Adding costs and value entries

Costs and value entries are what every ROI figure in Roiva adds up. You can record them by hand, import a spreadsheet, or let connected systems and value formulas record them for you.

Recording a cost

An initiative's costs are what you pay to run it: its tool's seats or usage, vendor fees, implementation, consulting, your own team's time. Leave out spend that serves other work, even when it's on the same vendor's bill. For an AI coding assistant rollout, say, the assistant's seats for the engineers in the rollout count, and the same provider's API usage for a product feature doesn't.

Every template names what typically counts for its kind of initiative and what usually stays out. They're guidance, not rules: an initiative's costs are whatever it actually pays to run. The coding assistant, for one, leaves out the GitHub plan the assistant runs on, which you'd pay for anyway. You'll find the two lists on the template's page, on the Costs tab, in the cost form and on the Setup tab. An initiative that didn't start from a template gets the general version.

Open the initiative's Costs tab and choose Record a cost:

Cost type — software, tokens, implementation, infrastructure, data licensing, consulting, internal labor or maintenance
Cost category — CapEx or OpEx. Implementation defaults to CapEx and everything else to OpEx.
Amount, currency and the period it covers
Optional: a source reference (an invoice or PO number), notes, and This is an estimate

The Costs tab has two more views:

Recurring Costs — a schedule (a monthly subscription, say) that records a cost entry each period for you.
Vendors — which vendors' bills book to this initiative from a connected finance system (QuickBooks, Xero, NetSuite, Brex or Ramp), how each vendor is matched, and what share of each bill counts.

A cost in an accounting period your finance team has locked can't be changed or deleted.

Logging value

Open the Value Entries tab and choose Log value:

Entry type — revenue gain, cost savings, time savings, cost avoidance, implementation cost or run cost
Amount, currency and period
Optional: notes, a confidence score (0–100) and This is an estimate
Optional: Supporting documents — check any of the initiative's documents the figure rests on, or add a link to the spreadsheet, invoice or report. A link you add is saved to the initiative's documents as well.

An entry you log is saved as a draft.

Supporting documents are what an approver opens. A formula's entry shows the inputs it was calculated from, and a synced entry the records it came from. An entry you typed shows the documents it cites, or None cited. Citing is optional, but an approver sees which it is. Changing an approved entry's documents sends it back for approval, like any other change. An SOW or contract you cite is listed only for the people who can open it; everyone else sees that one is there.

Notes are where you say why. The amount says what the figure is; the note says what moved it, and it's the first thing an approver reads. It matters most on a cost saving, where the question is always the same one: did your team earn this, or did a vendor hand it to you? Routing simple requests to a smaller model is your saving. A provider cutting its list price is not, even though both show up as the cost falling. Say which it was.

Where the saving is a drop in what your AI spend buys, and Roiva can read your provider's bill, it works that split out for you and shows it on the entry — see How value is calculated. Everywhere else, the note is the record.

Most value doesn't need typing in: an initiative's value formulas calculate entries from its readings and assumptions, and value integrations (Zendesk, HubSpot, Stripe…) book what they sync.

Value needs approving

Only approved value counts toward ROI. Entries a formula or an integration calculates go straight to approvers. A draft, or an entry an approver disputed, goes to them when you choose Submit for review. Approvers Approve or Dispute it from their Inbox. Only an entry waiting for approval can be disputed. See Approving value and initiatives.

Anyone can edit a draft or an entry waiting for review. An approved entry is different: changing, deleting or sending it back takes someone who could approve it. Saving any change sends it back for approval, and so does Send Back for Review on the entry, which leaves everything alone and asks for a reason.

Importing a spreadsheet

Imports cover every initiative at once. Open Entries → Cost Entries (or Value Entries) and choose Import:

Download Template and fill it in. Each row names its initiative in initiative_name (or initiative_id), and the upload page lists the required and optional columns.
Upload the file. It's processed in the background, and you get a notification when it's done.
The import's page lists how many rows came in and why any were skipped. Valid rows are saved even when others fail, so fix the skipped rows and import just those.

A value entry row's status can be draft (the default), reviewed (sent to approvers) or approved, which takes someone who could approve the entry. Rows with any other status are skipped.

An initiative with no costs yet also offers Import a spreadsheet on its own Costs tab, and one with no value entries on its Value Entries tab. Imported costs take CapEx or OpEx from their type. Baselines and readings import from Entries → Metric Entries → Import.

Planned figures

Entries are what actually happened. What you planned to spend and gain lives on the initiative itself: its financial expectations (planned CapEx and OpEx, planned value as cost savings and revenue uplift per period, and the time horizon). Set them with Edit in the initiative's … menu, or Edit Targets on its page under ROI → Initiatives. The ROI dashboard sets the two side by side.

Vendors, shares and recurring costs — vendors, shares and schedules in depth