Use Cost Control
Open the Portfolio
Section titled “Open the Portfolio”Open Cost Control from Operations. The Portfolio tab lists trackable projects with budget, committed value, actual costs, variance, spent percentage, health, review/backup counts, and open learning findings.
Use My projects, All, or Recent (30 days) to focus the list. My projects includes watched projects and those where you are the creator, price reviewer, or approver; it opens first when it has results, otherwise All. Finished projects are hidden unless you enable Show finished projects.
The summary shows Budget, Committed, Actual, and Variance separately for each currency; Darwin does not add dollars and colones into one total. Click the Over budget, At risk, or Entries to review count to focus the projects needing attention; click again to clear it.
Health uses provisional actual costs, so overruns can appear before all paperwork arrives:
| Health | Meaning |
|---|---|
| On track | Less than 90% of budget spent |
| At risk | From 90% through 100% spent |
| Over budget | More than 100% spent, or spending with no budget |
| No budget | No budget and no spending |
The actual column shows substantiated costs separately when they differ. Health describes spending against budget, not completion progress or a forecast. To review counts Pending entries; Need backup counts entries lacking supporting evidence. Either link opens the project’s Costs Register with the relevant filter. Select the project to open its full tracking detail.
Track a Project
Section titled “Track a Project”The project tracking detail organizes work into these tabs:
| Tab | Use it to |
|---|---|
| Cost Groups | Review grouped costs, add an actual-cost entry, and record commitments. |
| Commitments | A dedicated register of commitment headers and their status — where you open the commitment modal and the change-order (revision) modal. |
| Budget Evolution | See how the tracked budget changed through baseline updates. |
| Variance Report | Compare actual costs with the baseline and review findings. |
| Costs | The Costs Register — the list of actual-cost entries awaiting or having received sign-off. It shows each entry’s review and evidence statuses, supports bulk approve/reject and evidence filtering, and carries a pending-count badge. |
| Files | Access project evidence and supporting documents. |
Add actual costs and commitments from Cost Groups. Their effect becomes visible in the project’s cost groups and in the portfolio totals.
To enter a single invoice that covers several cost codes or commitment lines, use Enter Invoice (batch entry). It records the distributions in one all-or-nothing transaction — either every split is saved or none is.
Resolve Learning Findings
Section titled “Resolve Learning Findings”Open the Learning tab at the top of Cost Control to work through variance findings that need a resolution. The Learning tab lives at the portfolio level of Cost Control, alongside the Portfolio tab — you can reach it directly from a saved link on the Work Requests hub for the learning category. Each project row in the Portfolio also shows an indicator of how many learning findings are open, so you can see at a glance which projects need attention.
Use the cause chips and their counts to filter findings. Send to Learning asks you to choose an assignee, priority, and due date before creating the linked work request; a finding does not become owned work merely because it is visible in the queue.
Open the linked work request and follow its normal workflow. Make and review the appropriate module, price-list, or assumption change before closing the request. When you choose Completed, record the resolution outcome and note; confirm the affected module if the outcome is a module update.
Recording the outcome does not edit the recipe or prices for you. For a worked example, see Record a Cost and Review a Variance.
Review Recorded Activity
Section titled “Review Recorded Activity”From Operations → Recorded Activity, Darwin merges commitments and actuals into a single chronological feed you can filter by project, type, status, and baseline. It is the financial log of what has been recorded. This is unrelated to the platform-wide Organization Activity feed on the home dashboard, which tracks requests, projects, and tasks across the whole organization.