Cost Control
You can set an account's Forecast to what is booked in it, and you know when that helps and what stays unchanged.
**Consolidate** sets the **Forecast** of an account to what is booked in it: the sum of its paid and expected cost items. **Free** then shows 0.00. Consolidate an account when you expect no more cost in it. **Forecast** and **Variance** then show what the account will cost in the end. You can consolidate an account or a markup, including the accounts that collect fringes, supplements, extra costs and taxes.
In the cost control grid, click the row of the account or markup. KOSMA opens the **Cost Items** and **Recalculation** tabs directly under that row. Click  **Consolidate**. While the account is consolidated, the button stays pressed. To switch it off, click **Consolidate** again. When you point at the button, KOSMA shows:
**Message:** Sets the prediction value equal to the sum of expected and paid cost items. The remainder is set to 0. Use this when no more costs are expected in this account.
Without Consolidate, **Forecast** is the higher of two figures: the sum of the account's cost items, or the account's own forecast. The account's own forecast is the forecast you typed or, if there is none, the total that KOSMA calculates in **Recalculation**. With Consolidate on, **Forecast** is the sum of the cost items. **Budget**, **Paid** and **Expected** stay the same. **Variance** (Budget minus Forecast) and **Free** (Forecast minus Paid minus Expected) follow the new Forecast.
An example from the cost control set of the demo project: account 3.03 Production Manager has a budget of 38,500.00 and a typed forecast of 39,100.00. Its cost items are 30,100.00 paid and 5,000.00 expected.
| | Budget | Forecast | Variance | Paid | Expected | Free | | --------------- | --------- | --------- | -------- | --------- | -------- | -------- | | Consolidate off | 38,500.00 | 39,100.00 | −600.00 | 30,100.00 | 5,000.00 | 4,000.00 | | Consolidate on | 38,500.00 | 35,100.00 | 3,400.00 | 30,100.00 | 5,000.00 | 0.00 |
While Consolidate is on, **Forecast** leaves out the part of the account's own forecast that is not booked yet. If more cost is still coming, **Forecast** is then lower than what the account will cost.
**Consolidate** is greyed out when the account has no cost items, or when its cost items already reach its own forecast. Consolidating would then change nothing. An example from the demo project: account 3.08 Gaffer has 19,800.00 booked, more than its typed forecast of 19,100.00.
For this test, KOSMA adds up the cost items in their own currencies, without converting them. An account can have cost items in a currency other than the default currency of the set. **Consolidate** can then be greyed out although it would change **Forecast**, or clickable although it changes nothing.
You can switch **Consolidate** on in every set you can open, also with the **Budget** or **Free** licence or in a set shared with you read-only, because it changes no data.
Consolidate does not change any data in the set. The forecast you typed and the subaccounts in **Recalculation** stay as they are. When you switch Consolidate off, **Forecast** shows the previous figure again. KOSMA does not save the **Consolidate** setting with the project.
When you import cost items from your accounting software, the option **Consolidate account predictions** consolidates every account that receives a line from that import. This includes the account **Unmapped**, where KOSMA puts lines without a matching account. The other accounts of the set and the markups stay as they are. If more cost is still coming on one of the consolidated accounts, click **Consolidate** on that account to switch it off. See [consolidate on import](/kb/article/consolidate-on-import).
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