cost recovery calculator

This 6-lecture video programme, will teach you how to accurately cost your products and guide you on how to recover all operating expenses and set their selling price levels to optimize trading profits.

The videos are complemented by a Microsoft Excel Macro-Enabled workbook, which will progressively guide you to achieving the main objective of the course as outlined above. The programme is designed so that you can follow my lectures in the workbook, and you’ll be able to use it to model your own data to reinforce your understanding of the lessons.

There are twenty five lecture videos, which are designed with ‘discussion breaks’ so you can update the worksheet and the bizzdynamics app, should you choose to purchase it. The bizzdynamics app is a business financial simulator, which teaches how changes to key business elements, such as contribution, expenses, asset levels and funding strategies affect a business. I highly recommend that you consider purchasing it – it’s very reasonably priced.

The six videos are structured as follows:

video 1 - introduction

The introduction video simply explains the structure of the course.

video 2 - expenses

In these videos I explain the basic elements of a simple trading account. I emphasize the importance of classifying expenses as either cost of sales or overheads and categorizing them as either fixed or variable. I introduce a process to aggregate all fixed and variable expenses, which include employment, operating and depreciation expenses, that need to be recouped in the products' selling prices to optimize profits.

video 3 - product cost

In these videos I introduce you to my production and employment calculators. These calculators can assist in determining production capacity and the number of employees required to meet forecasted production and sales levels. The lesson includes calculating the unit cost of each element making up a finished item – a bill of materials (BOM). These elements include, materials, consumables, packaging and production variable expenses. This data is summarized in a product cost sheet.

video 4 – cost recovery

These videos will teach you how to calculate the break-even point in your business and how to apply this break-even concept for setting profitable sales targets. I introduce my bottom-up and top-down process management tools to manage the internal value chain, which contributes to the profit in an item’s selling price. Furthermore, you’ll learn about managing an items unit contribution to optimize trading profits. You’ll also see how the production calculator can be used to optimize production capacity.

video 5 - margin / markup

The penultimate video set teaches the difference between margin and mark-up and when and why they should be used. I also introduce you to my revenue factor concept, which allows you to calculate the turnover requirements to recover additional expenses and maintain profit levels.

video 6 - contribution mix

To gain market share profitably, when you operate in a multi-product environment, these final videos will teach you how to use price as a weapon to achieve your objective. I provide you with a back-solve revenue calculator to determine the revenue required to maintain targeted profit levels. This calculator can be used to measure the impact on trading profits by implementing a strategy of changing your  products' contribution mix to increase market share.

Quentin G McCullough

I enjoy motivating, mentoring and developing young entrepreneurs.

I am an accountant and my 35 years of general management experience includes: sales, marketing, finance, industrial relations, manufacturing, inventory management, logistics and information technology. As an eager advocate of information technology, I have applied myself to the development of analytical financial modelling tools aimed at improving efficiency within businesses. My methodologies and IP developed over these many years are being transferred onto my bizzbean cloud-based platform.

I have written a book, entitled 'getting to value', in which I explore the characteristics of an entrepreneur and provide my thoughts on mentorship and the need for them to learn from successful business leaders. I tell stories about my experiences as a manager. I adapt the well-known business life-cycle ‘J’-curve to challenge entrepreneurs on how they can progressively add value to each business touch-point (products, customers, suppliers, employees, infrastructure, systems and leadership) by applying common sense, humanity, innovation, structure and technology to create their asset of value.