A finished costing sheet shows five dollar figures and a total. Reading it well means more than accepting those figures; it means knowing what underlying numbers produced each one, so a wrong or outdated figure can be caught before it is quoted to a buyer or approved by an owner. Lesson 1.1 grouped the five components into three families by what drives them. This lesson goes one line at a time through Order A's own finished sheet and shows exactly which numbers feed fabric, trims, making, overhead and profit. This lesson mainly teaches the money flow: how to trace a printed figure back to the numbers that built it.
You need: the three cost families from lesson 1.1 (material costs, conversion costs, profit) and the five cost components from Course 7.
By the end of this lesson you can:
Not covered here: why the same garment can cost differently for two orders (lesson 1.3), common costing mistakes (lesson 1.4), and building a costing sheet from a blank page (lesson 1.5).
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Cost component | One part of a garment's total price: fabric, trims, making, overhead, or profit. |
| Fabric cost | The cost of the fabric used in one garment, driven by fabric price per kilogram and consumption per piece. |
| Making charge | The labour cost of cutting, sewing and finishing one garment. |
| Overhead | A factory's running costs that are not fabric, trims or direct labour: rent, electricity, management salaries and similar costs, shared across all the pieces it makes. |
| Profit | The money left over after all costs are paid, out of a selling price. |
| FOB price | The price the factory charges for the garment, delivered on board the ship at its own port. |
| Share of price | One cost component's dollar value divided by the total price, usually shown as a percentage. |
Some costing-sheet lines are built from numbers a reader can check directly: fabric cost, for instance, comes from a fabric price per kilogram and a consumption figure per piece, both real, checkable numbers. Other lines, like trims, making and overhead, are usually shown as one lump dollar figure, with no build-up printed on the sheet itself, because their own underlying numbers, a bill of small items, an SMV and a labour rate, an allocation formula, live in separate documents. Profit is neither: it is a decision the factory made, not a calculation to trace at all. Reading a costing sheet well means treating these three kinds of line differently, not assuming every figure has the same kind of backup.
| What can differ | The shapes you will meet | Why it matters to you |
|---|---|---|
| How much detail fabric shows | Some sheets show fabric price and consumption as two separate columns, so the reader sees the calculation. Others show only the final fabric dollar figure, as Order A's own sheet does in Course 7. | A sheet with visible price and consumption lets you check a fabric change yourself; a lump figure means you must ask the merchandiser for the two numbers behind it. |
| How trims are itemised | A simple style like Order A's T-shirt often shows trims as one lump figure, since the item list, labels, thread, care label, is short. A trim-heavy style may show trims broken into several rows, one per item, each with its own small cost. | The more items a style has, the more useful an itemised trims section becomes for finding a single overpriced item. |
| Export or domestic framing | Order A's sheet ends in an FOB total, since Northline Apparel is an export buyer. Cedar & Co.'s own domestic sheet keeps the same five components but ends in an ex-factory total, with local delivery added separately rather than export freight. | The reading method is identical either way; only the label on the final total line changes. |
| Who assembles the sheet, and for whom | A merchandiser at Delta Garments builds the sheet from the factory's own cost data. A buyer's own team may rebuild the same five lines independently, using market price benchmarks, to check whether the factory's figures look reasonable. | The same finished sheet can be a quotation from one side and a benchmark check from the other; reading it well matters to both. |
A new hire at Delta Garments is shown Order A's finished costing sheet for the first time. Mona explains what stands behind each of the five lines before the new colleague is allowed to quote from it unsupervised.
| Line | Order A (USD per piece) | What actually feeds this line |
|---|---|---|
| Fabric | 1.15 | Fabric price 5.60 per kilogram times consumption 0.205 kilogram per piece |
| Trims | 0.20 | A lump sum for labels, thread and care label bought from Trimco; no further split shown |
| Making | 1.10 | The garment's own SMV times Delta Garments' labour cost per minute; the SMV build-up is a separate document |
| Overhead | 0.49 | Delta Garments' total overhead cost, allocated across all the pieces it runs; the allocation rate is set factory-wide |
| Profit | 0.26 | What Delta Garments decided to keep on this order, not calculated from any other number |
| Total (FOB price) | 3.20 | The sum of the five lines above |
Fabric's own build-up, price times consumption, is usually printed or easy to ask for, and a reader who has just checked it can wrongly assume every other line works the same way. Making, overhead and trims are typically shown as one dollar figure with no calculation on the sheet at all, their own supporting numbers living in a separate SMV sheet, an overhead allocation model, or a trims bill of materials. A reader who expects a visible calculation for making or overhead and finds none may wrongly conclude the figure is unsupported or arbitrary, when it is simply documented elsewhere.
