What your assembly costs is in your own BOM. You do not have to ask anyone for it.
The parts list out of your design goes in, resolved lines with price, availability and lifecycle status come out. You see what your assembly costs at your own quantity before you collect a single quote, and you hold the yardstick you will measure that quote against later. Prices and availability come from over 350 catalogues.
The BOM is finished, the price is not
At the end of a design there is a list out of the layout tool: designator, value, package, a manufacturer part number on many lines, two candidates and a question mark on a few. For engineering that list is complete, for procurement it is not yet. What happens next you already know: the file goes out as an enquiry, and weeks later a single figure comes back, with no way to tell which line drives it and where something was guessed. And you have nothing to measure that figure against.
From the design state to a procurable state
- 1
Read the file, detect the columns
A spreadsheet or an export from your layout tool, in the column order you already use. Which column carries the manufacturer part number is searched for rather than assumed. There is no template for you to fill in.
- 2
Resolve the lines
Every line is resolved against the catalogue data: manufacturer, part number, datasheet, price, stock and lead time. Lines that match several parts, or none, stay flagged instead of being quietly set to one candidate.
- 3
The price at your own quantity
Material cost per part and per assembly, calculated at the quantity you actually intend to build, with the price break that applies there. Ten prototypes and five thousand pieces are two different calculations over the same lines.
- 4
Hand over a clean state
What goes out is a versioned state with part numbers, quantities and released alternatives, not a spreadsheet whose validity lives in its file name. Whoever receives it can price it without coming back to you.
What you get out of it
The BOM is where the circuit, the price and the delivery date come together. That is why it pays to make it dependable early.
The price before you ask
You see what your assembly costs at your own quantity without having sent an enquiry. That is the figure you walk into a conversation with, and the yardstick for a quote that later names a different one.
Gaps surface while the layout can still change
A line without a manufacturer part number, a line matching two possible parts, a line whose part is no longer available: you see it while you can still move something in the layout, not once the boards have been made.
Every figure carries its reasoning
Every line states what its price is built from and what it rests on. The software distinguishes which explanation may leave the house and which stays inside it, so you can pass on an extract without sending your own costing with it.
A state, not an attachment
Every revision stays separately traceable: which state applied when, what changed between two states, which state was procured. The question of which file was the right one last time stops coming up.
Prices that are from today
Price, stock and lead time per line come from over 350 catalogues rather than from the last order. A line whose lead time has grown shows up on the BOM, not on the order confirmation.
What goes out is exactly what you checked
The released state becomes an enquiry without preparing the list a second time. What you checked is exactly what goes out.
- 350+
- catalogues for price, stock and lead time per line
- 6
- entries per resolved line: manufacturer, part number, datasheet, price, stock and lead time
- 1
- parts list that carries price, availability and lifecycle status together
- 0
- templates to fill in: the columns are detected the way your file carries them
What belongs next to it
The BOM is the beginning. These three pages describe what follows from it.
Obsolescence in your own design
Lifecycle status per line, an early warning while the replacement is still plannable, and electrically equivalent alternatives to release.
DFM analysis for development teams
What your layout triggers in a specific plant: the rule violation with its limit and its spot, plus the share a design decision has in the price.
eCAD integration for KiCad and Altium
Hand the BOM and the fabrication data over from inside the running board editor, without an intermediate export.
Frequently asked questions
- Can I work out what my assembly costs without sending an enquiry?
- Yes, and without anyone learning that you did. You load your BOM, state your quantity and see the material cost per assembly with the price break that applies at that quantity. The result is your own yardstick: if a quote names a different figure later, you know which part of it is material and which part is the manufacturer's work.
- My BOM has lines without a manufacturer part number. Is that a problem?
- It is the normal state at the end of a design, and it is exactly why those lines should be visible early. A line without a part number, and a line that matches several parts, stay flagged instead of being quietly set to one candidate. You then decide while the layout can still change, rather than once the boards have been made.
- How do I hand the finished state to a manufacturing partner?
- As a versioned state with part numbers, quantities, released alternatives and the date it applied. The other side needs no software from us for that, it needs a list with nothing left to guess. The benefit stays with you: the queries do not come back, and you can look up at any time which state you handed over.
- Which explanation does the other side see, and which stays with me?
- Every figure carries its reasoning, and every reasoning carries its audience. Anything that concerns your own costing is marked internal and stays in the house; anything that explains the line itself you may pass on. So you do not decide line by line all over again what an extract is allowed to contain.
- Does the BOM also calculate what it costs to build my assembly?
- The material cost comes out of the BOM. What placing this assembly costs depends on your design decisions: pitch, the share of through-hole parts, testability, layer count. That calculation sits on the DFM analysis page, because it needs the layout and not only the list.
See PCBoffer in action: book a demo
30 minutes with founder Dr. Josip Strutz, on your own bill of materials: what PCBoffer calculates from it and where it takes work off your hands.
- 30-minute live session via Google Meet
- Tailored to your parts and your BOM
- No commitment required
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