Esmail Arshad
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Formlabs · Supply Chain Planning Intern · 2024

Scaling SLS powder cost reporting beyond Excel

Monthly COGS for SLS powders was calculated by hand in Excel. With the portfolio expected to grow from 8 to 25+ SKUs, I built a NetSuite reporting workflow that consolidated product, BOM and landed-cost inputs and cut manual reporting effort by 80%.

NetSuite · SQL · Advanced Excel

Starting point
8 SKUs costed manually each month in Excel
Growth
25+ planned SKUs expected as the SLS portfolio expanded
Outcome
80% reduction in manual reporting effort

Before

Monthly Excel calculation

Effort grew with every SKU added

  • Cost inputs gathered by hand each month
  • Raw material, assembly, shipping, duties, packaging, FX
  • Assumptions held inside the workflow itself
  • Recalculated from scratch every cycle

After

NetSuite reporting workflow

Built for the portfolio that was coming

  • Source of truth mapped per cost driver
  • SKU, BOM and cost-driver relationships defined once
  • Assumptions maintained centrally
  • Source-value changes flow through on a scheduled refresh
The reporting logic was rebuilt around reusable source data so new SKUs could be added without recreating the monthly process.

Challenge

COGS for the SLS powder portfolio was calculated by hand in Excel every month. At roughly eight products that was tedious but manageable. The portfolio was expected to pass 25 SKUs.

The cost data was also fragmented. Raw-material and assembly charges often sat on separate transaction records rather than on the finished powder SKU, so scaling the existing spreadsheet would have multiplied both the manual effort and the chance of two months using different cost assumptions.

What I did

  1. Mapped the source of truth for every COGS input — raw material, assembly and downpacking, transportation, duties, packaging, exchange rates and the remaining landed-cost components.
  2. Linked related product records back to the correct powder SKU, handling the cases where raw-material and assembly costs lived on separate transaction lines.
  3. Built the reporting logic across SQL data sources and NetSuite, consolidating the cost drivers into one repeatable monthly workflow.
  4. Designed for SKUs that did not exist yet, using available attributes and centrally maintained assumptions until final values arrived.
  5. Automated the refresh and distribution, so a change to a source value flowed through without rebuilding the calculation.

Decision

The goal was not to automate the spreadsheet as it stood. I built the logic around reusable source data and centrally held assumptions, so the process would still work at 25 SKUs without being rewritten.

Outcome

Manual monthly COGS reporting effort fell by 80%, and the reporting structure was built to absorb the planned expansion of the SLS powder portfolio.

Finance and program stakeholders could take refreshed cost information each month without anyone rebuilding the calculation first.

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