Assembling a final costing sheet means taking cost pieces built separately, fabric cost, trims cost and the making (cutting, sewing and trimming) cost, and combining them with overhead and profit into one sheet that gives a single asking price. This lesson mainly teaches the money flow of an order: how a price is finally built up from every piece that Course 12.2 and Course 12.3 taught separately. Without this final assembly step, a merchandiser is left holding separate numbers with no single price to quote, and a buyer is left with no one sheet to check against its own target. This page shows you the general rule for assembling the pieces, the shapes the assembly takes in real life, and one worked case, Order A's own final costing sheet.
You need: the fabric cost from Course 12.2 and the trims and making cost from Course 12.3. You do not need to recalculate any of those pieces here; this lesson only assembles figures already built.
By the end of this lesson you can:
Not covered here: how a buyer's target price compares against this asking price (lesson 4.2), and where the sheet can flex before margin disappears (lesson 4.3).
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Cost component | One part of a garment's total price: fabric, trims, making, overhead, or profit. |
| Trims | Everything sewn or attached to a garment besides the main fabric: labels, buttons, zips, thread, care labels. |
| Overhead | The factory's running costs shared across everything it makes: rent, electricity, management. |
| Profit | The money left over after all costs are paid, out of a selling price. |
| 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. |
| Typed number | A value entered directly into a cell as a fixed figure, with no formula behind it. |
| FOB (free on board) | The factory delivers the goods on board the ship at its own port. Freight from there is the buyer's cost. |
Building a final costing sheet means bringing together the fabric cost (Course 12.2), the trims cost and the making cost (Course 12.3), then adding overhead and profit on top, all in one sheet with a formula-driven total. Every piece has already been calculated somewhere else; this sheet's own job is only to assemble them correctly, never to recalculate any one piece from scratch. If any one piece changes later, for example a fabric price rise or a faster making time, the whole assembled asking price must update by formula, not by someone manually adding the pieces again on a calculator.
| What can differ | The shapes you will meet | Why it matters to you |
|---|---|---|
| Who assembles the pieces | At Delta Garments, Mona the merchandiser gathers fabric cost from the fabric team and making cost from the industrial engineer, then assembles both into her own final sheet before quoting Northline Apparel. | A final costing sheet is rarely built by one person from a blank page; it is usually assembled from other people's already-checked figures. |
| Export or domestic assembly | Order A's assembly ends in an export FOB asking price. A domestic assembly for Cedar & Co.'s own factory order ends in an ex-factory asking price instead, with no shipping term attached. | The same pieces assemble the same way, but the label on the final total changes with the market the order serves. |
| Make to Order or hybrid assembly | A Make to Order factory such as Delta Garments assembles a fresh sheet for every new order before quoting it. A factory running a hybrid production model, Make to Order and Make to Stock lines side by side, assembles one sheet per style, then reuses it across repeat Make to Stock runs of the same style. | The assembly method never changes; only how often a fresh sheet is built changes with the business model. |
| What happens if a piece is missing | If the making-cost figure from Course 12.3 is not yet finalised, an incomplete final sheet understates the asking price, and a factory that quotes from it loses money on every piece shipped. | Assembling from separate pieces only works if every piece is actually ready; a merchandiser must check this before quoting, not after. |
Delta Garments assembles Order A's final costing sheet for Northline Apparel's 15,000-piece basic cotton T-shirt. Fabric cost is USD 1.15, already fixed from Course 12.2. Trims cost is USD 0.20 and making cost is USD 1.10, both already fixed from Course 12.3. Delta Garments adds overhead of USD 0.49 and profit of USD 0.26 on top. A total row sums all five figures with a formula, giving the assembled asking price of USD 3.20.
| Cost component | Order A (USD per piece) | Share of price (formula) |
|---|---|---|
| Fabric (Course 12.2) | 1.15 | 35.9% |
| Trims (Course 12.3) | 0.20 | 6.25% |
| Making (Course 12.3) | 1.10 | 34.375% |
| Overhead | 0.49 | 15.3125% |
| Profit | 0.26 | 8.125% |
| Total (asking price / FOB) | 3.20 | 100% |
The five shares add up to 100%, the sanity check that tells you the assembly is wired correctly.
Adding all five shares at full precision (35.9375, 6.25, 34.375, 15.3125 and 8.125) gives exactly 100%, confirming the assembly is wired correctly.
