Orders
Pre- and post-costing: plan and actual to the hour and the euro
The hours, materials and machine costs you enter in the quote become the plan on the order. Every booked minute and every material withdrawal writes the actual next to it.
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Gantway Controlling — pre- and post-costing with plan-vs-actual comparison
How you work with it
Costing begins with the quote and runs seamlessly through to sign-off: whatever you enter for hours, materials, and machine costs becomes the plan on the order — and every booked minute, every material withdrawal writes the actual figure right next to it. The margin panel shows the current status at all times, color-coded: green on plan, yellow for small deviations, red once ten percent over. A frozen baseline preserves the original plan, even when things are rescheduled later. This way, every completed order becomes a better costing basis for the next.
Margin in view at all times
Live comparison between calculated costs and the quote total. Margin in euros and percent — shown before, during, and after every order.
- Calculated costs against the quote total
- Margin in euros and percent — before, during and after the order
Margin in view at all times
Controlling overview across all orders
A list of all orders with plan, actual, difference, quote price, and margin. Sortable, filterable — your monthly overview, without Excel workshops.
- All orders with plan, actual, difference, quote price and margin
- Sortable and filterable
- Your monthly overview without Excel
Controlling overview across all orders
Also included
Cost labor, material, machine and other
Labor (employees × hours × hourly rate), materials (quantity × sales price), machine (duration × machine hourly rate), and miscellaneous (free-text line items). Individually per task or aggregated across the order.
- Labor, material, machine and other
- Per task or aggregated across the order
Automatic overhead surcharges
Overhead is calculated automatically as a percentage surcharge — not typed in manually per line item. Each tenant sets up its standard surcharges in the settings (e.g. "20% on production costs"). For special cases, the surcharges can be overridden individually per order or line item.
- Percentage surcharge, calculated automatically
- Default surcharges in the settings
- Can be overridden per order or line item
Post-costing from real bookings
As soon as employees book time or material is withdrawn, it flows automatically into the post-costing. No double entry, no Excel reconciliation, no forgotten slips of paper.
- Booked time and withdrawn material flow in automatically
- No double entry, no Excel reconciliation
The plan comes from the order planning
The plan value is aggregated from an order's scheduled tasks — start, end, planned duration, planned material. When the order is released, a frozen snapshot is created. This snapshot is permanently the comparison value for actual bookings — even if the planner reschedules later.
- Plan from the order’s scheduled tasks
- Frozen at release
- Stays the reference even if rescheduled later
Compare plan and actual per line item
Per order, per task, per cost category. With the difference in euros and percent, color-coded. You see immediately where things are getting out of hand.
- Per order, task and cost category
- Difference in euros and percent
- Color-coded: green, amber, red
Set and reset the comparison basis
A baseline can be set for every order — it serves as the comparison basis for plan and actual. The planner can reset it at any time when the planning changes substantially; the old baseline is then replaced by the new one.
- Reference for plan and actual
- Can be reset whenever planning changes substantially
Three typical situations
- Costing before the quote: You calculate an order per line item: 12 h labor, 320 € material, 4 h machine. The software adds it up, and you see your margin in real time.
- Weekly controlling: Friday afternoon — you open the controlling overview. Three orders are green, one yellow, one red. On the red one you click in and see that the machine hours are 40% over plan.
- Improving costing rates: After three months you notice: for joinery work you always need 15% more hours than calculated. You adjust your hourly rate or your buffer times — data-driven instead of by gut feeling.
Step by step in the help center
- Order costing: pre- and post-costingPlan versus actual: what should the order cost, what did it cost? The costing tab with freezing, versions and the premium post-costing.
- Reading the post-costing correctlyWhere plan and actual come from, what the traffic light per task means — and why the numbers are live, not frozen.
- Understanding the costingWhere the numbers in the markup panel come from: five cost types, the order in which Gantway searches for an hourly rate, and the warning when you quote below your own costs.
- Rates & costs: the rates for costingHourly rates for qualifications and employees, machine rates per station, overhead surcharges — and what happens when a rate is missing.
- The controlling overviewAll orders with plan, actual and variance on one page — with a traffic light, an expandable detail view down to the individual line item, and filters by status, customer and period.
Post-cost your next order
With your own orders, no credit card. Or bring a current order to a 30-minute call.