Financials & COPQ
How SixGrid tracks the money on a project — the opportunity, what you've saved, and what you've spent.
The Three Numbers
Every project's Financials tab tracks three things: an opportunity (COPQ), what the project has saved (Benefits, hard and soft), and what it has spent (Costs). Every figure you see on the Dashboard, the Program view, and Reports is a view of those same per-project numbers — there is no separate set of books.
COPQ — the Opportunity
COPQ stands for Cost of Poor Quality — the annualized cost of the defects, rework, waste, and lost opportunity a project is targeting. It answers the question "how big is this problem in dollars?" It's an estimate by nature: set it early, refine it as you learn more about the process.
The COPQ card sits at the top of the Financials tab. It holds the annualized value, an optional one-line Basis — the headline formula behind the number — and, once a value is set, a section for dated notes and file attachments so the working papers behind the estimate live right next to it.
COPQ is the sizing of the problem, not an audit. Benefits are measured against it, never reconciled with it — a project's benefits can exceed its COPQ, and that's fine. COPQ never counts toward savings, costs, or net figures.
Benefits — Hard and Soft
When you add a benefit, you pick a benefit type. SixGrid derives from the type whether the benefit counts as hard or soft — there's nothing extra to choose.
- Hard — Cost Savings, Revenue Increase. These tie to the P&L; finance validates them against the ledger.
- Soft — Cost Avoidance, Safety Impact, Compliance Impact, Environmental Impact, Other. Real value that doesn't tie directly to the P&L; reported separately.
If finance decides a particular benefit should count the other way, open the benefit and click Count as hard instead (or Count as soft instead). The benefit keeps its type and is labeled reclassified by finance so everyone can see the call was made deliberately.
Hard and soft are never added together anywhere in SixGrid. You'll always see them as two separate figures.
Estimated and Captured
A benefit starts as Estimated. When finance confirms the value is real, click Mark captured with finance on the benefit and it becomes Captured.
Captured means one thing everywhere in SixGrid: validated, realized value. Rollups show hard savings with an "of which $X captured" line, so you can tell at a glance how much of a total finance has signed off on.
Costs
Costs are what the project spends — operating expense, cost of goods sold, capital expenditure, or other. Each cost has a type, an annualized value, and a status of Estimated or Actual.
Costs net against hard savings only — never against soft savings, and never against COPQ.
The Summary Row
Once a project has at least one benefit or cost, a summary row appears below the COPQ card: Hard savings · Soft savings · Total costs · Net hard savings.
Net hard savings is hard savings minus total costs. It shows "—" until the project has a hard benefit — a project with only costs is un-netted, not negative. Nothing is subtracted until there's something to subtract from.
% of the Opportunity
When a project has both a COPQ and at least one benefit, the COPQ card adds a line: "Benefits: $X — Y% of the opportunity · $Z captured." It shows how far the project has gone toward the problem it set out to attack.
This is a progress measure, not a savings claim. It's the only place hard and soft benefits appear together, and only as a percentage — the dollar figures stay separate everywhere else.
Rollups: Program, Reports, Dashboard
On the Program view and the Dashboard, you get the same money row: Total COPQ · Hard savings · Soft savings · Total costs · Net hard savings, plus the "% of the opportunity" line and the status strip showing how the work is distributed across Idea, Active, and Completed. Reports shows four of those cards (Total COPQ, Hard savings, Soft savings, and Net hard savings) without the progress line or the status strip.
Netting is per project. A rollup's Net hard savings is the sum of each project's own net, over the projects that have a hard benefit. One project's costs are never subtracted from another project's savings — a project that only has costs contributes nothing to the net.
Sample projects are left out of every rollup. Archived projects are too — see Archived Projects on the Dashboard page.
Who Sees What
Anyone on a project sees its Financials tab in full. Project leaders and associate leaders edit — COPQ, benefits, and costs; everyone else on the project sees financials read-only.
Rollup dollars — on the Program view, Reports, and the Dashboard — are for managers (their groups), executives, owners, and admins. Team members see Reports with counts and breakdowns but no dollar figures. They do not see the Program view, and their Dashboard ends after their own work. See Who Sees Dollars for the full rule.