Planned cost estimates how much an operation, item, or intervention should cost. Actual cost uses what is recorded during execution.
Planned and actual costs are both expressed in euros (EUR). Bold does not let you change the currency or combine costs in several currencies.
Comparison
Planned item cost
Planned cost per unit is used to estimate orders, recipes, manufacturing orders, and comparisons with actual cost.
When the cost updates automatically, Bold stores the total and its per-unit breakdown into materials, labor, and machine:
- For a purchased item, all cost is treated as material; labor and machine are zero.
- For a manufactured item, direct material comes from purchased components consumed by its own recipe. Inherited material comes from materials previously consumed within the manufactured components or semi-finished items in that recipe.
- Direct labor is calculated from the expected person-time of the item’s own operations and the average positive hourly cost of active employees. Inherited labor was already consumed in its semi-finished items.
- Direct machine cost is calculated from the expected duration of the item’s own operations and the main workstation’s hourly cost. Inherited machine cost was already consumed in its semi-finished items.
The calculation estimates what is needed to produce one unit of the catalog item. Within that unit, an operation can have a relative quantity other than one. Times with a “per unit” frequency scale with that relative quantity; other times apply once.
If there is no usable active main recipe, the automatic breakdown is zero. A manufactured item with manual cost, or an ignored item, keeps its total but does not show a breakdown.
For manufactured items, Bold preserves the cost categories contributed by semi-finished items. Their material is added as inherited material, their labor as inherited labor, and their machine usage as inherited machine cost. The item details separate direct and inherited semi-finished costs in all three categories.
Planned item costs are rounded to a maximum of four decimal places. If a component has a manual cost without a breakdown, Bold allocates that amount to direct material when it is purchased and inherited material when it is manufactured.
Employee cost
Employee cost is the hourly cost Bold applies to labor records. It affects manufacturing orders, operations, and maintenance work orders.
To estimate it, use the total cost to the company and divide it by effective annual hours.
For a 40-hour working week, a common reference is 1,826 effective annual hours. Adjust this basis to your collective agreement, calendar, and internal criteria.
Cost updates
Costs can update automatically or manually depending on the item type and operational workflow.
The specific policy depends on operational settings and available data. Always review the cost date, source, and scope before using it for financial decisions.
Manufacturing
In manufacturing, actual cost adds consumed materials, recorded labor, and machine cost. Material cost comes from the lots consumed.
Co-products are recorded without allocating a share of production cost to them. Rejected quantities also do not change the total used in this calculation; actual cost per unit divides total cost by completed quantity.
An order with consumption not linked to a lot, incomplete time records, or missing hourly costs can show an incomplete actual cost.
Maintenance
In maintenance, actual cost combines materials and employee time.
The history lets you compare assets, causes, actions, and recurring interventions.
Common problems
