Calculate costs of goods or services
Most of the output can be produced by software today.
Software can pull the data, run the comparison and write up what it found. The accuracy depends almost entirely on whether it is wired into the real system of record rather than a stale copy, which is the problem the tools and auth layer exists to solve.
| How automatable | Mostly automatable |
|---|---|
| Kind of work | Analysis and evaluation work |
| Jobs that do it | 25 occupations |
| Tool categories that apply | Builders, Tools and auth |
| O*NET activity | Making Decisions and Solving Problems (4.A.2.b.1) |
What this looks like on the job
Not our paraphrase. These are real task statements recorded against this activity, spread across the 25 occupations that perform it.
- Determine prices for styles.
- Establish or identify prices of goods, services, or admission, and tabulate bills, using calculators, cash registers, or optical price scanners.
- Compute charges for merchandise or services and receive payments.
- Compute sales prices, total purchases, and receive and process cash or credit payment.
- Calculate premiums and establish payment method.
- Calculate costs for billings or commissions.
- Compute cost of travel and accommodations, using calculator, computer, carrier tariff books, and hotel rate books, or quote package tour's costs.
- Compute and compare costs of services.
- Review documents, such as purchase orders, sales tickets, charge slips, or hospital records, to compute fees or charges due.
- Calculate costs of materials, overhead, and other expenses, based on estimates, quotations and price lists.
- Calculate costs of orders, and charge or forward invoices to appropriate accounts.
- Inform customers about foreign currency regulations and compute transaction fees for currency exchanges.
- Compute costs of records furnished to requesters, and write letters to obtain payment.
- Determine charges for services requested, collect deposits or payments, or arrange for billing.
- Compute bills, collect payments, and make change for guests.
- Compute total charges for merchandise or services and shipping charges.
- Calculate and quote rates for tours, stocks, insurance policies, or other products or services.
- Plan routes, itineraries, and accommodation details, and compute fares and fees, using schedules, rate books, and computers.
What we would actually use
One recommendation rather than a shortlist, because a shortlist is just your problem handed back. This is what we would buy for analysis and evaluation work, and what it costs.
Start in the assistant with an export of the real data, because the accuracy problem here is a stale copy rather than a weak model. Make, at $9 a month, is the cheapest way to put the pull on a schedule once the analysis is worth repeating.
Chosen for the cheapest thing that does the job, not the best funded. Nothing on this site is sponsored, and the full landscape is there when you want to disagree with us.
The rest of the category
Context, not alternatives to weigh up. We name the layer rather than promise a named product does your specific task.
Matched from the kind of work, not from vendor marketing. Check any of them can reach the system your records actually live in — that connection, not the model, is where these projects stall.
How people actually do it
No workflow names this activity yet, but these automate the same kind of work, with the prompts to paste and what to keep for yourself.
Who does this work
25 occupations in the O*NET database perform this activity. Each one has a full breakdown of its other tasks.
- Billing and Posting Clerks
- Bookkeeping, Accounting, and Auditing Clerks
- Cashiers
- Correspondence Clerks
- Counter and Rental Clerks
- Customer Service Representatives
- Farm Equipment Mechanics and Service Technicians
- Fashion Designers
- Hotel, Motel, and Resort Desk Clerks
- Insurance Claims and Policy Processing Clerks
- Insurance Sales Agents
- Office Machine Operators, Except Computer
- Order Clerks
- Petroleum Pump System Operators, Refinery Operators, and Gaugers
- Procurement Clerks
- Production, Planning, and Expediting Clerks
- Receptionists and Information Clerks
- Reservation and Transportation Ticket Agents and Travel Clerks
- Retail Salespersons
- Sales Representatives of Services, Except Advertising, Insurance, Financial Services, and Travel
- Securities, Commodities, and Financial Services Sales Agents
- Stockers and Order Fillers
- Taxi Drivers
- Tellers
- Travel Agents
Work that goes with it
O*NET groups these under “Determine values or prices of goods or services”. In practice they tend to be done by the same person, in the same sitting.
Method. The activity, its taxonomy placement and the occupations that perform it come straight from the public-domain O*NET 30.3 database. The automatability band is ours: we map each of O*NET’s 41 generalized work activities to how much of its output current software can produce, assuming a person still reviews and owns the result. It is a coarse three-way judgment on purpose. A precise-looking percentage here would be invented.