Adding costs and value entries

Costs and value entries are what every ROI figure in Roiva adds up. You can record them by hand, import a spreadsheet, or let connected systems and value formulas record them for you.

Recording a cost

An initiative's costs are what you pay to run it: its tool's seats or usage, vendor fees, implementation, consulting, your own team's time. Leave out spend that serves other work, even when it's on the same vendor's bill. For an AI coding assistant rollout, say, the assistant's seats for the engineers in the rollout count, and the same provider's API usage for a product feature doesn't.

Every template names what typically counts for its kind of initiative and what usually stays out. They're guidance, not rules: an initiative's costs are whatever it actually pays to run. The coding assistant, for one, leaves out the GitHub plan the assistant runs on, which you'd pay for anyway. You'll find the two lists on the template's page, on the Costs tab, in the cost form and on the Setup tab. An initiative that didn't start from a template gets the general version.

Open the initiative's Costs tab and choose Add costs → Record a cost:

Cost type — software, tokens, implementation, infrastructure, data licensing, consulting, internal labor or maintenance
Cost category — CapEx or OpEx. Implementation defaults to CapEx and everything else to OpEx.
Amount and the period it covers, which is required: monthly reports, the board brief and a month's close all read it. An OpEx cost whose period spans several months, such as a year's license paid up front, is recorded as one entry a month, each its share of the amount by days, so each quarter carries the months it paid for. A CapEx cost stays in its month. An amount you type is in US dollars. A cost synced from another system keeps its own currency, shows its dollars beneath it, and counts in totals at the European Central Bank's average rate over its period (or the latest rate, marked provisional, until that period's rates are published). A cost can't be negative; record a credit by lowering the cost it reduces.
Optional: a source reference (an invoice or PO number), notes, and This is an estimate

The Costs tab has two more views:

Recurring Costs — a schedule (a monthly subscription, say) that records a cost entry each period for you.
Vendors — which vendors' bills book to this initiative from a connected finance system (QuickBooks, Xero, NetSuite or American Express statements), how each vendor is matched, and what share of each bill counts.

A cost counts toward ROI as soon as it's saved, so changing or deleting one is recorded in the audit log with what it was. No cost can be recorded, changed or deleted in a locked accounting period until someone reopens it (see Allocation rules and accounting periods).

Logging value

Open the Value Entries tab and choose Add value → Log value:

Entry type — revenue gain, cost savings or cost avoidance, which are cash; freed capacity; or capacity realized as cash (see below). A cost isn't value: record it on the Costs tab, where ROI nets it against value. A revenue gain is the margin on the added revenue, not the revenue itself: what's left after the costs that grow with a sale. Formulas and synced deals, invoices and payments book it that way, so enter yours the same way. Hours your team got back, at whatever rate, are freed capacity, not a cost saving: payroll is the same afterwards
Amount, in US dollars, and period. A period spanning several months is saved as one draft a month, each its share of the amount by days, because value counts in the months it was earned. Every month has to have ended: record the months that have, and the rest as each one ends.
Optional: notes, a confidence score (0–100) and This is an estimate
Optional: Supporting documents — check any of the initiative's documents the figure rests on, or add a link to the spreadsheet, invoice or report. A link you add is saved to the initiative's documents as well.

An entry you log is saved as a draft.

Supporting documents are what an approver opens. A formula's entry shows the inputs it was calculated from, and a synced entry the records it came from. An entry you typed shows the documents it cites, or None cited. Citing is optional, but an approver sees which it is. Changing an approved entry's documents sends it back for approval, like any other change. An SOW or contract you cite is listed only for the people who can open it; everyone else sees that one is there.

Notes are where you say why. The amount says what the figure is; the note says what moved it, and it's the first thing an approver reads. It matters most on a cost saving, where the question is always the same one: did your team earn this, or did a vendor hand it to you? Routing simple requests to a smaller model is your saving. A provider cutting its list price is not, even though both show up as the cost falling. Say which it was.

Where the saving is a drop in what your AI spend buys, and Roiva can read your provider's bill, it works that split out for you and shows it on the entry — see How value is calculated. Everywhere else, the note is the record.

