Costing Analysis Overview

As you make decisions about your business costs, you may need to investigate alternative costing scenarios. Costing analysis can help you determine how changes to one or more variables will affect costs, without actually changing existing costs in your system.

For example, you may want to analyze the following:

The effect of dependent materials costs that have a significant impact; for example, the erratic cost of aluminum.
Rate changes for direct labor or overhead for production.
Cost projections for an upcoming capital expenditure.
Rollup of standard costs before committing a rollup, or comparing costs to a previous rollup.

SyteLine provides the Costing Analysis Workbench for creating costing alternatives. Costing alternatives are collections of items on the Workbench that you can work with in these ways:

Capture a Year-End Snapshot

You can copy items with their complete BOM and routing to a costing alternative and then "freeze" them. This is typically done to create a year-end snapshot of costs for historical record keeping. You can save as many frozen costing alternatives as you need and keep them indefinitely.

Analyze Detailed Changes to the Copied BOM and Routing

You can copy items with their BOM and routing to a costing alternative; open the Costing Analysis Alternative Current Materials or Costing Analysis Alternative Current Operations forms to change specific items and labor rates in detail; and roll up the new item costs. You can then compare these changes with item current or standard costs, or with the costs in another costing alternative. These changes can be analyzed but not rolled to current.

Analyze Changes to Current or Standard Routing, with Option to Roll New Costs to Current

You can copy items without their BOM and routing to a costing alternative; selectively change the items' labor, material, and/or overhead rates; and roll up the new item costs. You can then compare your changes with item current or standard costs, or to the costs in another costing alternative. Continue making changes and comparing as needed. When the revised rates in your costing alternative are the values you want to use, you can copy them to Product Code, Work Center, Department, and Item master files using the Costing Analysis Alternative Roll Costs to Current form. This automatically updates the rates in your master files.

Forms Overview

This table describes the forms and reports provided for costing analysis:


Form	Use
Costing Analysis Workbench	For creating the different types of costing alternative records, for manually adding items to a costing alternative, and for comparing a new costing alternative with current or standard costs, or with the costs in another costing alternative.
Costing Analysis Alternative Copy	For adding groups of items to a costing alternative.
Costing Analysis Alternative Roll Up	For rolling up new item costs when you have made changes on the Workbench or using the Costing Analysis Alternative Current Materials or Costing Analysis Alternative Current Operations forms. When you roll up costs, subassemblies for manufactured items are added to the Workbench Items tab.
Costing Analysis Alternative Roll Costs to Current	For updating the rates in the Product Code, Work Center, Department, and Item master files with revised rates from your costing alternative. The only costing alternatives available for selection on this form are those for which you have not copied the BOM and routing.
Costing Analysis Alternative Current Materials	For modifying materials data for costing alternatives that include the complete BOM and routing for items added to the alternative. These changes can be analyzed but not rolled to current.
Costing Analysis Alternative Current Operations	For modifying operations data for costing alternatives that include the complete BOM and routing for items added to the alternative. These changes can be analyzed but not rolled to current.
Costing Analysis Alternative Inventory Variance Report	For reviewing costing alternative variance information.
Costing Analysis Customer Order Margin Report	For reviewing costing alternative margin information.