Cost Control
You can close an account's forecast down to what is actually booked, and you know when that is the right move.
**Consolidate sets the account's Forecast to Expected plus Paid, which drops Free to zero.** It is how you say: nothing further is expected here.
The product gives the worked example itself:
Account forecast = 100. A cost item with amount 60 is imported. Without consolidating, the forecast stays at 100, paid is 60, free is 40. With consolidating, the forecast drops to 60, paid is 60, free is 0.
The €40 of headroom disappears — which is right if nothing more will be spent on that account, and wrong if something will.
**Consolidate** in the Cost Items panel of the account.
The tooltip states the condition and it is worth taking literally: *Use this when no more costs are expected in this account.*
In practice that means:
- **a department has wrapped** and its final invoices are in; - **a one-off is settled** — a location fee, an insurance premium; - **the production is closing** and each account is being brought to its final figure.
Any account still spending. Consolidating mid-production replaces your judgement about what an account will cost with what has happened to be booked so far — which is always an understatement while work continues.
The symptom is a set that looks perfectly on budget until late invoices arrive and every account goes negative at once. Variance stops being an early warning, because the forecast is no longer a forecast.
Consolidating discards the forecast that was there. If you consolidate an account that was still running, you have to work out its forecast again and type it back.
Copying the set before a bulk consolidation is the cheap insurance — see [copy a cost control set](/kb/article/copy-a-cost-control-set).
The import can consolidate every account as it goes, which is the efficient way to close a period and the fastest way to flatten a whole set by accident — see [consolidate on import](/kb/article/consolidate-on-import).
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