Costing a single corporate communication job line by line

This corporate communications cost guide starts with one job, not an agency average. Fictional Cedar Vale Engineering Ltd needs a budget for an authorised announcement about a proposed England site consolidation. No qualifying price evidence was found, so every monetary value stays blank.

The costing record covers the manual baseline and any external route. It does not assume a supplier, salary, VAT result or saving.

Write the purchase unit first

Name the exact deliverable and acceptance event. A source-copy draft, accessible employee document, approved newsroom page, monitored mention report and corrected archive are separate units. State whether each is one-off or recurring.

For every line, capture currency, VAT status, unit, quantity, charge period, minimum term, eligibility, inclusions, exclusions, source date, expiry and assumptions. If a supplier quote omits any material field, mark the line unresolved rather than estimating it.

Divide the work into cost owners

The communication owner lists discovery, factual evidence, employee and audience research, drafting, editing, approval, production and correction. Specialist owners add accessibility, legal and claim review, privacy and PECR analysis, security, rights and sector review. Operations adds publishing, monitoring, support, retention and incident work. Procurement records contracting, changes, renewal and exit.

Internal time belongs in a separate economic-cost schedule. Record the role, approved time source, period and finance-approved employer-cost method. Do not substitute a public salary or assumed hourly rate.

Rights can create work before and after publication. GOV.UK's copyright overview identifies protected categories including written, visual, recorded, software and web material. The buyer must document ownership or permission for the actual asset; the page supplies no licence price.

Accessible output also needs a defined task. The government accessible-formats guidance, updated 17 June 2026, discusses formats and supplier planning in government communication. It is not a private-company price list. Cedar Vale should request evidence for preparation, testing, alternatives and later correction.

Build the blank calculation

Use this formula for each external line:

line cash cost = fixed contractual amount + eligible quantity x unit charge + approved extras

Keep all operands blank until evidence exists. For the route total, add documented internal labour, implementation, migration, review, content production, accessible formats, operation, correction allowance, incident allowance and exit. Do not merge cash and economic cost into a single unexplained figure.

VAT receives its own column. HMRC's record guidance covers purchase invoices, sales invoices, adjustments and credit or debit notes. A qualified tax reviewer must determine Cedar Vale's treatment from valid records. The model records that decision; it does not make it.

Test uncertainty before approval

Create lower, planning and higher quantity fields without numbers. Record which input changes, why the range is plausible, who owns it and when it will be checked. Add a switching field: the value at which the route is no longer affordable or no longer preferable to the manual baseline.

Supplier assurance and exit can require paid and internal work. NCSC supply-chain guidance discusses contractual controls, reporting, review and action on findings. It does not prescribe a spend. Budget only the assurance tasks Cedar Vale has approved.

Reject the budget if a material cost has no owner, source or period, or if correction and exit are unfunded. Finance, tax, procurement, legal, privacy, security, accessibility and rights reviews remain independent. The output is a cost evidence request, not an England price estimate.