Recording capacity realized as cash

Freed capacity is reported beside cash value and is in no ROI, because the hours are freed but payroll is the same. It becomes cash when something the books can see changes: a hire that was planned and not made, overtime, contractor or outsourcing spend that fell, or growth absorbed without adding staff. Roiva can't see that on its own, so a person records it:

On the initiative's Value Entries tab, choose Add value → Log value and pick Capacity realized as cash as the entry type. Once an initiative has approved freed capacity, Record capacity realized as cash on its page under ROI → Initiatives, and on its Formula Trace, opens the same form.
Enter one calendar month, and the amount of that month's freed capacity that became cash.
Say in the notes what changed.
Cite the document that shows it under Supporting documents: a canceled requisition, a contract not renewed, an overtime report, or a vendor's invoices before and after. It can be saved as a draft without one, but not submitted.

For a change that holds month after month, like a contract not renewed, Repeat monthly through records one entry for each month with the same amount, notes and documents.

An approver can approve it only up to the initiative's freed capacity approved for that month, less what other realizations already took. Once approved, it counts in cash value and comes out of freed capacity, so the dollar is counted once. While it stands, the freed capacity it drew on stays approved: that month's capacity entries can't be edited, sent back or deleted if what's left would be less than what was realized. Send the realization back for review first. "We would have hired someone" on its own stays capacity: an avoided hire needs a decision with a date on it. A bill that fell by more than the freed hours explain is an ordinary cost saving, on its own evidence.

Formulas, syncs, imports and document extraction never record it. It's always a person's call, with the evidence attached.

Most value doesn't need typing in: an initiative's value formulas calculate entries from its readings and assumptions, and value integrations (Zendesk, HubSpot, Stripe…) book what they sync.

Value needs approving

Only approved value is reported: cash counts toward ROI, and freed capacity is reported beside it. Entries a formula or an integration calculates go straight to approvers. A draft, or an entry an approver disputed, goes to them when you choose Submit for review. Approvers Approve or Dispute it from their Inbox. Only an entry waiting for approval can be disputed. See Approving value and initiatives.

Anyone can edit a draft or an entry waiting for review. An approved entry is different: changing, deleting or sending it back takes someone who could approve it. Saving any change sends it back for approval, and so does Send Back for Review on the entry, which leaves everything alone and asks for a reason. In a locked month an approved entry can't change at all until the month is reopened, and its page says so.

Importing a spreadsheet

Imports cover every initiative at once. Open Entries → Cost Entries (or Value Entries) and choose Import:

Download Template and fill it in. Each row names its initiative in initiative_name (or initiative_id), and the upload page lists the required and optional columns.
Upload the file. It's processed in the background, and you get a notification when it's done.
The import's page lists how many rows came in and why any were skipped. Valid rows are saved even when others fail, so fix the skipped rows and import just those.

A value entry row's status can be draft (the default), reviewed (sent to approvers) or approved, which takes someone who could approve the entry and a month that isn't locked. Rows with any other status are skipped.

An initiative's own tabs offer the same import for just that initiative: Import a spreadsheet under Add costs on its Costs tab, and under Add value on its Value Entries tab. Imported costs take CapEx or OpEx from their type. Baselines and readings import from Entries → Metric Entries → Import.

Planned figures

Entries are what actually happened. What you planned to spend and gain lives on the initiative itself: its financial expectations (planned CapEx and OpEx, planned cash value as cost savings and revenue uplift per period, planned freed capacity per period, and the time horizon). Planned freed capacity sits beside the cash plan, and no planned ROI includes it. Enter the revenue uplift as your business case states it, top line. It counts toward planned cash value at your contribution margin, the same way booked revenue does, so until a margin is set, for the account under Method → Assumptions or for the initiative on its Setup tab, it counts as nothing. Set them with Edit in the initiative's … menu, or Edit Targets on its page under ROI → Initiatives. The ROI dashboard sets the two side by side.

Vendors, shares and recurring costs — vendors, shares and schedules in depth