You are about to quote a buyer on a style and need one number you can trust: what a single piece costs you to make, and what to charge so you keep the margin you planned. Most quotes go wrong because the number was built from fabric and sewing wages alone. Rent, electricity, office salaries and the pieces that fail inspection still have to be paid for out of the price.
This free Excel sheet builds the full cost per piece, suggests a selling price for your target margin, and compares your styles side by side. It is in Arabic, like its page: garment costing sheet. The list of all our free sheets is at /templates (in Arabic).
What is inside the sheet
- Start here: short instructions and how to read the colours.
- Model cost: the result sits at the top so it stays on screen while you type below it. Below it are the inputs: materials (consumption per piece, unit price, waste %), operations (standard minutes and piece-rate pay for each), other costs per piece (outside printing, embroidery or washing, packing), monthly overheads with monthly output, and the reject rate and target margin.
- Style comparison: cost, price, quantity, profit per piece, margin and order profit for each style, with a red mark when the margin is under your target.
- Why still on Excel?: a short note on when a spreadsheet stops being enough.
A worked example (sample data)
The numbers below are the sample data in the sheet, not figures from a real factory. The style is a kids' cotton T-shirt, order of 1,000 pieces.
- Materials: 81.06 per piece. This already includes waste, for example 1.2 m of jersey at 60 with 5% waste, plus rib, thread, a label and a bag.
- Operations: 21.00 per piece, from seven operations such as cutting, shoulders and sleeves, neck, sides, hems, finishing and packing.
- Other costs: 4.00 for outside work.
- Overhead share: 150,000 monthly overheads divided by 20,000 pieces a month gives 7.50 per piece.
- Rejects: with a 3% reject rate the sheet adds 3.51 per piece, because the good pieces must carry the cost of the ones you cannot sell.
Cost per piece comes to about 117.07. Materials are 69% of it, which tells you where a saving would matter most. With a 25% margin the suggested price is 156.10, a profit of 39.02 per piece, or 39,024 on the order. The sheet also shows that this is a markup of 33.3% over cost.
In the comparison sheet the sample also lists a jeans style (cost 182.50, price 215) and a winter pyjama (cost 140, price 190). Against a 20% target, the jeans margin is about 15.1% and shows in red, while the T-shirt and the pyjama pass. That is the kind of thing you want to see before the order starts, not after.
Why these features matter
- Rejects and overheads are inside the cost. A cost that leaves them out looks better than it is.
- Margin on price, not on cost. The two are different numbers. The sheet shows both so nobody confuses them.
- No manual totals. Every grey cell is a formula, so changing a fabric price updates the cost, the price and the order profit together.
- Red when a style is below target. You do not have to read every row.
- Free, no sign-up, and it runs in Excel 2016 and later, Google Sheets and LibreOffice.
Using the online version
The template page opens directly on the worked example above, so you see real numbers before you touch anything. You edit the white (input) cells right in the page and the grey calculated cells update immediately. You can import your own .xlsx file made from this template, export your work to .xlsx, or download the original Excel file. Your data stays in your browser and is not sent to the server.
A sensible first run: replace the materials with your own consumption and prices, then the operations, then the monthly overheads, and look at the cost per piece before touching the margin.
Common mistakes
- Typing percentages as fractions. Write 5 for 5%, not 0.05.
- Using last year's monthly output for the overhead share. If you produce less than you assumed, each piece carries more overhead than shown.
- Costing one style once and never updating it when fabric prices move.
If you need to see a cost overrun while an order is still running, a sheet only gives the estimate made before production. ProTrack ties each stage of an order to its actual cost and the contract, so a cost overrun shows while it can still be fixed: ProTrack. If efficiency is part of your pricing, read how garment factories calculate production efficiency first.
Next step
Pick your best-selling style, enter its real fabric consumption and prices, and compare the cost per piece with the price you quote today. If the margin is under your target, you have found the first thing to fix.