Your first initiative in 5 minutes
Create an initiative, record a cost, log value and approve it, to see an ROI number end to end.
Answered from these docs only, by a model that cannot see your account. Check the pages it cites.
Checked against the product on September 26, 2026
The fastest way to see Roiva work end to end: create an initiative, record a cost, log some value, and approve it.
Step 1: Create the initiative
Initiatives → New Initiative offers four ways in:
- Start from a template — a common AI use case with its formulas, metrics and planned figures already filled in. Not sure which? Describe your business and Roiva recommends templates.
- Use the setup guide — a step-by-step walkthrough.
- Upload documents — a project plan, deck or budget; Roiva proposes the initiative's fields for you to review. See Creating initiatives from documents.
- Start from scratch (Create manually) — the form: title, category, priority, owner, and optional financial expectations (planned CapEx, OpEx and value). The owner is you unless you pick someone else or choose — Unassigned.
A new initiative starts in the Identified stage. One created from a spreadsheet with Upload documents can start in Reviewing, or further along if you could approve it. The Free plan holds 3 initiatives. Every stage counts toward that, completed included. Rejected and dismissed initiatives and sample data don't count.
Step 2: Record a cost
Open the initiative's Costs tab and choose Add costs → Record a cost. An initiative's costs are what you pay to run it, so leave out spend that serves other work, even on the same vendor's bill. Pick the cost type (software, tokens, implementation, infrastructure and so on), the amount and the period. CapEx or OpEx follows from the type unless you change it. With a finance system or a model provider connected, its bills, or the part of them that's the initiative's, can book themselves instead.
Step 3: Log value
Open the Value Entries tab and choose Log value: the entry type (time savings, cost savings, revenue gain…), the amount and the period. The amount is in dollars: 50 hours of sales rep time saved at $100 an hour is $5,000. It's saved as a draft.
Step 4: Submit it and approve it
Value counts toward ROI only once someone approves it. Open the entry and choose Submit for review. It then waits in the Inbox of the initiative's approvers, if it has an approval chain, or otherwise for any Owner or Admin. By default nobody approves an entry they recorded or last edited, unless nobody else in the account could approve it.
Step 5: See the ROI
Open ROI in the sidebar. The initiative's cost and approved value are in the portfolio totals, and ROI → Initiatives has its own row.
Want sample data first?
An Owner or Admin can load a set of sample initiatives from Organization Settings → General → Sample Data → Load sample data, and remove them again from the same place. The Board Brief and Value Evidence Register leave sample initiatives out; the Portfolio Snapshot includes them only while they're all the account has, and says so.
Next
- Approving value and initiatives — who approves what
- Adding costs and value entries — every way to get figures in
- The initiative lifecycle — moving an initiative from idea to live