This page brings together everything this course has built separately. Lesson 12.3.1 built a trims line item by item. Lesson 12.3.2 costed the wet process behind a finished fabric price. Lesson 12.3.3 turned an SMV into a CM labour cost. Lesson 12.3.4 added overhead and profit on top. None of these on its own is a full cost sheet; assembling all of them into one sheet, checkable line by line, is what actually lets a buyer approve a price with confidence.
This matters most to a buyer such as Sara at Northline Apparel, who needs to check a factory's whole submitted price before approving it, not accept a single total on trust. A cost sheet she can trace, component by component, back to this course's own earlier lessons is one she can actually defend to her own management.
You need: the trims figure from lesson 12.3.1, the wet-process understanding from lesson 12.3.2, the CM build-up from lesson 12.3.3, and the overhead and profit addition from lesson 12.3.4.
By the end of this lesson you can:
Not covered here: the fabric and material cost sheet itself, covered in course T12-C02, and comparing a factory's asking price against a buyer's target price, covered in the next course, T12-C04.
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Costing sheet | The document that lists a garment's cost components and adds them to the price the factory quotes. |
| Cost component | One part of a garment's total price: fabric, trims, making, overhead, or profit. |
| Share of price | One cost component's dollar value divided by the total price, usually shown as a percentage. |
| Formula | An instruction in a spreadsheet cell that calculates a value from other cells, instead of a value typed in by hand. |
Trims, wet process, CM, overhead and profit each have their own build-up, shown in this course's own earlier lessons, and a complete cost sheet assembles all of them with every component still traceable to its own source. A buyer who checks only the final total has no way to know whether one component is quietly wrong while another happens to compensate for it. Checking component by component is the only way to confirm a price is correct for the right reasons, not merely correct by coincidence.
| What can differ | The shapes you meet | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| A factory assembling its own submission | Delta Garments' merchandiser assembles Order A's own cost sheet from this course's own component build-ups before it is ever sent to a buyer. | The factory's own internal check is the first line of defence against an error reaching the buyer at all. |
| A buyer checking a received cost sheet | Sara, at Northline Apparel, receives Delta Garments' completed cost sheet and checks trims against lesson 12.3.1's method, CM against lesson 12.3.3's SMV build-up, and overhead and profit against lesson 12.3.4's addition. | A buyer's check uses the identical component-by-component method as the factory's own build, just applied in the reverse direction, from total back to components. |
| A domestic brand's own internal review | Cedar & Co.'s own owner, Omar, reviews his domestic run's ex-factory price using the identical method, even without an external buyer's separate audit. | The assembly and checking method does not change with who is doing the checking or why. |
| A hybrid order blending export and domestic figures for comparison | Reviewing Order A's export FOB price and Cedar & Co.'s domestic ex-factory price side by side, both built from the identical style's components, shows how the same cost structure supports two different business models at once. | Seeing both together in one review makes clear that trims, CM, overhead and profit are properties of the garment and the factory, not of the buyer or the business model. |
| A component that looks wrong at a glance | If a submitted cost sheet showed CM at USD 1.60 per piece instead of USD 1.10, a buyer who knows the SMV-to-CM method can immediately ask for the SMV table and labour rate behind it, rather than accepting or rejecting the whole sheet blind. | Knowing each component's own build-up method lets a reviewer localise a problem to one line instead of doubting the entire sheet. |
Sara receives Delta Garments' completed cost sheet for Order A: fabric USD 1.15, trims USD 0.20, making (CM) USD 1.10, overhead USD 0.49, profit USD 0.26, totalling USD 3.20 FOB per piece. Rather than approving the total on trust, she checks each component against what this course has already taught her to expect.
| Component | What Sara checks it against |
|---|---|
| Trims, USD 0.20 | The six named items from lesson 12.3.1's own method: main label, care label, hangtag, poly bag, thread, size sticker |
| Fabric, USD 1.15 | The finished fabric price, itself a greige cost plus a wet-process charge, from lesson 12.3.2's own method |
| CM, USD 1.10 | The SMV-to-CM build-up from lesson 12.3.3: 2.62 minutes at about USD 0.42 per minute |
| Overhead and profit, USD 0.49 and USD 0.26 | Lesson 12.3.4's addition on top of trims and CM, consistent across Order A and any other order in the identical style |
Checking every component this way, rather than accepting the USD 3.20 total alone, is what lets Sara approve the price with something she can actually defend if her own management later questions it.