A finished costing sheet shows five dollar numbers and a total. Reading it well means knowing where each number came from, not just trusting it because it is printed. Fabric usually shows its own two feeding numbers, a price and a consumption figure, right there or nearby, so anyone can check it. Trims, making and overhead are usually one lump number each, with their own detail kept in a separate document, not because they are less trustworthy, but because their detail belongs somewhere else. Profit is not calculated from anything at all; it is simply what the factory decided to keep. Knowing which kind of line you are looking at tells you what question to ask.
A buyer's assistant at Northline Apparel reviews Order A's finished costing sheet before approval. Seeing fabric shown with its price and consumption clearly stated, but making shown only as a single figure of USD 1.10 with no visible calculation, the assistant queries the figure, suggesting it looks unsupported compared with fabric.
Here is the line the assistant is looking at:
Does the absence of a visible calculation mean the making charge is unsupported? Decide before opening the answer.
No, it does not. Two facts decide this together.
First, what fabric's visible calculation actually is. Fabric happens to show its own price and consumption because both numbers are simple and commonly quoted together; this is a convenience of that particular cost component, not a rule that every line must show its own calculation.
Second, what stands behind making even without a visible calculation. Making's own USD 1.10 comes from the garment's SMV multiplied by Delta Garments' labour cost per minute, a calculation that exists in the factory's own work-study records, a separate document from the costing sheet itself.
The assistant's instinct to question an unexplained figure is reasonable practice. But the right response is to ask for the SMV and labour-rate document behind making, not to treat the absence of an on-sheet formula as proof the number is arbitrary.
Framed qualitatively, treating every unexplained lump figure as suspicious risks delaying approval of a properly costed order while a merchandiser tracks down documents that already exist. If Northline Apparel's assistant had rejected Order A's making charge outright instead of asking for its build-up, the order's approval, and Delta Garments' fabric booking that depends on it, could slip by days, pushing the whole 16-week timeline back with no cost actually saved.
A single request for the SMV document would have resolved the question in a day, at no cost to the timeline at all.
Open the Cost build-up sheet workbook linked below. Its one sheet, "Cost build-up", lists Order A's five components, each with a note on how the amount is driven. Read the note beside fabric first; it names the two numbers, price and consumption, that multiply to the printed figure. Read the notes beside trims, making and overhead next; each names the kind of document that holds its own detail, without repeating that detail on this sheet. Then fill in the yellow "Your order" column with your own five numbers, asking the same questions of your own costing team for any line whose driver you cannot yet name.
[Download the Cost build-up sheet](../../templates/T12-C01-cost-build-up-sheet.xlsx)
1. What two numbers combine to produce Order A's fabric cost of USD 1.15?
2. Why does a costing sheet usually show no visible calculation for the making charge, unlike fabric?
3. A different order's costing sheet shows trims at USD 0.55 with no itemised list. What is the correct next step before trusting that figure?
| EN | AR | FR | TR | Meaning |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cost component | عنصر التكلفة | Élément de coût | Maliyet bileşeni | One part of a garment's total price: fabric, trims, making, overhead, or profit. |
| Fabric cost | تكلفة القماش | Coût du tissu | Kumaş maliyeti | The cost of the fabric used in one garment, driven by fabric price per kilogram and consumption per piece. |
| Making charge | تكلفة التصنيع | Coût de façon | İşçilik (fason) maliyeti | The labour cost of cutting, sewing and finishing one garment. |
| Overhead | التكاليف العامة | Frais généraux | Genel giderler | A factory's running costs that are not fabric, trims or direct labour: rent, electricity, management salaries and similar costs, shared across all the pieces it makes. |
| Profit | الربح | Profit | Kâr | The money left over after all costs are paid, out of a selling price. |
| FOB price | سعر التسليم على ظهر السفينة | Prix FOB | FOB fiyatı | The price the factory charges for the garment, delivered on board the ship at its own port. |
| Share of price | نسبة السعر | Part du prix | Fiyat payı | One cost component's dollar value divided by the total price, usually shown as a percentage. |
You now know what underlying numbers feed each line of Order A's finished costing sheet. The next lesson compares Order A's export costing structure with Cedar & Co.'s domestic ex-factory pricing, to show why the same garment shape can carry two different total prices. Back to the course map