In a long-term maintenance plan, you compare the annual amounts planned for Spots with recorded costs. The comparison is made in the browser. Actual costs can also include work costs recorded using the Android or iOS app.
Open the plan and check the comparison period
In the browser menu, open Assets and content → Assets, devices, tools → Long-term maintenance plans. Click the plan's name in the list.
On the Plan tab, expand the Basic info section, which is collapsed when you open an existing plan. Check the Forecast start year. The table covers ten calendar years, from the start year through start year + 9. For example, a start year of 2026 displays the years 2026–2035. The default start year for a new plan is the current year.
You need permission to view the plan and access its Spots. A Manager user must have access to at least one of the plan's Spots to open the plan. You can only see and include the portions for Spots you have permission to view. This means two users may see different totals in the same plan. Making changes also requires permission to edit the plan.
If the plan does not exist yet, see creating a plan. The form for creating a new plan only shows planned amounts; save the plan and open it from the list to review actual costs.
What makes up Planned?
In the table in the Selected Spots section of the Plan tab, element lines and their annual monetary amounts appear beneath each Spot. If the lines are collapsed, expand them using the arrow next to the Spot's name. Scroll the table horizontally if needed to find the year columns.
The Planned row at the bottom of the table totals the amounts in each year's column from the element lines of all Spots visible to you. Collapsing a Spot's lines does not remove them from the total. The annual amounts are planned monetary amounts, rather than working hours or quantities.
Cycle (years) and Condition provide background information for planning. They do not, by themselves, create annual amounts or repeat costs in future years. Enter amounts in the cells for the years you want. An annual amount can be zero or positive; an empty cell adds nothing to the total.
If you have permission to edit the plan, you can click an annual amount cell on an element line and change its value. The Planned total updates when you finish editing a cell and when lines are added or removed, even before you save. When you open the plan, a planned year with no amounts or a total of zero may appear blank; a blank summary cell does not mean actual costs are missing.
Annual amounts are saved to two decimal places. The table's amounts and summaries are displayed with two decimal places. Use two decimal places when entering amounts: the total of unsaved numbers entered with greater precision may differ from the total calculated after saving.
What makes up Actual?
The Actual row at the bottom of the table totals, by year, the device costs for accessible Spots saved in the plan, together with the recorded work cost values for tasks and service requests related to those Spots. All cost lines falling within the period are included, even if a Spot has no planned element lines.
Actual costs are not limited to completed or billable work, or to work named on the element lines. Existing cost lines for work that is still in progress or has been cancelled may also be included in the total. Costs are not automatically allocated to individual element lines in the plan.
Simply recording hours, products or travel does not guarantee that a cost will appear in Actual: the calculation uses the monetary work cost lines that have been generated. Automatic work costs are generated when the work is completed. A separately recorded other work cost may be included before completion. The recorded value of an other work cost may include a customer discount, which is checked again when the work is completed.
Actual does not distinguish between costs and income in the same way as the Work cost and income report. It totals the recorded value of a work cost line even when the product line's value is treated as income elsewhere. The product line's separate sales amount is not added to this total. Actual should therefore not be interpreted directly as the report's cost or income series.
Costs for tasks and service requests without a Spot are excluded. Cost lines retained after work has been deleted are also excluded, even if they appear elsewhere in the cost information. If the same expense has been recorded as both a device cost and a work cost, both values are included in Actual. The calculation does not remove duplicate entries. A year with no eligible costs shows an Actual value of 0.00.
Which year does a cost belong to?
A device cost is allocated to the year in the Cost date field, if a date has been entered. Otherwise, the cost line's creation date is used. A work cost is allocated to the year in which the cost line was created, rather than directly to the year of the work's execution, completion or logged hours.
The year is determined using the account's time zone. If no time zone has been set for the account, Helsinki is used. This can affect costs created close to the turn of the year. Costs outside the period are not included in the table's annual summaries.
For example, a device cost added in 2027 with a cost date in December 2026 belongs to the plan's Actual total for 2026. The reporting tool's Device costs report uses the device cost's creation date, so the same cost may appear in that report in 2027.
Compare the amounts and investigate differences
Compare the Planned and Actual values in the same year column. If the year's element lines contain 1,000.00 and 500.00, the planned total is 1,500.00. If the same year includes 400.00 in device costs, 700.00 in task costs and 100.00 in service request costs, the actual total is 1,200.00. Actual is then 300.00 below the planned total. This example assumes that all lines belong to included Spots visible to you and to the correct year.
To investigate an unclear amount, click the Spot's name in the plan's table. On the Spot form's Device costs tab, check the cost's value and date. The Tasks and Service requests tabs show the related work; open the task or service request and its Work costs tab. Check the recorded cost lines, rather than comparing only hours or product quantities with a monetary amount.
When investigating a difference, also check the Spots selected for the plan, access permissions, cost line creation times and any duplicate entries. Correcting or deleting a cost changes the Actual total calculated the next time it is fetched. Instructions for recording costs are in the article adding an other work cost or a device cost.
Save changes before making the final comparison
Changing the Forecast start year moves existing planned amounts to new calendar years. The amounts stay in the same year positions. If you change the start year from 2026 to 2027, the 1,000.00 in the first column moves from 2026 to 2027. The original year allocation is not retained. Actual costs are fetched for the new ten-year period, but the dates of the cost entries themselves are not changed.
Change the Spot selection using the Choose spots button above the table. An unsaved selection affects the planned lines, but Actual still uses the Spots saved in the plan. Removing a Spot from the plan also deletes its element lines and annual amounts when you save. The Spot and its cost entries remain, but its costs are excluded from this plan's Actual total. Removing only an element line reduces the planned total; it does not remove the Spot's costs from Actual.
Select Save at the bottom of the form, then reopen the plan by clicking its name. Check the years, the Spot selection and both summary rows. Do this especially after changing the Spot selection. Also reopen the plan after costs have been changed elsewhere: Actual costs are fetched when the plan is opened and when the start year is changed, and do not update continuously as other users or the mobile app record entries.
For more information about changing lines and the change history, see editing a plan and viewing its history.
Export the comparison to Excel
On the open plan's Plan tab, select Export view to Excel above the table. The export includes the element lines, their Spot in a separate Spot column, the element description in the Task column, the cycle, condition and annual amounts, and the Planned and Actual summaries. The export's Task column contains the plan element's description, rather than a separately created task to be performed. Monetary amounts are exported as numbers that can be used in Excel calculations, with a two-decimal display format.
The export uses the form's current planning lines and the most recently fetched Actual values. It may therefore include planning changes that have not yet been saved. When you need a comparison that matches the saved plan, save first, reopen the plan and wait for the summaries to load before exporting. Check the years and summary totals in Excel.