Cost Management

Align prices work from your labour categories. An AI estimate gives an entry a low, medium and high cost. An admin or manager, or a role your commitment rules allow, commits a figure inside that range. The committed cost then goes through the stages of the project's cost approval: admin, then manager, then the client, unless the project's template says otherwise. Approved time, priced at your cost rates, is what Align measures margins against.

Who sees costs

Area	Who
Management → Cost (cost pages for projects, releases and entries)	Admins, managers and clients, and any staff role your Cost Commitment Rules allow to commit costs (on its own projects)
Settings → Cost Settings	Admins
Management → Profitability	Admins and managers
Invoices	Admins and managers

Developers, testers, tech leads, product owners and DevOps engineers can work on a project without seeing its costs.

Labour categories and rates

Admins set up rates in Settings → Cost Settings.

Labor Categories

Each labour category has a Bill Rate, what the client is billed per hour, and an optional Cost Rate, what that labour costs you. Without cost rates, project margins stay hidden. When categories are missing cost rates, the card says how many.

To add one, click Add Category and fill in:

Field	Notes
Name	Required. For example "Senior Developer".
Short Code	Required. For example SR-DEV.
Description	Optional.
Bill Rate	Required, per hour.
Cost Rate	Optional, per hour.
Currency	USD, EUR or GBP. Bill and cost rates share it.
Effective Start / Effective End	A category prices only work dated inside this period. Leave the end empty for "until further notice".

Click Create. The pencil edits a category; the power icon deactivates it. A deactivated category is not used for role mappings or for the default rate.

Changing a rate doesn't reprice time already logged: Align keeps the rates that applied when the time was logged.

Export CSV downloads your categories, Download Template gives you a blank file, and Upload CSV imports one. The import shows each row as a create, update, skip or error before you click Confirm Import; a file with errors can't be imported.

Starting rate card

A workspace with no labour categories is offered Start from a standard rate card. Create 31 categories adds categories across eight disciplines (Engineering; Architecture & specialist; Platform & reliability; Data; Quality; Design & research; Product & delivery; Business & documentation), each with a starting bill rate.

• The bill rates are a starting point, not a price list. On a project that bills from logged time they are what the client is invoiced, so replace them with yours first.
• The cost rates are left blank. Add your own; margins stay hidden until you do.

The offer disappears once the workspace has a category. You can edit or deactivate every category it creates.

Role Billing Rates

Role Billing Rates maps each role (Developer, Tech Lead, Product Owner, DevOps Engineer, Manager, Admin) to a labour category, so time is priced at that category's rate. A role left on Use default (lowest rate) uses the active category with the lowest bill rate.

A person's labour category on one project

A person can have their own labour category on a project. It is set when an admin or manager approves them on the project's Approvals page (in the project's navigation) with Approve & deploy, choosing from Assign labor category…. People appear there when a linked Illumera project is activated. It can also be set through the API.

Which rate prices an hour

When someone logs time, Align uses the first of these that applies:

1. Their labour category on that project.
2. Their role's category in Role Billing Rates.
3. The active category with the lowest bill rate.

The category must be in effect on the work date. If none applies, the time is recorded without a rate. See Time Tracking.

Valuing time logged before cost rates existed

Time logged while its labour category had no cost rate is uncosted, and is left out of margins. Once that category has a cost rate, the Labor Categories card offers to value it: it says how many time entries can be valued and shows Value N entries.

Each entry is valued at the cost rate in effect on the day the work was done. Time that already carries a cost is never changed. The card also says what will stay uncosted: entries with no labour category, entries whose category still has no cost rate, and entries dated outside their category's effective period.

Estimation Defaults and Cost Commitment Rules

Estimation Defaults sets an estimate's low and high from its medium. The low is the medium adjusted by the low percentage, and the high by the high percentage. With −20% and +30%, a medium of 10,000 gives a low of 8,000 and a high of 13,000. Every AI estimate uses them, for one entry or a whole project. A workspace that hasn't saved its own gets −20% and +30%. The low percentage is between −100% and 0, and the high between 0 and 1000%.

Cost Commitment Rules sets:

• Who can commit entry costs? Admins and managers always can. A staff role you add can commit entry costs on its own projects, and can see the cost pages to do so. Committing isn't submitting or approving: those stay with the approval stages.
• Who can commit release costs? The same, for a release's own committed cost (see A release's committed cost).
• Committed costs visible to clients. Off, clients don't see figures derived from committed costs, such as a release's budget risk.
• Lock after release approval. On (the default), once a release's approval is Approved, the committed costs of its entries, and the release's own, can't change or be reopened. Turn it off to allow changes after approval.

Cost Settings Audit Log

Cost Settings Audit Log lists recent changes to cost settings: labour categories created, updated, deactivated or imported, the starting rate card, valued time, estimation defaults and commitment rules. Each row shows what changed, the action and the date.

