Tutorial — Recording a Cost (Step by Step)

What This Tool Is For

The complete walkthrough for entering a single cost correctly — the most important routine in the whole platform.

Step-by-Step Walkthrough

Step 1 — Open the cost entry form from the costs page.

Step 2 — Enter amount and date. Use the date the cost was incurred (when you received the goods/service), not the date you happened to type it in. This single habit keeps monthly reports honest.

Step 3 — Pick the category. OPEX for consumable running costs, CAPEX for multi-year purchases, Marketing for acquisition spend, Overhead for general indirect costs. If unsure, ask: "does this benefit more than one year?" (CAPEX) and "did this directly serve revenue delivery?" (likely a cost-of-sales OPEX item).

Step 4 — Link it. Choose the project, and the service whenever the cost can honestly be attributed to one. Service-level linkage is what powers per-service margins later — don't skip it out of haste.

Step 5 — Choose the payment path. Pay Now if cash leaves immediately (you'll select the bank account), Pay Later if you owe it (you'll indicate whether you hold an invoice).

Step 6 — State the source. Receipt, invoice number, or feed name. Attach the document if you have one.

Step 7 — Save and verify. The cost appears in the list; glance at it once — amount, category, project — before moving on.

Real-World Example

Scenario: The team receives a $900 monthly bill for an SMS service used for customer login codes. Correct entry: amount $900, date = the usage month, category OPEX, project Streaming Platform, service Video CDN (where the logins happen), Pay Later with invoice attached, source = the invoice number. Three months later, when someone asks "why is Video CDN's cost of sales rising?", this entry is findable, attributed, and documented.

Tips & Common Mistakes

• The two most common errors are wrong date (entry date instead of usage date) and missing service link. Both are cheap to do right and expensive to fix later.
• One real-world bill can be several cost entries if it covers several services — split it at entry time while you still remember the breakdown.
• Never enter a cost twice "to be safe." Duplicates are far harder to detect than omissions.

---

Everything described in this tutorial is a working feature of TupicFinance, the financial management platform of the Tupic ecosystem. The screens, workflows, and guardrails above behave exactly as written there — this guide doubles as the platform's user manual for this tool.