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True Cost

Planned (Phase 3) True cost is the internal cost base used to calculate any client quotation. It rolls up material costs (from the BOM and assigned materials), CM cost, packaging cost, processing costs (washing, printing, embroidery), testing, freight, wastage, and MOQ considerations into a single per-unit number.

Inputs

The true cost workflow pulls from:
  • The approved style record
  • The approved BOM draft
  • Material assignments (where available)
  • Consumption per BOM line
  • Unit prices (from material library or template estimates)
  • CM (cut-and-make) cost
  • Packaging cost
  • Washing / printing / embroidery cost
  • Testing cost
  • Freight / logistics assumptions
  • Wastage rate
  • MOQ considerations

What Brain does

  1. Create a first-draft true cost using everything available.
  2. Fill in what it can from material library prices and template estimates.
  3. Highlight missing prices and mark assumptions explicitly.
  4. Flag uncertain fields with confidence scores.
  5. Ask the merchandiser to complete missing details.
  6. Log every human edit to feed the correction loop.

Draft true cost example

Low-confidence lines are always flagged for review.

Review statuses

The true cost record carries one of these statuses:
  • AI draft created
  • Missing material prices
  • Waiting for sourcing
  • Waiting for merchandiser review
  • Reviewed by merchandiser
  • Ready for quotation
The next workflow (quotation) only runs when status is Ready for quotation.

Approval gate

The merchandiser reviews the draft, fills missing prices, adjusts assumptions, and explicitly approves. Approval moves the record into Ready for quotation and triggers the suggestion to draft the quotation.