Costs & contracts (finance link)

Adding fuel & servicing costs as an expense

If you've recorded a price on a fuel or servicing entry, “Add as expense” appears there. Tap it to open a short prompt where you choose the payer (yourself, by default) – and it creates an expense in the finance module, linked to the vehicle, split evenly across the household, and dated to the day of the receipt. You can adjust the split and the payer further afterwards in the finance module. You can't add the same entry twice: recorded entries show “✓ added”.

For a company car, this option is deliberately absent – its costs don't count towards the family budget.

Linking contracts to the vehicle

Under “Costs & contracts”, you link existing motor contracts (third-party/comprehensive, vehicle tax, leasing) to the vehicle. You create new contracts as usual in the finance module; here, you just assign them to the vehicle. Notice periods and reminders keep running through the contracts module.

Cost overview

The overview shows the monthly contract costs, recorded fuel and servicing costs, and – if you keep odometer readings – the cost per 100 km. So you see at a glance what a vehicle really costs.

Cost dashboard & TCO

Via “Costs & contracts → Dashboard”, you open the vehicle's cost dashboard – your finance hub per vehicle:

• Every source pulled together: the fuel log, the servicing log, linked contracts and vehicle expenses (accessories, say) land in one list of entries. Fuel/servicing entries already added as an expense aren't counted twice.
• Time ranges: at the top, switch between calendar years and “Total”. Watch out with older years: patchio only knows costs from the point of recording onwards – the oldest year is often incomplete.
• TCO (cost of ownership): in the vehicle, under “Costs & contracts → Acquisition”, enter the purchase price and purchase date (optionally an estimated residual value). patchio then works out: purchase price + running costs − residual value = your real total cost, also per month and per kilometre.
• Forecast: from your active contracts, your consumption and mileage trend, and the average servicing cost of the last 24 months, patchio estimates the running costs per month and year – broken down transparently.
• Insights: short automatic statements from your data, your biggest cost block, say, or how cost per km has changed against last year.
• CSV export: export the list of entries for the chosen period with one click.

For a bicycle or trailer, there's no fuel block – the dashboard adapts to the vehicle kind.