The worked numberEvery component sums to Order A's own fixed FOB price of USD 3.20 per piece, and every component individually traces back to a build-up this course has already shown: trims to lesson 12.3.1, the wet process behind fabric to lesson 12.3.2, CM to lesson 12.3.3, and overhead and profit to lesson 12.3.4.
A common mistake is a buyer glancing at a cost sheet's final total, seeing it matches an expected or previously quoted price, and approving the sheet without checking any individual component underneath it. Two components can be wrong in offsetting directions, for example CM overstated and overhead understated by the same amount, and still produce a final total that matches perfectly, hiding both errors from anyone who checks only the bottom line. Component-by-component checking is the only method that catches this kind of offsetting error.
A full price for a garment is made of several separate parts: the fabric, the small extra items like labels and thread, the sewing labour, the factory's own running costs, and its profit. Each part has its own way of being worked out, shown earlier in this course. Putting a full cost sheet together means listing every part and adding them up. Checking a full cost sheet properly means going back and looking at every part on its own, not just checking whether the final total looks right. Two mistakes can sometimes cancel each other out and still leave a total that looks correct, so only checking each part separately actually catches everything.
Sara receives a revised cost sheet for Order A ahead of a repeat order and notices the CM line now reads USD 1.30 per piece instead of the USD 1.10 she approved before, while every other component and the final total have also shifted to match. Rather than accepting the new total outright, she asks Delta Garments to show the SMV-to-CM build-up behind the new CM figure.
Delta Garments' reply reads:
Does this explanation account for the whole CM increase, or does something else also need checking? Decide before opening the answer.
The explanation fully accounts for the CM increase; the labour rate is confirmed unchanged, so only the SMV explains the movement.
First, the maths reconciles. 3.10 minutes at USD 0.42 per minute gives about USD 1.30, matching the new CM line exactly, with no unexplained gap.
Second, the labour rate is the same figure Sara already checked before. Since the rate has not moved, the entire CM increase is explained by the SMV increase alone, not by any change to how labour itself is priced.
Sara should accept the new CM figure as correctly built, but should still separately confirm the re-timed SMV is itself accurate, since an SMV table error would still flow through correctly into a wrong CM even though the CM calculation method is not at fault.
Framed against the CM increase in this lesson's scenario, USD 1.10 to USD 1.30 per piece, a difference of USD 0.20 per piece, approving the new total without asking which component moved would leave Northline Apparel unable to tell whether the increase was a fair reflection of a genuinely higher SMV, or an unrelated cost hidden inside the CM line.
Across a 15,000-piece repeat order, this USD 0.20 per piece difference is USD 3,000.00 in total, an amount worth confirming against its own real cause before it is simply accepted as the new price.
Open the Trims, process and CM cost sheet calculator. Fill in the SMV-to-CM sheet and the trims-and-CM sheet with your own order's figures; every total and share-of-subtotal cell calculates automatically with a formula. Compare your own order's subtotal, component by component, against Order A's own fixed figures before treating any of your own order's figures as final.
[Download the Trims, process and CM cost sheet calculator](../../templates/T12-C03-trims-process-cm-cost-sheet-calculator.xlsx)
Download the Trims, process and CM cost sheet calculator (Excel)
1. Why should a buyer check a cost sheet component by component instead of only checking the final total?
2. A cost sheet shows fabric 2.00, trims 0.30, CM 1.50, overhead 0.60 and profit 0.40. What is the full price per piece?
3. A revised cost sheet shows CM has increased, and the factory explains the SMV has increased while the labour rate is unchanged. What should a careful buyer still check?
| EN | AR | FR | TR | Meaning |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Costing sheet | كشف التكلفة | Fiche de coûts | Maliyet tablosu | The document that lists a garment's cost components and adds them to the price the factory quotes. |
| Cost component | عنصر التكلفة | Élément de coût | Maliyet bileşeni | One part of a garment's total price: fabric, trims, making, overhead, or profit. |
| 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. |
| Formula | صيغة حسابية | Formule | Formül | An instruction in a spreadsheet cell that calculates a value from other cells, instead of a value typed in by hand. |
You can now build the trims, process and CM portion of a costing sheet end to end. The next course adds the material cost sheet from T12-C02 to reach one final, complete price. Back to the course map