Validating Migrated Cost Data in EDGEBIC

Validating migrated cost data in EDGEBIC means confirming that the imported material costs, labor rates, and overhead assumptions produce quote estimates that match a hand calculation from your accounting source. In EDGEBIC by User Solutions, cost data rides in on the same item and work center imports as scheduling data, but it feeds the quote estimate rather than the plan. A wrong date gets noticed fast; a wrong cost hides until a job runs at the wrong margin. That is why cost data earns its own validation pass before sales quotes a single customer.

Why cost data needs its own pass

Scheduling data and cost data travel together on the import masks. Your item master carries both the routing links and the unit cost; your work centers carry both the capacity settings and the labor rate. It is easy to assume that if the schedule looks right, the costs must be right too. They are not the same check.

A scheduling error announces itself: a job lands on the wrong day and a planner reacts. A cost error is silent. An item imported with last year's unit cost, or a work center rate left at a default, produces a quote that looks entirely reasonable and is quietly wrong. Nobody catches it until the job runs and the margin is off. So cost data needs validating against a source that scheduling validation never touches: your accounting numbers.

The three cost inputs to check

An EDGEBIC quote estimate is built from three inputs, and you validate each one.

Material cost. Comes from each item's unit cost on the item master, summed across the quantity of every component the product consumes. Validate that the imported unit costs match your accounting source, item by item for a sample.

Labor cost. Comes from the run hours the routing generates, priced at each work center's labor rate. Two things can be wrong here: the rate, or the run time that produced the hours. Both feed the same number, so a labor gap sends you to check both.

Overhead. Applied as an assumption on top of labor. Confirm the overhead basis you use is set the way your finance team expects, because a different percentage changes every estimate uniformly.

Clean before you validate

Two problems are worth catching before import, because they are visible on inspection: stale values and missing values. A unit cost that has not changed in years, a blank labor rate, a zero cost on an active item. A zero cost is the dangerous one, because it silently understates every quote that uses the item and produces no error at all.

Fix these at the source spreadsheet before they enter EDGEBIC, following the same discipline as cleaning your data before importing to EDGEBIC. The clean removes the values you can see are wrong. It cannot tell you whether a plausible number is actually correct, which is the job of the validation that follows.

The validation method: cost it twice

The reliable way to validate is to cost the same products two ways and compare.

First, in EDGEBIC, run a quote simulation for a representative product and read the material, labor, and overhead breakdown. The quote simulates the schedule for the order and costs it from the master data, so the estimate reflects exactly what a real customer quote would use. This is the what-if promise-date and cost capability working as designed.

Second, cost the same product by hand from accounting: sum the component unit costs for material, multiply the routing's run hours by the work center rates for labor, and apply your overhead assumption.

Compare. If the two agree, the imported data is sound. If they diverge, the breakdown tells you where to look:

• A material gap means a component unit cost imported wrong.
• A labor gap means a work center rate or a routing run time is off.
• An overhead gap means the assumption was set differently than finance expects.

Do this across ten products spanning your range, not one, so a systematic import error has nowhere to hide. This is the cost equivalent of the load-and-date checks used when validating a migrated schedule against RMDB.

When the numbers disagree

A divergence is useful, not alarming, because it points precisely. The most common cause is a units or format mismatch on import: a cost entered per hundred where EDGEBIC expects per unit, or a rate in the wrong denomination. Because the import mask is repeatable, you correct the source spreadsheet and re-import as many times as needed, then re-run the two-way comparison until it agrees. No cost data is ever stranded, because every value can be re-imported from a corrected source.

Hold sales back from quoting off EDGEBIC until the sample agrees. The whole reason to validate cost data separately is that its errors are invisible in the schedule, so the only proof is the comparison itself.

The takeaway

To validate migrated cost data in EDGEBIC, cost a representative sample of products twice, once through an EDGEBIC quote simulation and once by hand from accounting, and reconcile the material, labor, and overhead breakdown. Clean stale and zero values before import, since a zero cost silently understates every quote, then validate that the plausible values are actually correct. Because the import mask is repeatable, any divergence is corrected at the source and re-imported. See the platform on the EDGEBIC overview, read the upgrade path on the RMDB to EDGEBIC guide, and pair this with validating a migrated schedule against RMDB.