Top > Getting Started > Cost events
A cost event enables you to track financial expenses as they occur. Cost events can be associated with a hardware asset, an agreement or a milestone of an agreement. There are several types of cost events available depending on the expense and the association, such as repair, renewal, upgrade, true-up, and penalty costs. An Administrator can also change the types of events that are available in your organization from the Library workspace > Lists view. Ensure that you change the right list, since hardware assets and agreements have different types of cost events; there is one list entitled Cost Events - Hardware Assets and one called Cost Events - Agreements.
All cost events entered for a given asset are added together to give you a total cost of all expenses. Knowing the cost of the expenses associated with a particular asset can help you determine its true cost of ownership. The Hardware Asset Details report contains a summary of an asset’s cost events.
Any type of agreement can have a cost event associated with it. If you have added milestones to an agreement, the milestone can be associated with a cost event through its Related Items tab. Associating cost events with agreements and milestones can provide you with the actual cost of doing business with a particular vendor, or the actual cost of a software title.
To create a cost event from an asset or an agreement:
Find the asset or agreement and open it.
Go to the Financial tab.
In the Cost Events area, click Create. The New Cost Event form opens.
Complete as many fields on the form as possible, such as the following:
• Add an organization to designate who is responsible for the cost.
• Add a cost center to designate where the financial responsibility lies.
• Add a location to show where the cost originates from.
• Add a user to show who the cost is associated with.
• Add a change request to associate the cost with a specific request.
• Add an incident to associate the cost event with a specific incident.
Click OK to save the cost event.
To associate a cost event with a milestone:
Open any agreement and go to the Financial tab.
Open the cost event.
Go to the Related Items tab and click Add. The Milestone selection form opens.
Choose a milestone and click OK. The milestone and cost event are now associated with each other. You may also view the cost events associated with the milestone from the Milestone form.