Commitments and subcontracts

Track purchase orders and subcontracts as committed cost per job and cost code, see what is billed and still open, and close commitments that won’t be used.

Plans: Advanced and above
Availability: Available
For: Owners, Bookkeepers
In KontoCore: Projects → Commitments

In plain English

A commitment is money you’ve promised but not spent yet. It shows your exposure — it is not a cost in the books.

What this does

Commitments are job-coded purchase orders and subcontracts. For each line KontoCore derives ordered, received, billed, and remaining open commitment from posted documents.

A commitment never posts to the general ledger. Actual job cost appears only when a valid, posted, job-coded vendor bill (or other source) is recorded against it.

How to

Create and track

1Open Projects → Commitments → New (or create a job-coded PO).
2Choose vendor/subcontractor, job, and lines by cost code.
3Approve.
4Vendor bills linked to the commitment reduce its open amount.
5Use Commitment recap to review and print status.

Statuses and lifecycle

Status	Meaning
Draft	Not yet committed.
Approved / Open	Counts as committed cost.
Partially billed	Some lines billed.
Closed	No remaining exposure.

Corrections, voids, and reversals

Amend with a change; close remaining lines with a reason. Billed amounts follow the bills themselves.

Permissions

Approval rules apply on Advanced and above.

What happens in your books

No GL effect. Bills against the commitment post AP and job cost.

Common mistakes

Treating committed cost as actual in profitability reviews.

Troubleshooting

Open amount didn’t drop

The bill wasn’t linked to the commitment lines or is still a draft.

Matching vendor bills to purchase orders (partial billing and receiving)Enter a vendor invoice, optionally link it to a purchase order, match bill lines to PO lines, and track each line as open, partially received, partially billed, or closed.Change ordersRecord customer and commitment change orders that adjust contract value, schedule of values, budgets, and subcontracts, with approval status and history.Job detail and closeoutUse a job’s detail page to see contract, budget, committed, actual, billed, and remaining amounts, and close the job out cleanly when work is done.Correcting job costs and keeping source provenanceFix a vendor bill or expense posted to the wrong job, phase, cost code, or cost type without losing the trail back to the original source document.

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Last reviewed October 6, 2026