Overhead

Overhead is where you tell Subgrade about the fixed costs of running the business — rent, insurance, software, admin wages — that don't belong to any one job. Subgrade spreads each entry into a daily dollar figure and posts it to the budget ledger automatically.

Who can use it — You need "view budget tracking" permission to open the page and see categories and entries. Creating, editing, or deleting a category or entry needs "manage overhead settings" on top of that — so some finance users may be able to view overhead but not change it. See Roles & Permissions.

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

How to use it

The page has three tabs: Categories, Entries, and Cost Codes.

• Set up your Categories first (a handful of sensible defaults are seeded for every workspace — see Tips below).
• Then add Entries against those categories with an amount and a period.
• Cost Codes is a shared list used to tag costs across the whole ledger (labour, assets, and overhead) — it isn't specific to overhead, but it lives on this page for convenience.

Overhead here is always workspace-wide — there's no option to charge an overhead entry to a single project. It's a company-level cost, not a job cost.

Categories

Categories group related costs (for example "Office / Yard Rent" or "Insurance"). Each has:

• Name — free text.
• Code — a short unique code, automatically upper-cased (e.g. OFFICE_RENT). It must be unique within your workspace.
• Active — toggle off to retire a category. Inactive categories are hidden from the entry form and are excluded from the daily overhead calculation, even if an entry against them still has an open date range.

Entries

An entry is a specific cost against a category. Each has:

• Label — a description (e.g. "Head office lease").
• Category — one of your active categories.
• Period Type — Daily, Weekly, Monthly, Annual, or One Off.
• Net Amount — entered in the smallest currency unit (cents), e.g. 250000 = $2,500.00.
• Currency, Tax Rate (%), and Tax Inclusive — if the amount you entered includes tax, tick Tax Inclusive and set the rate so Subgrade can back out the net cost used for posting.
• Effective From / Effective To — the date range the entry applies. One Off entries have no "Effective To" — they only count once, on the Effective From date. All other period types run from Effective From onward, indefinitely if you leave Effective To blank.
• Notes — optional free text.

Subgrade amortises recurring entries into a daily amount before posting: a Weekly entry is divided by 7, Monthly and Annual entries are divided by your workspace's month/year divisor (calendar days or working days, depending on your payroll settings). Daily and One Off entries post at face value on the day(s) they apply.

You can't create two entries for the same category with overlapping effective date ranges — Subgrade blocks the save with "This effective date range overlaps an existing entry for the selected category." One-off entries are exempt from this check.

How overhead reaches the budget

Every day, Subgrade adds up the daily-amortised amount of every active entry that applies to that date and posts a single company-wide Overhead row to the ledger (cost code OH-COMPANY), rather than splitting it across projects. Editing, adding, deleting, or deactivating a category or entry automatically triggers a recalculation of the affected date range in the background — you don't need to re-run anything by hand.

This posted total is what you see as Fixed Overhead on Budget Overview, which also tracks whether the daily overhead posting is up to date and flags any failed recalculation batches. From there, Manage Overhead Entries and Manage Overhead Categories links jump straight back to this page.

On Budget Ledger, filter Entry Type to Overhead to see these posted rows — they show no project (overhead isn't job-costed) and carry the OH-COMPANY cost code.

Connected pages

• Budget Overview — shows the posted Fixed Overhead total and posting health; links back here to manage entries and categories.
• Budget Ledger — where posted overhead rows land; filter by Entry Type: Overhead.
• Projects — project costs are separate from overhead; overhead is never attributed to a specific project.

Tips & common mistakes

• New workspaces start with default categories — Office/Yard Rent, Utilities, Insurance, Software & Subscriptions, Admin Wages, Finance Costs, Marketing, Workers Comp Premium, and Other. Rename or deactivate them rather than deleting, since a code still referenced by an entry can't be removed.
• Entering the amount wrong? The Net Amount field takes minor units (cents), not dollars — $2,500.00 is 250000.
• A category won't appear when adding an entry — check it's still Active; inactive categories drop out of the picker and out of the daily calculation.
• Overlap error on save — you already have an entry covering that date range for the category. Adjust the existing entry's Effective To instead of creating a duplicate.
• One Off entries not showing on Budget Overview for other days — that's expected; a one-off only posts once, on its Effective From date.