Settings → Cost Settings: Labor Categories, Estimation Defaults, Cost Commitment Rules, Role Billing Rates and the Cost Settings Audit Log.

Finding costs

Management → Cost opens Enterprise Cost Overview: the low, medium and high totals across your projects, the committed total, and your active projects. Open a project for its entries grouped by release, each with its medium estimate and committed cost. Open an entry for its cost page.

A release's page shows its Release Cost Range and its Release commitment; click an entry's ID there for its cost page. See Releases.

Estimating costs

One entry

On an entry's cost page, an admin or manager clicks Generate AI Estimate. Align reads the entry and estimates hours per labour category at low, medium and high, then prices them at each category's bill rate. The page shows the Estimated Cost Range (LOW, MEDIUM, HIGH) and AI Estimated Effort by Role.

The workspace needs at least one active labour category. Recalculate replaces the range; it doesn't change the committed cost.

An entry's cost page: the estimated range, the commitment slider and the cost approval status.

A whole project

On a project's cost page, the AI Cost Estimation card estimates every entry in the project. Click Start Cost Estimation; the card shows progress, and View Results opens the results when it finishes. Admins and managers see this card.

Committing a cost

Admins and managers, and any role your commitment rules allow, commit an entry's cost on its cost page:

1. Drag the Adjust Cost Commitment slider to a figure between the low and high estimates.
2. Click Commit Entry Cost.

Changing a cost that is already committed asks for a Reason for change.

A release's committed cost

A release can have a committed cost of its own: the figure agreed for the release as a whole. It sits beside Committed Release Cost, the sum of its entries' commitments, and doesn't replace it. It's on the release's page, under Release commitment.

1. Click Commit release cost (or Change commitment). Admins, managers and the roles in Who can commit release costs? see it.
2. Enter an amount between the release's low and high estimates, the sums of its entries' estimates. A release whose entries have no estimate has no range to commit within.
3. Changing an existing commitment asks for a reason. An admin or manager can tick Submit for approval to send it straight on.

It goes through the same approval as an entry's cost (below). A new amount starts a new round: earlier sign-offs don't carry over. Every change is recorded in the workspace's audit log.

Cost approval

A committed cost is approved in stages, in order. The stages come from the project's cost approval template (see Approvals). The default is three stages:

Stage	Who approves	Status while waiting
Admin	An admin	Pending Admin Review
Manager	A manager or admin	Pending Manager Review
Client	The project's client	Awaiting Your Approval (to the client)

A template can change the order and number of stages, and a stage can name the one person who approves it. The stages are fixed when the cost is submitted, so editing the template changes only costs submitted afterwards. When the last stage approves, the cost is Approved and locked. While a cost waits, its cost page shows which step it's at, for example Step 2 of 3: Manager Cost Review.

Starting approval. An admin or manager clicks Submit for Approval on the entry's cost page. A draft or rejected cost can be submitted. Max can also commit a cost and submit it, where Max is enabled for your workspace.

Approving.

• Admins and managers: on the project's cost page, the Batch Approval card shows how many entries are waiting at your stage. Approve All and then Confirm Approval approves all of them.
• The person at a cost's current stage: Approve Cost or Reject Cost on the entry's cost page. Rejecting asks for a reason; submitting it again starts from the first stage.
• Clients: Approve All on the project's cost page. A client can also approve or decline a quote in the client portal; declining asks for a reason.

Changing an approved cost. An admin or manager clicks Reopen to Change and gives a reason. The approval is withdrawn, the cost returns to draft, and the new amount goes through approval again. While Lock after release approval is on, a cost in an approved release can't be reopened.

Cost approvals waiting at your stage are listed in My Approvals.

Invoices

Admins and managers open Invoices from the Cost page. A draft invoice can be changed with Edit Draft and sent with Send Invoice.

When a release is set to Released on a project that creates invoices automatically, Align generates a draft invoice for it. See Releases.

Profitability and margin

Management → Profitability shows what each project earned against what it cost to deliver.

Figure	What it is
Revenue	Invoiced, not voided.
Cost	Approved hours at your cost rates, where known.
Billable hours	Billable hours out of all approved time.
Projects	How many projects are in view, and how many can't state a margin.

By project lists revenue, cost, margin and time per project. Align withholds a project's margin, and shows Not enough data with the reason, when:

• it has no approved time yet;
• its time has no cost rates;
• fewer than 80% of its approved hours have a cost rate;
• its revenue or cost is in more than one currency, or revenue and cost are in different currencies.

When approved time has no cost rate, the page says how many hours that is: they count as zero cost, so margins are best cases until you add cost rates.

Billable utilization shows billable and total hours By person, By project or By team, over the Last 30 days, Last 90 days, Last 180 days or Last year.