Cost Control
You can read the rail's totals in the right order, and know the habits that stop a healthy-looking total from hiding a problem.
The left rail carries **Grand Totals** in the display currency — the same six figures as the grid, for the whole set. Under them, **Categories** breaks the same totals down by budget category.
This is the part of the module a producer actually opens. Everything else exists to make these six numbers true.
The rail carries the columns the grid carries — Budget, Forecast, Variance, Paid, Expected, Free. What each one is and where it comes from is set out once, in [read the six money columns](/kb/article/read-the-six-money-columns).
What the rail adds is the whole-set view, and an order to read it in. **Variance first** — it is the number that says whether the plan holds, and negative means over budget; see [understand a negative variance](/kb/article/understand-a-negative-variance).
**Read Paid against Budget.** That ratio is your burn: a third of the budget paid at the half-way point is a very different production from two thirds.
**Read Variance and Free together.** Variance says whether the plan holds; Free says how much of the forecast is still just a plan. A comfortable Variance sitting on a large Free late in the schedule is not comfortable — it is a forecast that has not been faced.
**Read the categories, not just the total.** A grand total near zero routinely hides a department €40,000 over against another €40,000 under. The rail's category breakdown is where that shows.
Because the budget is locked, the **Budget** total here is the same figure the budgeting module shows. There is no drift and no reconciliation step — if they look different, you are looking at two different budgets, or the display currency differs — see [switch the display currency](/kb/article/switch-the-display-currency).
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