Calculate successfully - 6 points you should consider
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Especially in view of the extremely rising energy and raw material prices that affect all of us, both in business and privately, the correct and foresighted (pre-)calculation of your purchases, orders, sales or projects is becoming more and more important. Especially – but not only – when margins are tight, the calculation simply has to sit in order to remain economically efficient.
Cost prices in the company, purchase prices, sales prices: On the one hand, you have to be sure that the calculation is economically profitable and that your margins are secure. On the other hand, price increases that flow into your own prices and offers must be transparent, well thought out and comprehensible for your customers.
The permanent review of costs on all sides and in all areas of the company is essential for your profitability. It is important to have an overview of everything, to be able to see through dependencies and to be able to act flexibly. This only works with a flexible and modern ERP software that thinks along with you.
You should definitely take the following points into account in your (pre-)calculation:
1. Check cost centre allocation rate
In order to get an up-to-date picture of the cost of goods sold in your company, you should check your cost centre allocation rates and keep them constantly up to date. Have you updated any increased costs for wages and salaries? Have increases in energy costs been taken into account?
Take a close look to see if everything is still up to date. Check carefully and uncover any discrepancies or possibly outdated calculation bases. This is absolutely essential at the moment, as prices for raw materials and energy are constantly changing and further massive increases can be expected in the short term.
2. Check your stock
What is the state of your stock? Are all materials and products sufficiently available or do you have to reorder?
Do you work in advanter with minimum and maximum stocks in the products? Then simply start the reorder level query. You can also create the order(s) directly from the order proposal list.
It is important to check the current prices in advance. Under certain circumstances, repeat orders can become more expensive, as your suppliers also face the economically induced price increases and pass them on.
In the advanter module “Manufacturer Price Lists” you manage all the price lists of your suppliers. Current lists of your suppliers are imported as .xls or .csv. With the help of the price list update function you can update your product prices with a mouse click. Alternatively, cost rates can of course be adjusted manually.
3. Enter validity of prices or update prices
The half-life of prices has become very short – due to inflationary and strongly fluctuating economic trends. Therefore, the purchasing conditions with their prices and validity periods should be precisely tracked in your merchandise management system. Only in this way can you act efficiently in the long term and set your purchasing and sales conditions with foresight and in line with the market.
Our ERP software advanter has an automated validity check of purchasing conditions on product basis. This allows you to keep an overview and not miss out on anything. If a recorded validity has expired, you will receive corresponding warnings in the product area (for both procurement products and production products).
New prices and validity periods can then be requested directly from the suppliers with a click.
To prevent offers with outdated prices from being created in sales, you can block affected products for the period of the price adjustment. These products cannot be used in sales until they are released.
4. Project-related updating of current conditions
You can also check the current prices and availabilities of your suppliers on a project-related basis.
You will find a function for proactive price enquiries with suppliers and vendors as standard in the various advanter modules. You decide whether you want to send a price enquiry only to the currently stored supplier or directly to several suppliers.
5. Update sales calculations
Only if you check and update your purchase prices regularly and in good time, and have an overview at all times of when, where and how much something has changed or will change in the price, can you also react to this in sales and adjust your sales prices accordingly. Here, the coordination and communication between the departments and the systems simply have to be right. Information must flow together perfectly without friction losses or misunderstandings. Otherwise you run the risk of filling offers with outdated prices and incurring economic damage.
The advanter validity check also provides support here: offers or orders cannot be printed with an expiring validity. Appropriate warning messages appear with information about the expired prices.
Do you have a webshop? Of course, the prices have to be right here too. With advanter you are on the safe side. All items that have had a price change are updated in the webshop.
Price changes for price lists are also no problem. Choose a factor in % or an amount and update your price lists at the push of a button.
6. Post-calculation: check your profit and check your success
To ensure and check that you are working efficiently and achieving your margins, you should also carry out a post-calculation regularly, or after each project.
The aim of the post-calculation is to uncover deviations from your quotation calculation and to determine a cost over-recovery or a cost under-recovery. In addition, it serves to determine the sales price to aim for.
In advanter you can carry out the post-calculation automatically and check all individual factors involved in production. You can then assign a cost under- or over-recovery to individual product groups, activities or machine usage, for example. If you find deficits in individual areas or overall, you can block the offer for further processing or duplication.
Stay on the ball!
The big picture and the small details: manifold savings potentials
First and always Corona, the war in Europe, climate change with its effects…. the times are noticeably changing. Supply and demand are changing rapidly and rising prices for energy and raw materials, supply shortages and inflationary tendencies dominate our actions and require new decisions every day.
Even if you carry out your calculations optimally: The increased cost pressure may make it indispensable for you to look for further savings potential in your company. For example, check your time recording. This is not necessarily about the efficiency of individual resources, but rather about higher-level interactions. Where do you have leaks? Time lost due to poor interfaces? Where is there duplication of work? Where do frictional losses occur? Where is the flow of information inefficient? Where does a price change and you don’t know about it?
Check your processes and uncover your potentials. Check your time recording and project times. Some potentials are so obvious that you hardly need to look for them. Often, however, a look from the outside or a conversation with your employees helps. Even a time gain of 5 minutes a day pays off in your new cost accounting!
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