Cost Control
You know which budgeting habits carry into cost control and which do not.
The two modules share a grid, a rail, a details panel and most of their vocabulary. This article is for the differences, so you stop looking for things that are deliberately absent.
A budget account is quantity × price, with fringes, extra costs and a DFFF calculation hanging off it. A cost control row is **six money columns** — a plan figure, what has been booked, what you forecast, and the differences.
The calculation still exists in the account, and you can still reach it: that is what the **Recalculation** tab is for, when you want to move a forecast by changing days or rate rather than typing a total — see [recalculate an account](/kb/article/recalculate-an-account).
Top-level rows in the cost control grid are **account groups**. Categories appear in the left rail and in the filter, not as rows.
Same as budgeting's grid, so if that already reads naturally to you, nothing changes here.
Only tracked accounts appear — see [which accounts appear in cost control](/kb/article/which-accounts-appear-in-cost-control).
Creating a set locks its budget. This is the one difference a reader meets before they read anything — see [how a cost control set relates to a budget](/kb/article/how-a-cost-control-set-relates-to-a-budget).
Accounts, groups, categories, companies, effects, tags, currencies, markups, variables, the timeline and the filter panel are all the budget's and behave as they do there. The toolbar's Timeline, Variables and Markups buttons open the budgeting surfaces you already know.
You are not learning a second product. You are looking at the same structure with a different question: not *what will this cost* but *what is it actually costing*.
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