RE: Costs
Hi Jay
When you assign a resource that has a cost associated with it then Project will work out the cost of that task.
Alternatively you can simply add cost information directly to your task. In Gantt chart view, right click on one of your columns and from the context menu that appears choose the cost field
You can now directly enter cost figures for your tasks, whether they have resources assigned to them or not.
Hope this helps - do let us know if you have any further questions.
Kind regards,
Andrew