page — Manage categories is the shortcut there.