Support Article - Cost Overages Dashboard

Overview

The Cost Overages Dashboard helps Ottimate customers identify overages across vendors, items, and locations. It enables teams to catch cost creep early by comparing item-level purchase prices to their own lowest historical purchase price from the same vendor within the selected time range.

By identifying cost “creep”, even subtle ones, you get actionable insights to negotiate smarter, reduce inefficiencies, and take control of your margins.

This dashboard will help answer two critical questions for you:

1. Where are we losing money now?

2. Which vendors are driving most of our cost creeps?

How it works

The dashboard analyzes all your processed invoices and highlights when you've paid more for an item than the lowest price you’ve historically paid for it from the same vendor within a selected date range. These are flagged as Cost Overages. The dashboard also gives you visibility into month on month trends of vendor overages (if it’s trending up or down) as well as item price trends.

Only vendors and items with overages identified are shown in this dashboard.

Where can I find the Cost Overages Dashboard?

The Cost Overages Dashboard appears under the “Dashboard” section of the Reports Module.

Reports -> Dashboard -> Cost Overages

How do I use Cost Overage?

Go to the Reports → Dashboard section and select Cost Overages.

Apply filters such as date, location, vendor, or category.

Review the insight metrics at the top along with the vendor and item price charts to catch cost slippages faster.

Click into vendors or items for a deeper breakdown and trend analysis.

For best insights, apply the date filter for up to 3 months only.

How do I use the date filter to filter for a specific invoice date range?

1. Select the “Invoice Date Filter”

2. Select the “Specific Dates” option from the menu

3. Apply the custom date range you would like to view the dashboard data for

What are the elements of the Cost Overages Dashboard?

The dashboard is split into three sections:

1. Overall Analysis

   - Insight metrics: Total Overages, Overage %, Top Overage Category, Vendors with Overages Above 5%, Items with Overages

   - Summary metrics: Locations, Vendors, Items analyzed, Total Spend

   - Visualizations:

     • Overages by Vendor (with top category contributor)

     • Overages by Category (with % of total spend)

     • Bubble chart showing location-wise overages vs total spend to identify outliers

2. Vendor Level Analysis

   - Detailed overage trends per vendor

   - Filters for custom views (date range, company, location, GL, vendor, category)

   - Drill-down into vendor-level overage trends by selecting vendor of choice

   - Charts showing Month on Month selected vendor overage trends (if costs with the selected vendor are trending up or down)

3. Item Level Analysis

   - Detailed analysis of items contributing towards the total overages. Can be filtered by location, category, vendor, and GL for further analysis

   - Select an item to further drill-down into invoice level overage tracking

   - Chart showing selected item level overage trends over time

What can I learn from the Cost Overages Dashboard?

1. Which vendors/categories/items are experiencing cost creep over time

2. Where overages are recurring or increasing across locations and categories

3. Where your spend is drifting due to inconsistent pricing practices

This helps you catch subtle leaks before they scale into major cost issues

Access & Pricing

Available to all non-view-only roles by default

If you or someone on your team is unable to find the dashboard, they’re probably on a “View” only or “No-Access” role permission. Ask the user with Administrator role permissions to activate the “View Analytics Dashboard” permission for the user with missing access

FAQs

Q1. How does the dashboard calculate a cost overage?

It compares your purchase price to the lowest price you paid for the same item from the same vendor within the selected date range. It aggregates data across your organization, with filters for vendor, category, location and GL. Use the filters to drill down into item level data and find cost inefficiencies. Items falling under the category of "Other" (eg: fringe item costs, miscellaneous costs, etc) are not included in the overage calculation along with items that have no overages.

Outliers have been excluded from total overage calculation for more accurate results (items with greater than 50% price change)

Q2. Does this mean we can always save the overage amount shown?

Not always. It highlights inefficiencies, not guaranteed savings, as prices can vary due to valid reasons like seasonality or supply chain issues.

Q3. How is this different from the Cost Analysis Dashboard?

Cost Overages focuses on slippage and missed efficiency at a granular level; Cost Analysis gives a broader view of spend and trends. 

Point to note: Total Spend in Cost Overages won't match with Total Spend in Cost Analysis because we have excluded others, fringe items, etc in the overage calculations. We will upgrade the dashboard to better support these in the true sense of overages.

Additional Info

For further assistance, contact Ottimate Support by emailing support@ottimate.com or clicking here.