Putting a Price on Preparation

More Than a Checklist

Fecit’s Preparation section is where you organize what you need before executing a task. Materials, tools, venues, personnel — four categories to cover the basics.

But until now, Preparation was just a checklist. “Need flour” check, “Need mixer” check. To truly “prepare,” something was missing: how much does it cost?

The Cost Field

We added cost input to each preparation item. Rather than just dropping in a number field, we thought through a few things.

Unit Price vs Total

If you need 5kg of flour at 3,000 per kg, entering a unit price and auto-calculating the total is convenient. But a venue rental of 50,000 is naturally just a total.

So we made it selectable. Categories with quantities (materials, tools) get a toggle to switch between unit price and total. In unit price mode, quantity × unit price = total is displayed automatically. Categories without quantities (venues, personnel) only show total cost.

Currency

Planning a trip might involve both local currency and dollars. Currency is free text — “KRW”, “USD”, “won”, ”$” — whatever format works for you.

Typing the currency every time is tedious, so you can set a default currency in Achiever settings. New items automatically use it.

Input UI

We followed the same pattern as quantity input. Value next to its unit, all in one line.

Quantity              [5] [kg]
Cost              [3000] [KRW]
Total             15,000 KRW

Quantity and unit in one line, cost and currency in another. The auto-calculated total only appears in unit price mode. Compact, but complete.

Visible in the List

You don’t need to open an item to see its cost. It shows right in the list next to the title.

✓ Flour  5 kg  15,000 KRW
□ Mixer  1  50,000 KRW

All Four Categories

Materials, tools, venues, personnel — all four categories got cost fields. Each fits a different context:

• Materials: ingredients, parts — unit price × quantity is useful
• Tools: purchase/rental costs — quantity allows unit price calculation
• Venues: rental fees — total only
• Personnel: labor costs — total only

Implementation

Three fields added to the data model: cost (amount), cost_currency (currency), is_unit_price (unit price flag). All Optional, so existing data works without migration.

Cost is stored as a string to avoid floating-point precision issues, following the same pattern as quantity. Parsing happens on the frontend only when calculation is needed.

The API follows the existing per-field update pattern: cost/set, cost-currency/set, is-unit-price/set — each updated independently. Applied to both mobile and desktop simultaneously.

Toward a Specialized Preparation Section

The Preparation section moved beyond a simple checklist. Now you can track not just what you need, but how much it costs.

If you can estimate costs before executing a task, you can plan more realistically. A small feature, but one that makes preparation feel like real preparation.