Vanlynk | Running Costs

Overview

Running Costs is the financial command center for an individual job. As a technician works, every cost that accrues against the work order : “inventory”, “pricebook services”, “custom line items” and “labor” lands here, sorted into what’s already Billed, what’s Pending on a draft, and what’s Unbilled. From the same screen, a user can adjust quantities, add costs, and add selected items straight into an invoice.

The Problem

Field-service businesses bleed margin in two places: costs that quietly pile up without anyone watching them against the job’s budget, and invoicing that lags days behind the work. Before this module, there was no single place to see what a job was actually costing in real time, no at-a-glance signal when spend was running ahead of plan, and billing meant manually reassembling line items after the fact. The module was built to keep project costs tracked as they happen, surface overruns before they become losses, and let staff invoice faster.

Technical Approach

The tab follows a container/presentational (“smart/dumb”) architecture. One stateful parent owns all data and orchestration , four stateless children render it and emit events back up

an overview bar, a filter/action bar, quick-add chips, and a reusable table section rendered three times (one per billing status).

User intent is governed by three modes: NO_SELECTION, SELECTION, and CHANGES. These are mutually exclusive , you can’t be editing quantities and selecting items to invoice at the same time , which eliminates an entire class of “which action wins?” bugs and keeps the toolbar’s buttons honest about what’s currently possible.