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Operational expenses

Track the studio's own recurring costs, rent, insurance, software, as versioned amounts that update cleanly when a price changes.

What you'll achieve

Set up a recurring overhead cost once and keep its amount accurate over time as a dated version, not an overwrite.

You'll end up with: The studio's recurring overhead tracked as named, amount, and recurrence, with every change to that amount preserved as its own dated version.

A project expense happens once and belongs to a job. Rent doesn't. Insurance doesn't. Your design software subscription doesn't. These are costs the studio pays every month whether or not a single project is running, and none of them belong on a project's books. Operational Expenses is where they live instead: named once, priced once, and carried forward automatically until the price actually changes.

Costs that repeat get a recurrence, not a re-entry

The mental shift from recording a project expense is small but important. A project expense is a single event, such as an invoice or one-off charge that arrived. An operational expense is a standing commitment: an amount, and how often it repeats. Set Studio Rent up once as three thousand two hundred dollars every month, and Monument keeps counting it every month from then on, no re-entering, no remembering.

That's why operational expenses live under Expenses, on their own Operational tab, next to Claims. They're gated on the same financial access as rates and staff cost, so only admins and finance roles see the tab; most staff won't, and that's by design, since this is firm-wide financial data, not project data.

Set up a recurring cost

Northlight Architects pays three thousand two hundred dollars a month for its studio. Here's the full capture.

1
Open Expenses and click Operational to switch to the Operational tab.
2
Click Add Operational Expense.
3
Name it Studio Rent, so it reads clearly in the list later.
4
Enter the Amount per occurrence, three thousand two hundred dollars, what the landlord charges each time.
5
Recurring expense is already switched on, repeating every one month, exactly how rent works.
6
Effective From is already set to today, so the cost starts counting straight away.
7
Click Create Operational Expense, and Studio Rent joins the list.

Studio Rent now shows in the list at three thousand two hundred dollars per month. Open it and its detail panel shows the same figure, the recurrence, and how far back it's been effective from. Scroll down to Monthly Totals and every month ahead already carries the cost forward, a twelve-month window you can page backward and forward through.

Amount per occurrence, not per month

The field is called Amount per occurrence on purpose. Set the recurrence to every two weeks instead of every month, and the same field means the fortnightly charge, not a monthly one. The occurrence and the recurrence are two separate settings so either can change without touching the other.

Change the amount without losing the old one

Rent goes up. Insurance renews higher. When that happens, don't edit the figure that's already there, click New Version instead. A new version keeps the old amount on record as history, dated, with a reason, rather than quietly overwriting it. That matters because your Monthly Totals for past months should keep showing what you actually paid then, not what you pay now.

1
Open Studio Rent, then click New Version.
2
Type the new amount, three thousand five hundred, this year's increase.
3
Set Effective From to the date the new amount actually starts, the first of next month rather than today, so last month's totals stay untouched.
4
Add a reason, Landlord increased rent, so anyone checking later knows why it changed.
5
Click Create Version, and the old amount becomes a dated version in the past.

Click Show beside Version History and the whole timeline is there: the new amount marked Current, the old one below it with its own effective range and the reason it changed. Scroll down to Monthly Totals and the split shows exactly where it should, this month still carries the old rent, and the month the new version takes effect carries the increase, automatically, with nothing to recalculate by hand.

Backdating is blocked on purpose

A new version's Effective From has to fall after the current version's, so you can't accidentally date an increase into the past and rewrite what already happened. If a change genuinely took effect earlier, correct it going forward from today and note the real date in the change reason instead.

Bringing these across from CoinCraft

If you're migrating from CoinCraft, operational expenses come across automatically during import. Each one keeps its name, its amount, and its recurrence, and successive price changes for the same cost land as versions here, not as separate entries. CoinCraft's cost centres arrive as tags, so you can still filter and search by the grouping you're used to, even though Monument doesn't have a separate cost centre field.

Troubleshooting

New Version won't accept today's date. Effective From has to be strictly after the current version's own Effective From. If the current version already starts today, the next one has to start tomorrow or later.
This month's total looks wrong after a change. Check the new version's Effective From. Monthly Totals splits at that exact date, so a change dated for next month correctly leaves this month showing the old amount.
The Operational tab isn't there. It only shows for admins and finance roles. Ask whoever manages permissions to confirm your financial access if you expect to see it.

Where this fits next

Operational expenses cover what the studio pays to exist. For what a project pays for, see Recording expenses. The versioning pattern here, a shell that never changes plus dated versions that do, is the same one behind Rates and rate history, so the New Version habit transfers directly.