We have recently released some updates for pricing, costing and quoting and I thought it would be a good opportunity to review the functionality that has been delivered.

Cost description

The original grids used for language and additional costs have been updated to include a cost description which shows a more human-readable version of the cost. See, for example, these descriptions:

Negative costs

Language and additional costs can now be set to negative values to allow for discounts to be applied. Previously, only positive values were allowed when adding or editing costs.

Re-ordering costs

The order that the costs are applied is important; especially when adding percentage values. Both language and additional costs can now be re-ordered using the drag handle to the left of the cost. This ensures that the cost calculations are done correctly.

Conditional costs

Conditional costs are now available to help users to implement logical calculations in the pricing model and subsequently the quote. Conditional costs are only applied when a condition is met. To add a conditional cost, select conditional as the cost type when adding a new cost at either the language or project level. You will be presented with the following options:

Here you can specify the following:

Variable

This can be either Word Count or Running Total. At language level, Word Count refers to the source word count. At project level, Word Count is the source word count multiplied by the number of target languages. At language level, Running Total is the currently calculated cost for that language. At project level, Running Total is the currently calculated cost for the whole project.

Operator

The standard operators are:

Value

The value entered is used to compare the variable using the operator. For example, if you wanted to check whether the Word Count is less than 500, you would enter 500 in this field.

Type

There are three condition types:

Unit Cost

The unit cost is either the percentage to apply or the Absolute/Relative currency value to use.

Minimum language cost example

To implement a minimum language cost of €500, you would add a conditional language cost with the following settings:

This will generate a description of:

If Running Total < 500 then set Running Total to €500.00

Large project discount example

To implement a 5% discount on projects over 100,000 words of translation, you would add a conditional project cost with the following settings:

This will generate a description of:

If Word Count >= 100,000 then apply -5%

Displaying and editing costs

Previously, project costs could only be changed during the Customer Quote Review workflow task. This was restrictive because any changes to the scope of the project could not be reflected in the costs, even if they were agreed by the customer. The new release of Language Cloud has a dedicated section for displaying and editing the costs associated with the project. A new tab is available when viewing a project:

On this tab you have the project costs laid out as follows:

Editing costs

During the lifecycle of a project, a user with sufficient permissions can open up the Costs page for the project and make changes to the costs to reflect any scope changes in the project. It is down to the user to make sure that the customer is aware of these changes and the assumption is that they have been pre-agreed with the customer!

Downloading a quote

Quotes can be downloaded from the Costs page in either Excel or PDF formats.

The quote contains the same sections as described above.

We hope this post was informative and we look forward to continuing to provide you with updates to the product.

David Pooley
Senior Product Manager