Real Estate Portfolio Management / Cost Administration / Cost Wizard

Cost Wizard Overview

From the Cost Wizard you can manage Recurring, Scheduled, or Actual Costs associated with leases, buildings, properties, or accounts. The Cost Wizard guides you through the process of recording detailed cost records for your real estate portfolio items.

If you are using the Archibus Enhanced Global Feature Set, see Working with the Cost Wizard When Using the Enhanced Global Feature Set.

The Cost Wizard includes three tabs, a drill-down selection list, and a Filter console that restricts the view to specific cost types and categories.

Use the drill-down selection list to locate a lease, building, property, or parcel to manage its associated costs. See Using Drill-Down Selection Lists. Or, search for accounts by Account Code to work with costs associated with accounts. When working with accounts, you do not work with parcels.
View details for the selected lease, building, property, or account in a pop-up window from any tab.
Use the Cost Wizard to manage three types of costs associated with the selected lease, building, property, or account:

From the Schedule tab, create new recurring costs, or schedule recurring costs to create scheduled costs (specific instances of the cost in its own record). Creating scheduled costs in this way reduces data entry for costs that occur on a regular basis. See Create and Schedule Recurring Costs.

From the Approve tab, review, edit, and approve Scheduled Costs so that they are Actual costs that you have verified. You can generate chargeback for approved costs and issue invoices for them if the cost is a receivable. From this tab, you can also add new Scheduled Costs, and quickly locate costs that are past due, as these costs are shown with a red background. See Approve Costs.

From the Review tab, view details for Approved Costs. See Review Costs.

Note: When generating reports, if you select to use more than one cost types (recurring costs, scheduled costs, and actual costs), the program ensures that it does not duplicate costs by using Scheduled or Actual Cost records over Recurring Cost records when both exist, and by using only Recurring Cost records with a Due Date that is after the most recently generated Scheduled or Actual Cost record.

Note: The Cost Wizard is also available is the Strategic Financial Analysis / Financial Analysis process so that you can review costs or add new costs while working with SFA.

Restricting Costs by Category and Type

After selecting an item in the Cost Wizard, by default, the wizard shows all costs associated with your selection. You can restrict your view by cost category and cost type. This restrictions enable you to show only the specific costs you want to work with. The available cost category selections include only categories whose 'Assigned To' field is either 'All' or matches the type of item you have selected (lease, building, property, or account). For example, if you are viewing costs for a lease, the Cost Category selection list shows only categories that have an 'Assigned To' value of 'All' or 'Lease'.

For more on Cost Categories and the chargeback definition selection (Assigned To - Rolls Up To - Prorates To field), see About Cost Categories.

Note: The restriction you set is applied to the costs shown in all tabs of the wizard.

Viewing portfolio item details: When you select a portfolio item in the drill-down list, you are able to view details for that item (Property, Parcel, Building, or Lease) by clicking the button at the top right of the screen. For example, when you select a parcel in the drilldown list, the Show Selected Parcel Details button appears so that you review parcel data.

The following is an image of the Cost Wizard with the Approve Costs tab showing and a parcel selected.

screen shot of the Cost Wizard - Approve tab

Viewing and recording tax expenses

To display only TAX costs, you filter the costs by Cost Type = ‘TAX,’ or choose the appropriate Cost Category for recording property taxes (that ‘TAX – PROPERTY TAX’). After entering the criteria and clicking Show, the wizard displays only the tax costs.

When creating a new tax cost transaction, you manually select the correct Cost Category that represents property taxes (for example,‘TAX – PROPERTY TAX’).

Tracking Total Cost of Occupancy

Operating Expenses are typically used for statistics concerning the Total Cost of Occupancy. The application uses Operating Expense costs to determine facility metrics such as Cost per Area, Cost per Employee, and Cost per Line of Business (LOB) … Business Units / Divisions / Departments.

Tracking Total Cost of Ownership

Operating Expenses plus Capital Expenses (asset costs, income, depreciation and amortizations) are typically used for determining the total cost of ownership (TCO). For TCO reporting, the application uses the Cost Category – Cost Type (cost_cat.cost_type) field values for Cost Grouping. For tracking Total Cost of Ownership, the application tracks and analyzes both Operating Expense and Capital Expense costs when looking to determine Facility Metrics such as, Cost per Area by Building, Cost per Employee by Building, and Cost per Line of Business (LOB) by Building … Business Units / Divisions / Departments.

Total Cost of Ownership = OpEx + CAPEX

For Total Cost of Ownership reporting, you should:

Assign Chart of Account group costs to Account Codes. For TCO reporting, the application groups costs by Account Codes.
Assign Archibus accounts to cost types. See Defining Cost Categories and Types.
Enter both Operating Expense and Capital Expense Costs (asset costs, income, depreciation and amortizations) by entering costs using the Cost Category – Cost Types that include both OPEX and CAPEX cost groups

Working with CAM and Non-CAM Costs (Landlords)

When using the Cost Wizard to enter costs, the cost administrator for the landlord can mark costs as CAM or Non-CAM. Additionally, this cost administrator can filter the Cost Wizard to show:

CAM costs only
NON-CAM costs only
All costs (CAM and NON-CAM)

The cost administrator for the landlord makes these selections from the CAM Charges - display options list found in the Filter console.

Bulk assigning costs as CAM or Non-CAM

If you are the Cost Administrator for the landlord, the Cost Wizard also includes an action button to bulk assign costs as CAM or Non-CAM.

To bulk assign / unassign costs as CAM / Non-CAM:

From the Cost Wizard, from the Schedule Costs, Approve Costs, or Review Costs tab, use the Filter console to locate the costs you want to assign or unassign as CAM. Use the CAM Charges - Display Option list to select CAM or Non-CAM costs.
Click Show.
The costs meeting your search criteria are shown.
Select the check boxes for the costs you want to assign or unassign as CAM.
Click Set CAM Status, and from the submenu, select either 'as CAM' or "as Non-CAM.
The Cam Cost? column updates to reflect your selection.

See Recording Actual CAM Costs (for Landlord Cost Administrator).