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OPAS Budgeting / Costing Module
The terms "Budgeting" and "Costing" are used interchangeably and refer to the means whereby clients can use OPAS to calculate the cost of a Project or concert set, store that information, and then compare those figures to the actual expenses incurred.
The global OPAS development community seeks input from clients to ensure the tools we create will serve the wide variety of ensembles and business models in use around the world.
The final costing functionality will be incorporated into an early update of OPAS version 9.0.
Assumptions
Our communal discussion and creation of these financial tools starts with the following assumptions:
- Every effort will be made to expand existing financial tools already in OPAS rather than create an entirely new system
- While the point of using OPAS is that it should auto-calculate the bulk of concert costs, clients must have the ability to add ad-hoc costing items
- Similarly, while integration is a key feature of OPAS, budgeting must, by definition, be more fluid - for example, if soloist fees typically run €600, you should not have to build a soloist contract (as you probably haven't even confirmed the soloist yet) just to get a €600 line item in your budget.
- Figures entered through a costing module are separate and distinct from "actual" expenses. If the costing module calculates total of ٣,000 in orchestra fees, clients need to store that number for comparison against the actual cost of the concert once payroll has been calculated.
- The budgeting / costing module must have security considerations so that only select OPAS Users can use it.
- Reporting, particularly to Excel, is required
Costing Module Components
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Fixed Expenses |
These are the typcial fixed expenses that are associated with a performance. Everything from hall rental to piano tuning to music preparation to concert staff. These costs will be...
- Created in forms very similar to the existing Expense Combination area of OPAS (see the financial section of the 'How To' guides for more information regarding Expense Combinations). This will allow you to create templates that reflect typical concert costs for quick assignment & calculation.
- These templates will be associated with OPAS Activities so that you can have different templates for different activities (a rehearsal may have hall costs but not stage crew costs, for example)
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Personnel and Repertoire-based Expenses |
This is the most complex, and most critical, part of a costing module. OPAS needs to convert repertoire information into personnel and other expenses.
- Personnel / Doubling - based upon the instrumentation of compositions assigned to a concert and the background financial information in OPAS, the costing module must calculate the orchestra costs, automatically factoring in doubling/extra musician requirements.
- Conductors / Soloists / Choirs - the costing module should extract the number of soloists/choirs required for the assigned repertoire. You can then enter estimated fees for each required soloist / choir and a conductor.
- Instruments / Equipment - similarly, where the repertoire calls for certain instruments (piano, celeste, harpsichord), the costing module should include your pre-defined costs for those instruments.
These aspects of budgeting will likely require specialized functions given the global variations in orchestra payroll and manner in which non-principal and extra musicians are paid.
It is understood that you need a way to take these specific costs associated with a concert and multiply them times the number of activities assigned (or a number you type). In other words, this aspect of the costing module would work with one representative concert in the Project - you needn't assign programs to every activiy.
It is understood you need to take any configuration of this area of the costing module, name/save it, and recall it at a later date. In this way, as you re-program different parts of the season or a concert, you can compare artistic / orchestra costs.
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Ad-Hoc Expenses |
These are items that do not fall into either of the two categories above, and are input manually as the circumstances of your season dictate |
Reporting / Output
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Screen Displays |
In addition to the data entry / modification screens in the areas above, we understand the need to see the sum total of budgeting figures for a season (or any portion thereof).
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Reports / Output |
Most external reports will output to Excel. We will strive to build a global consensus regarding the format and nature of the budgeting report library, so that custom reports rarely need to be built.
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