Financials: income, expenses & job costing

Every time you mark a commission or product-order milestone paid, that is already a dated, itemized income record. Financials reads those directly, so your revenue is there with nothing new to type. All you add by hand is anything you sold off BladeOS, so the picture stays honest.

• On-platform sales are counted automatically from your paid milestones (see Commissions & milestones).
• Add off-platform sales (a show, a local sale, Etsy, cash) so your totals reflect everything you actually sold.

Expense capture is where the real work is, so it is built to be fast and glove-friendly. An amount and a category are all you need; everything else is optional.

• Quick-add takes an amount and a category. The date defaults to today, and vendor, a note, a receipt photo, and a link to a build are all optional.
• Recurring costs like shop power, rent, or propane can post themselves each period, or sit ready for a one-tap repeat.
• Vendors and materials you have used before come back as one-tap presets, so common buys prefill for you.
• Snap a receipt (photo or PDF) and it is attached to the expense.

Add the steel, handle blocks, and belts you buy as stock lots. When you use some on a build, log it, and Financials draws the cost from that lot and lowers what is on hand. This is always optional, so you can be as loose or as precise as you like.

• A lot records what you paid, how much you bought, and its unit, so a per-unit cost falls out automatically.
• Set a low-stock level and Financials nudges you when a lot runs low.
• Consuming from a lot can attach that material cost to a specific blade, which powers real per-piece costing below.

This is the heart of Financials. For any build it adds up your materials, direct expenses, and optional overhead, then compares that to the sale price, so you see two honest margins:

• Cash margin, the money in versus the money out. Your own time is left out on purpose.
• True margin, the same figure with your own hours costed in at your shop rate, shown as a clearly separate line.

The money-pit finder on the dashboard ranks your builds worst margin first, so the pieces quietly losing you money are easy to spot. And the moment logged costs on a build cross its price, you get an underwater alert, the save-your-bacon warning while there is still time to act.

• Equipment, track your grinder, forge, or press, with optional service-due reminders by time or by use, and a maintenance log whose cost flows into your expenses.
• Staff, add anyone who works the forge and their pay rate, so their time can be costed into a build. Wages you actually pay out stay a separate expense, so the two are never mixed up.

A bell in your dashboard keeps the important things in front of you: a build going underwater, low stock, service coming due, a payment that has gone unpaid and is aging, and a monthly "your numbers are in" summary. If you have notifications on, the underwater and aging alerts also reach you by email.

When it is time to do taxes, export a full transactions file or a tidy year-end summary as a spreadsheet, ready for your accountant. If you collect sales tax, you can turn on optional tax fields; Financials records the amounts and totals them, but it does not calculate tax for you.

Money is sensitive, so Financials is visible only to you (the forge owner) and any staff you explicitly grant access. It is part of a paid plan; see the plans article for what your plan includes.