Class Overview

You can create four types of cost records in Cobra: budgets, earned value, actuals, and forecasts.

For each of these types (other than earned value), it is possible to define different cost classes that track specific types of information. Thus, it is possible, for example, to distinguish between different funding sources when budgeting, or to distinguish between accounting, invoiced, or incurred actual costs.

Each type of class allows you to define different characteristics, depending on its context. For example, budget classes can be assigned different fiscal calendars for spreading. This allows you to spread budgets for planning using fiscal years rather than months. Classes used for budget costs can refer to different rate files to indicate, for example, change orders that involve different labor costs than those originally planned. This allows for the segregation of change orders from original proposal values and ensures that rate changes are applied only when appropriate. Forecast  classes can indicate which other classes they are based on, allowing, for example, for the generation of different sets of forecasts depending on the selected class (or classes) of budget costs.