The methodA common mistake is copying already-calculated figures into a final sheet as typed numbers, checked once on a calculator, instead of linking each cell to its own source sheet with a formula. The final total looks correct on the day it is assembled. The first time any one source piece changes, for example the making cost after a line rebalancing, the typed final sheet stays silently wrong until someone remembers to re-copy every figure by hand.
A final costing sheet brings together several pieces: fabric cost, trims cost, and making cost, then adds overhead and profit on top. Each piece has already been worked out somewhere else. This sheet's job is only to add them all up correctly, using a formula, never a number typed in by hand. If a formula does the adding, then changing one piece updates the whole asking price by itself. If someone copies the pieces in as fixed numbers, the total stays exactly as first assembled even after one piece changes underneath it.
Mona assembles Order A's final costing sheet at Delta Garments. The industrial engineer has just finished the making-cost calculation in a separate sheet, USD 1.10 per piece. Pressed for time before a quote deadline, Mona types "1.10" directly into her final sheet's making row instead of linking the cell to the industrial engineer's own sheet.
Here is the row as Mona leaves it:
Does this shortcut cause any immediate problem? Decide before opening the answer.
Not immediately. Two facts decide this together.
First, today's number is correct. The industrial engineer's sheet says 1.10, and Mona's final sheet also says 1.10. Nothing on the assembled sheet is wrong today.
Second, the risk sits in the future, not the present. The moment the making cost changes, for example if a line rebalancing lowers it to 1.00, the typed 1.10 in Mona's final sheet is now silently wrong until she remembers to re-check the source sheet and retype it. A linked cell would have updated itself automatically, showing 1.00 and a new asking price of 3.10 the moment the source cell changed.
Neither fact alone tells the full story. Looking only at today's number would say the shortcut is harmless. Looking only at future risk without checking today's number would miss that the sheet is not wrong yet. The real risk is not today's number; it is every future update this final sheet will ever need.
If Mona's typed 1.10 stays in the final sheet after the true making cost has moved to 1.20 after a line rebalancing, Delta Garments keeps quoting an asking price of 3.20 built on a cost that no longer exists, while its true cost before profit has actually risen. This silently erases profit on every one of the 15,000 pieces shipped.
Across the whole order, that understated USD 0.10 per piece is USD 1,500 of profit Delta Garments believes it is earning but is not, a gap this lesson's linked-cell method avoids entirely.
The Final costing sheet has five columns: cost component, Order A's amount, Order A's share of price, your order's amount (a yellow input cell), and your share of price. Order A's rows total 3.20, with the share and total rows live formulas, never typed numbers. For your own order, type each component's dollar value into the yellow column only, pulling fabric cost from Course 12.2 and trims and making cost from Course 12.3, leaving every share cell and the total row untouched. If your five shares do not sum to 100%, a formula has been overwritten with a typed number.
[Download the Final costing sheet](../../templates/T12-C04-final-costing-sheet.xlsx)
1. What does a final costing sheet in this course assemble?
2. Why must the already-built pieces be linked into the final sheet by formula rather than typed in as fixed numbers?
3. Order B, the jeans, has a fixed total FOB of USD 9.80 per piece. If its fabric, trims and making pieces sum to USD 8.50 before overhead and profit are added, what must overhead plus profit equal for the assembled total to reach USD 9.80?
| 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. |
| Trims | الإكسسوارات | Fournitures (accessoires) | Aksesuar (yardımcı malzeme) | Everything sewn or attached to a garment besides the main fabric: labels, buttons, zips, thread, care labels. |
| Overhead | التكاليف العامة | Frais généraux | Genel giderler | The factory's running costs shared across everything it makes: rent, electricity, management. |
| Profit | الربح | Profit | Kâr | The money left over after all costs are paid, out of a selling price. |
| 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. |
| Typed number | رقم مكتوب يدويًا | Nombre saisi manuellement | Elle girilen sayı | A value entered directly into a cell as a fixed figure, with no formula behind it. |
| FOB (free on board) | تسليم على ظهر السفينة في ميناء المصنع | FOB (franco à bord) | FOB (gemide teslim) | The factory delivers the goods on board the ship at its own port. Freight from there is the buyer's cost. |
You can now assemble a final costing sheet from its separately built pieces. The next lesson takes that finished sheet's asking price and compares it against a buyer's target price, the first step of a real price negotiation. Back to the course map