If prices are what the world pays you, costs are what the world costs you — and the application keeps the two in separate rooms on purpose. The Costs page manages costs only; the Prices page (§6.7) manages prices only; neither form carries the other's field. The separation is a ruling, not an accident: the people who set selling prices and the people who guard margins are often different people, and a price form that quietly showed the cost would leak the one number the business most wants held — who may see costs at all is a permission, held separately from prices.
Costs live per branch, so this page needs a branch to show. A company created in the setup wizard is born with one (Head Office — see 0.2). If a company has no branch at all, the page says exactly that, and where to add the first one, instead of showing an empty grid.
For every product, in every branch, three costs are kept:
- Moving average — the system's running truth: the average cost of the stock actually received, folding each receipt in as §5.5 describes. It is computed, never typed; it values your stock and your cost of sales.
- Last-in — the cost on the most recent receipt: what this product cost you lately, before averaging smooths it. The early-warning cost — when last-in climbs away from the average, your next receipts will pull the average after it.
- Standard — your figure: the cost you budget and judge against, set by hand on this page, product by product or in bulk, with its changes kept in a history. The standard does not move when markets do — that stillness is its job. The variance reports (§6.10) measure the world against it.
Branch costs recalculate from the branches' own movements, so a branch that buys dearer carries its own average rather than inheriting another's. Costs are maintained here; what they are used for — valuing stock, costing sales, judging variances — happens in Inventory and Accounts, on these figures.
Changing a standard is a proposal, then an activation. Editing a standard cost on this page, rolling a BOM up (§6.9), using Propose Standards in bulk, or the system's nightly re-roll — none of these change the live standard. Each writes a proposed standard, shown in the Proposed column here, and the proposals collect on Products Management → Standard Cost Proposals, each with the revaluation it would cause: the on-hand quantity per branch and the value difference between the stock's current cost and the proposed standard. Nothing — not a standard, not a stock value, not the ledger — moves yet.
Activation is the deliberate act that applies them, behind
the activate standard-costs permission (company admins; it is
kept apart from editing costs on purpose). Activating, usually
at a period boundary:
- applies every pending proposal as the live standard, kept in the cost history as an activation;
- restates the affected stock balances to the new standards;
- posts one revaluation batch — the total value difference, stock accounts against your Inventory Revaluation account (6420) — permanent, like a realised restatement, never auto-reversed.
Activating twice in one period is allowed but warns: once per period is the discipline the big systems keep. One honest limit, stated on the activation screen itself: open work orders are not restated — they keep the standard frozen when they were released, so the change reaches them as manufacturing variance when they close; the screen names each affected order and the amount, so the consequence is a decision, not a surprise. Discarding a proposal is always available and changes nothing.