Running Cost

Create budget estimations for specific date ranges — annual budgets, quarterly plans, or any custom period your organization requires. Each estimation references the ship's published template and captures per-category budget amounts in the vessel's currency, exact to that currency's decimal places, so no rounding errors accumulate across hundreds of line items.

Multiple estimations can exist simultaneously for different periods, and one active estimation is marked as the default that every invoice is checked against. The estimation system supports the full lifecycle: create an estimation, populate category budgets, track actuals against estimates, and archive completed periods — all while maintaining a complete history of every budget figure change.

Organize your vessel's operating costs into a hierarchical tree of expenditure categories — parent categories contain child categories, and budgets roll up cumulatively from leaves to root. This tree structure mirrors real-world cost breakdowns: Crew costs contain subcategories for wages, overtime, travel, and provisions; Technical costs break down into maintenance, spares, repairs, and class surveys.

Each category in the tree carries a code, its own estimated amount in every estimation, and its own reviewers and approvers. The hierarchical rollup shows total estimated and actual spending at every level, from a single leaf category to a top-level cost group or the vessel total. Add and rename categories at any time, before or after publishing, and a rename carries through to every invoice that already uses the category.

Configure per-category approvers and reviewers with three execution methods: All (every designated person must approve), Any (any single approver is sufficient), or Not Required (skip the approval step entirely). This flexible model lets you enforce strict oversight on high-value categories while streamlining low-value routine expenses.

Set multiple approvers and multiple reviewers per category. The execution method determines how the approval chain resolves — unanimous consent for critical budget items, first-available approval for routine items, or direct processing for pre-approved categories.

Reviewers and approvers are set on the template's categories and apply to every invoice share posted to that category in Bookkeeping. Assign them to many categories at once; one person is never both reviewer and approver of the same category.

Visualize spending patterns with heatmap analytics that aggregate a vessel's invoices by month or quarter across its top-level categories. The heatmap view reveals seasonal spending peaks, recurring heavy periods and cost anomalies that warrant investigation.

Select a vessel, monthly or quarterly period grouping and a range of whole years, and count verified invoices only or every invoice that is not canceled. Each cell totals the invoices dated in that period, with every subcategory rolled into its top-level category and converted into the vessel's currency.

Set the operating currency per template, supporting fleets that operate across multiple currency zones. Each vessel's running cost template carries its own currency designation, and all budget amounts and actuals within that template are denominated in the selected currency.

Invoices can be in any currency. Each one saves the exchange rate for its invoice date into the vessel's currency in Bookkeeping, and actuals are converted at that saved rate, so past figures stay accurate when rates move. The currency is set before the template is published and then stays fixed, keeping every estimation and every actual for the vessel in one currency.

Manage multiple budget estimations per vessel across different time periods. Active estimations track current spending, archived estimations preserve historical budget data for trend analysis and year-over-year comparison, and deleted estimations move to their own list with their history intact.

The three-status estimation lifecycle (Active, Archived, Deleted) ensures you always have a clean view of current budgets while retaining full historical data, and an archived or deleted estimation can be restored to active at any time. Switch between estimation periods to compare spending patterns, analyze seasonal variations, and build more accurate future budgets based on actual historical performance.

Mark one active estimation per vessel as the default: the budget that every invoice for that vessel is checked against in Bookkeeping. Reviewers and approvers see how much of each category's budget is already spent without leaving the invoice.

Change the default estimation at any time as budget cycles roll over. When a new annual budget is ready, make it the default and every invoice check uses it from then on. The previous default remains accessible as a standard estimation for historical comparison.

See what a vessel spent in any period, with no estimation needed. Pick the dates and count verified invoices only or all invoices, and Navatom totals the spend for every category in the tree by invoice date, with totals at every level.

Use it for a quarter-end check, for a period no estimation covers, or to compare all recorded spend with the verified part. Each view keeps its vessel, dates and filter in the page address, so it can be bookmarked or shared.

Bootstrap a new vessel's cost template by importing the category structure from another active vessel while the template is still a draft. The import runs in the background, copying the complete hierarchical tree, categories and subcategories with their codes, reviewers, approvers and approval methods, without blocking the user interface.

Import is especially valuable when adding new vessels to your fleet. Rather than rebuilding the category structure from scratch, import from a similar vessel type and customize as needed.

Large category trees are handled in the background, and the template is locked to other editors until the import finishes.

When restructuring a published template, move a category's invoices and estimates to another category before deleting it. Navatom reassigns every invoice line to the target category, merging the two amounts where one invoice used both, adds the source category's estimates to the target in every estimation, and records the move in each estimation's history.

This safe deletion model ensures no expenditure data is orphaned when categories are reorganized. Only categories without subcategories can be moved, and a category already used on invoices can only leave the tree this way.

The move runs in the background with its progress shown, and the template is locked to other editors until it finishes.

Export any active estimation's actual vs. estimated view to Excel in one click. The workbook lists every category with its code and name, its spend and its estimate, the totals of each parent category, and a grand total at the foot.

The sheet is set to landscape and fitted to the page, ready to print. For invoice-level detail, Bookkeeping's Excel exports list every invoice with its category split.

Use Excel exports for board presentations, owner reporting and internal financial reviews, without reformatting.

Add, edit, and delete comments on any budget estimation to maintain a running dialogue between fleet managers, finance staff, and technical superintendents. Comments provide context that numbers alone cannot — explaining why a category was overspent, noting a one-time extraordinary expense, or flagging a budget reallocation request.

Every change is recorded with who made it and when: on each estimation, its creation, amounts, dates, status changes, category moves and comments; on the template, new and renamed categories, imports, moves, the currency, publication and approval settings. The complete audit trail provides full accountability for every budget decision.