Cost Sheet

Using quote information from ActiveQuote, Octopart, or manual entry, Aligni can compile amazingly accurate cost estimates for your assemblies for any target quantity you specify. It automatically recognizes price breaks so it knows when the excess materials cost is beneficial to getting the next quantity price break.

The cost sheet pulls together the inventory costs and min/max quotes for all the parts on a bill of materials (BOM). It also uses price breaks in your quotes to determine the costs of any target build quantity.

Cost Computations

Shown below is the cost sheet of an assembly in the demo database. It lists each part on the BOM, the quantity of that part on the BOM, and various pricing information:

  • Min Quote – The minimum quote available. This will be blank if no quotes are listed for the part.
  • Max Quote – The maximum quote available. This will be blank if no quotes are listed for the part.
  • Est. Cost – The estimated cost stored with the part details.

The extended costs are also listed by multiplying the BOM quantity by the appropriate unit cost figure. At the bottom of the BOM, you can see a total of the extended costs. These are also listed in the summary tags at the top of the page.

Hierarchical Pricing

Assemblies marked with the Manufactured Here? attribute are considered to be manufactured in-house. For these parts, Aligni will compute the line item costs by drilling down to the lower level. This process occurs recursively until a non-assembly part is reached. The process also stops when it encounters a part with Manufactured Here set to FALSE.

Quote Selection

By default, all quotes are considered when computing the minimum and maximum quote for a particular item. You can manually disable specific quotes by visiting the item’s Supply Chain tab and clicking on the calculator icon in the row corresponding to the quote you want to disable.

Target Quantity

You can also specify a quantity for which to compute costs. Aligni will then use this quantity to choose quotes at available price breaks that minimize the total cost of the build including excess materials. That is, Aligni will choose to buy a larger quantity if the total cost including excess is less than if you were to buy at a smaller quantity. The cost estimate computed this way will always be monotonically decreasing with increasing quantity; you will not have a situation where increasing quantity increases cost.

The complete cost sheet is shown below. The column 500 pcs. indicates the prices per line item at the target quantity. In the extended column, excess quantities are indicated in blue. This is how many extra components were required to meet the next price break.