Cost Rates Advisor budgeted hourly rates software Capabilities

Features
Improve pricing & profits Gain insight into all costs Compare yourself to the industry Create multiple sets of rates Account for all expenses Recover all employee costs Find the best markup strategy Validate your information Create financial ratios Import your information Visual Navigation Tree Easy to use, setup, & update History of cost & rates changes Tested and proven

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Cost rates analysis software for printing and packaging businesses.

Make informed pricing decisions

Knowing what it costs to operate your equipment is probably the most critical number you need to ensure a successful business. Cost Rates Advisor tells you exactly how much to charge for your equipment and services in order to cover your operating costs, but more importantly, what you need to charge to make a profit.

Gain insight to all your cost components

Cost rates includes a comprehensive breakdown of your fixed factory costs, variable factory costs, selling, general & administrative (SG&A) costs, and direct labor costs.
Rates are calculated based on the annual cost of the equipment and the budgeted chargeable production hours you expect to sell.
All-inclusive rates represent your true out-of-pocket break-even costs.
Rates are represented several ways so they can easily be implemented into any estimating, pricing, and costing software.
View numerous pie charts, bar charts, and reports of your cost data to identify patterns and trends.
Hyperlinks that enable you to interactively drill down directly to the source data allow you to make quick changes, on the fly.
Cost rates can be calculated for any equipment or services including:

prepress
design
proofing
prepress
design
proofing
sheetfed presses
web presses
large format
digital printers
copiers
inkjet
screen presses
flexographic presses
extrusion
inspection stations
rewinders
cutters
folders
stitchers
binders
collators
folder gluers
die cutters
letterpress
mounting
laminating
drilling
shrink-wrapping
mailing
inserters
handwork
fulfillment
warehousing
hand assembly
kitting
packing
delivery
and more.

Compare your costs and rates to the industry

Compare your labor, factory, and overhead to thousands of costs rates from other companies.

Find out if your costs and rates higher or lower than the competition and industry?

Create multiple sets of rates & what-if scenarios

Manage budgeted hourly cost rates for multiple companies, divisions, or locations from one dashboard.
Create what-if scenarios for new equipment, expansions, acquisitions, shift changes, or other reasons.
Make copies of companies to see how future cost changes will affect your rates.

Account for all your expenses

Company overhead expenses, factory expenses, supplies, equipment repairs, and other expenses are simple to enter and maintain as your business changes.
Expenses can be entered or imported from your accounting spreadsheets or import templates, making setup and updates quick and easy.
You have the flexibility of allocating expenses to SG&A overhead, factory overhead, to departments, to individual equipment or cost centers, and other methods.

Recovering employee costs has never been so easy

Employee wages, benefits, workers compensation insurance, and taxes can be entered or imported from payroll information, ADP, Paychex, or spreadsheets.
Employees that work in multiple departments or machines can have their hours and expenses split between SG&A overhead, factory overhead, departments, cost centers, or any combination.

Find the best markup strategy

The Markup Strategy Tool allows you to create various strategies for marking up your factory costs, overhead costs, material costs, and other costs so you can determine the best strategy for achieving the highest revenues and profits.
Each Markup Strategy can have different markups and profitability projections.
Helps you decide the best markup and pricing strategy for your cost estimates.

Automatically validates your information

The Advisor validation tool assesses the information you entered and Red Flags any potential issues.
Identifies areas that you may need to update or modify to successfully calculate your cost rates.
Checks for missing expenses, missing assets, abnormal labor hours, higher than usual labor costs or factory costs, and other anomalies.
Benchmarks your financial and cost rates information against industry statistics.

Gain insight into your budget with financial ratios

Over 50 ratios based on your budgeted help you forecast the financial performance of your organization.

- Projected Income Before Income Taxes
- Factory Costs as a % of Sales
- Factory Costs as a % of Value Added
- Material Costs as a % of Sales
- SG&A Costs as a % of Sales
- SG&A Costs as a % of Value Added
- Sales Analysis Per Factory Employee
- Sales Analysis Per SG&A Employee
- Profit Analysis Per Factory Employee
- Profit Analysis Per SG&A Employee
- Value Added Analysis Per Employee
- Payroll Analysis
- and more...

Benchmark your performance against industry statistics and ratios.

Import your data. Save time & money.

The Data Import Wizard will save you hours of manual entries by importing your spreadsheets, income statements, budgets, payroll, fixed assets, and other data directly into Cost Rates Advisor.
Use our pre-formatted import templates or your own spreadsheets using field matching functionality.
Import data from spreadsheets or software products such as QuickBooks, MIS Software, Pace, Enterprise 32, Avanti, Monarch, Radius, Microsoft Dynamics, Sage Accounting, and other products.

Visual Navigation Tree

A navigation tree displays a hierarchical of how your departments, cost centers, employees, expenses, & other data has been allocated.
Departments, cost centers, and other cost categories can be expanded to view its related entries in detail.
Click on any item in the tree to quickly navigate and edit your information on the fly.

No accounting or budgeted hourly cost rates knowledge needed

The Quick Start Guide provides easy to follow step-by-step instructions that guide you through preparing your cost rates.
The comprehensive and easy on-line help manual contains over 200 topics that can be easily searched using keywords.
Online Help is specific to each screen, reducing the time looking for information or the answers to your questions.
Embedded in the help is information about industry best practices, examples, diagrams, and answers to common questions.

See how your costs and rates have changed over time

The History function takes a snapshot of your cost rates, factory costs, SG&A, labor allocations, equipment productivity, and other important data.
Shows trends of how your rates and costs have changed over time and why.

Tested and Proven

CostRatesAdvisor was engineered based on tested and proven best practice formulas, accounting principles, and standards supported by the printing and packaging industries.
It is used by hundreds of organizations throughout North America and the world, small and large, spanning all industry segments including web & sheetfed, large format, digital, flexographic, ink-jet, screen, mailing, packaging, and in-plant operations. more...
CostRatesAdvisor is the most popular cost rates software used and recommended by the printing and packaging industry.