Cost Types

Define and manage Cost Types on your Rate Card. Set the default Supplier, pricing structure, cost price, and markup so every Cost added to a Job is priced correctly from the start.

A Cost Type is the template for anything your agency buys in rather than produces with its own hours. Print, promo items, stock imagery, hosting, outsourced copywriting, a photographer's day rate, media placement.

Where Task Types price your own labour, Cost Types price third-party spend. Setting them up properly means the buy price, the Supplier, and the markup are already right every time someone adds that Cost to a Job, rather than being looked up or guessed at.

Costs are not tied to time tracking. A Cost consumes money rather than hours, which is why it carries a Supplier and a markup instead of a rate and an estimate.

Creating a Cost Type

1

Click + New Cost Type. The Add Cost Type slider opens, with the Active toggle on by default.

2

Enter a Cost type name that describes what is being bought, for example Stock Images, Litho Printing, or Outsourced Copywriting.

3

Choose the Assign to specific department this Cost belongs to. See Departments.

4

Select the Supplier you normally buy this from. If they do not exist yet, click + Add Supplier to create one without leaving the slider. See Suppliers.

5

Check the Cost Currency. This is inherited from the Supplier and shows the currency they invoice you in.

6

Select the Pricing structure, either Per Unit or Per Hour.

7

Enter the Cost price, what the Supplier charges you, and set the Billable toggle.

8

Select the Markup method, either Percentage or Fixed Price, then enter the Markup. The Resell amount calculates automatically.

9

Write a Default description. This carries onto the Job and appears on Estimates and Invoices, so write it for the client as well as the team.

10

Click SAVE.

A stock image licence bought from a supplier at $5.00 with a Percentage markup of 100% gives a Resell amount of $10.00.

The resell figure updates live as you change the cost price or the markup, so you can see what the client will pay before you save.

The Supplier sets the currency

The Supplier attached to a Cost Type determines the Cost Currency, because that is the currency they actually invoice you in. A hosting provider billing in USD gives that Cost Type a USD cost price, regardless of what currency your Jobs run in.

When the Cost is added to a Job running in a different currency, Agencydesk converts the unit cost and states plainly beneath the figures that a conversion has taken place.

Great for agencies buying internationally. Stock libraries, hosting, licensing, and offshore production are usually priced in USD or EUR while the client is billed in local currency. Holding the cost in the Supplier's currency keeps your true buy price accurate instead of frozen at whatever the exchange rate happened to be the day someone set it up.

Pricing structures

• Per Unit — priced per item.

• Per Hour — priced per hour.

Mechanically these behave the same way, since an hour is just a unit. The difference is how the line presents on client-facing documents. A Cost priced Per Hour shows its unit price with /hr on Estimates and Invoices, so outsourced copywriting quoted at $75 an hour reads as $75.00/hr rather than a bare $75.00.

Match it to how the supplier quoted you and how the client expects to read it. A print run is Per Unit. A freelance developer or an outsourced copywriter is usually Per Hour, and showing the rate makes the line easier to defend when a client asks how the number was reached.

Markup methods

• Percentage — the uplift is a percentage of the cost price, so the margin holds as the cost moves.

• Fixed Price — the uplift is a set amount per unit, in the same currency.

Percentage suits categories where supplier pricing varies job to job, since you keep the same margin whatever the quote comes in at. Fixed Price suits a standard handling fee that should not balloon on a large purchase.

On a Job, a Cost using Percentage markup gains a Markup / Margin toggle, which expresses the same uplift either way. Markup is (price − cost) / cost, margin is (price − cost) / price. A Fixed Price markup has no toggle, since it is an amount rather than a ratio.

Billable

The Billable toggle sets whether this Cost is charged to the client by default.

• Billable on — the Cost appears on Estimates and Invoices.

• Billable off — the Cost is recorded against the Job for profitability but never reaches a client document.

Billable and markup are separate decisions, and between them they cover the three ways agencies use Costs: absorbed expenses (not billable), billed expenses (billable at cost, no markup), and procurement (billable with a markup).

Non-billable is not the same as zero markup. A billable Cost with no markup still shows on the Invoice at cost. A non-billable Cost never appears on a client document at all.

Defaults, not locks

Everything on a Cost Type is a starting point. When the Cost is added to a Job, the Supplier, cost price, markup, description, and Billable state can all be adjusted on that Job without changing the Cost Type itself.

Great for competitive quoting. Brief three printers on the same campaign, then set the winning one as the Supplier on that Job's Cost. The Cost Type keeps your usual supplier as the default for next time.

Deactivating a Cost Type

The Active toggle controls whether a Cost Type appears in the dropdown when someone adds a Cost to a Job. Switching it off retires the Cost Type from new work while leaving every existing Cost that used it untouched.

This is the right move for a supplier you no longer use or a service you have stopped reselling, since it keeps historical Jobs and their Purchase Orders intact and reportable.