First Steps
You can read the licence panel, say which tier you are on, and know what a Free licence will not let you do.
The licence belongs to your account, not to a machine, and it travels with you when you sign in elsewhere. The Project Manager shows it in the bottom corner: which tier you are on, and when it renews.
| Tier | You can edit | | ---------------- | ------------------------------ | | **Free** | nothing — see below | | **Budget** | Budgeting | | **Cost Control** | Budgeting and Cost Control | | **Production** | all four modules | | **Trial** | all four, until the trial ends |
The tiers build on each other, so Cost Control includes everything Budget has.
**Every tier can open and read every module.** What the tier decides is what you may *change*. So a Budget licence still lets you look through a cash flow plan someone else built — you simply cannot edit it.
**These names stay in English** whatever language the rest of KOSMA is in. If your interface is German and the panel still reads *Cost Control*, nothing is wrong — the tier names are simply not translated.
**A Free licence can look, but not change anything** — and that includes projects you made yourself. It also cannot share, print or export, which are the two ways work leaves the app.
The case that catches people is a dataset a colleague has shared with you *with editing access*: the sharing is fine, the licence is what stops you. KOSMA says so when you try —
You are running on the free KOSMA license and have only viewing rights to this dataset.
So "why can I only view this?" is almost always a licence answer rather than a permissions one. Being given editing access to something does not by itself let you edit it.
**The Demo Project is fully editable on every tier, Free included, in all four modules.** It is there to be taken apart — change figures, add accounts, see what recalculates. Nothing you do in it affects your real work, and no licence stands in the way.
That means a Free licence can edit the demo budget but not its own. That looks odd written down, and it is deliberate: the demo is a sandbox everyone gets a fresh copy of.
On a trial the panel reads **Trial (N days left)**, and the renewal date shown is the day the trial ends — not a date you will be billed on.
When it runs out you keep your projects. What you lose is the ability to edit them — the licence behaves as Free from that point, which is the position described above. Buying a tier does not expire this way; only a trial does.
**A licence is for one person, so KOSMA runs on one machine at a time.** You can use it on a laptop and a workstation — just not signed in at both at once. Signing in on the second one signs the first one out.
There is no warning and no prompt. The earlier machine simply stops being signed in, so if KOSMA has returned you to the sign-in screen for no reason you can see, the usual explanation is that you signed in somewhere else. Signing back in here is all it takes, and doing so ends the other one.
**Nothing is lost by it.** Your budgets live on the machine they are used on, not in the licence — they are still there, exactly as you left them at your last save. Your projects follow the account, so both machines see the same list; what each one holds locally is the work you have actually opened there.
The practical rule is the ordinary one: **save before you walk away from a machine.** That is not about licences — KOSMA saves when you tell it to, and unsaved changes are unsaved changes wherever you are.
Not here. Upgrading happens on the KOSMA website — see [upgrade your licence](/kb/article/upgrade-your-licence).
**If your licence comes from a team, it is not yours to change.** A team licence is bought and managed by whoever administers the team, and every seat on it moves together. So if KOSMA has started telling you your licence does not cover editing and you did not change anything, the thing to check is the team's plan, with your team admin — not your own account. Buying a personal licence would not lift the same block, because the seat you work under is the team's.
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