Costs and pricing
Costing a single corporate communication job line by line
Cost one England communication job through blank, evidenced line items covering cash, labour, review, accessibility, correction and exit in full.
What to take away
- Costing a single corporate communication job line by line starts with one job: Cedar Vale Engineering Ltd's authorised announcement about a proposed England site consolidation. Name the exact deliverable and acceptance event before costing.
- Use published rates or labelled typical ranges where evidence exists. Leave a line blank only if no qualifying price evidence exists for it.
- Separate cash cost from economic cost. Record VAT treatment in its own column.
- Test uncertainty with lower, planning and higher quantity fields before approving any budget.
- Fund correction, incident cover and exit before you approve any budget.
Write the purchase unit first
Name 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.
Quote fields to capture
- Currency and VAT status
- Unit and quantity
- Charge period and minimum term
- Eligibility and inclusions
- Exclusions and assumptions
- Source date and expiry
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
Each line in the table needs one named owner. The communication owner holds discovery, factual evidence, employee and audience research, drafting, editing, approval, production and correction.
Specialist owners hold legal and claim review, privacy and PECR review, accessibility remediation, security, rights and sector review. Operations holds publishing and newsroom, monitoring, support, retention and incident support. Procurement holds contracting, changes, renewal and exit and transition.
Internal time belongs in a separate economic-cost schedule. Record role, approved time source, period, 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. That 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 Cedar Vale line-by-line cost calculation
The costing record covers the manual baseline and any external route. No single qualifying quote covers the whole Cedar Vale job, so the table uses published rates and labelled typical ranges. The model assumes no supplier, salary, VAT result or saving.
Use this formula for each external line:
line cash cost = fixed contractual amount + eligible quantity x unit charge + approved extras
Fill each operand from the table below or from a supplier quote. Leave an operand blank only when no qualifying 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 one unexplained figure.
The typical rates below come from published UK sources. ProCopywriters publishes an annual UK copywriting rates survey, and the NUJ publishes a Freelance Fees Guide for editorial work.
The IPA Agency Census and the PRCA PR and Communications Census cover UK agency and in-house pay. Crown Commercial Service digital frameworks publish supplier day rates by role, and England and Wales costs assessment uses the published Guideline Hourly Rates.
Copy, editing, design and legal lines draw on those sources. Software and platform prices come from the vendor pages listed in the table. Where no UK source lists a price, the line says the supplier quotes.
| Line | Unit | One-off or recurring | Typical UK price as of 2026 | VAT treatment | What drives it |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Discovery and factual evidence | Consultant day | One-off | £450-£750 freelance; £600-£1,200 agency | Reviewer confirms, typically standard 20% | Seniority, sector, deadline, travel |
| Audience research | Project | One-off | £2,000-£7,500 for survey and interviews; SurveyMonkey Team Advantage from around £25 per user per month; Qualtrics custom | Reviewer confirms, typically standard 20% | Sample size, method, analysis |
| Drafting | 1,000 words | One-off | £250-£600 B2B corporate copy; senior specialist day £450-£800 | Reviewer confirms, typically standard 20% | Technical detail, interviews, revisions |
| Editing | 1,000 words | One-off | £120-£300; senior editor day £300-£500 | Reviewer confirms, typically standard 20% | Track changes, legal read, style |
| Approval and stakeholder time | Internal labour | Recurs each approval round | Salary plus 20% to 30% employer on-costs under finance-approved method | No VAT on salary | Grades, meetings, sign-off |
| Legal and claim review | Hour | One-off | £150-£500 regional solicitors; £500-£1,000 City | Reviewer confirms, typically standard 20% | Risk, regulated claims, urgency |
| Privacy and PECR review | Hour | One-off | £150-£450 | Reviewer confirms, typically standard 20% | Data flows, consent, employee data |
| Accessibility remediation | PDF or audit | One-off per asset set | £50-£300 per PDF; WCAG audit £2,000-£10,000; Adobe Acrobat Pro around £20 per month; Siteimprove, Deque, Silktide and Recite Me custom | Reviewer confirms, typically standard 20% | Pages, tags, alt text, testing |
| Design and production | Day or asset | One-off | £250-£600 freelance designer day; Canva Pro around £11 per month or £110 per year; Adobe Creative Cloud All Apps around £57 per month | Reviewer confirms, typically standard 20% | Brand, volume, print |
| Publishing and newsroom | Month | Recurring monthly | WordPress.com Business from around £25 per month; Mailchimp Standard from around £14 per month for small lists; Mynewsdesk and Presspage custom | Reviewer confirms, typically standard 20% | List size, workflow, hosting |
| Monitoring | Month | Recurring monthly | Google Alerts free; Meltwater, Brandwatch and Cision custom, typically £6,000-£20,000 per year | Free service no VAT; paid tools reviewer confirms standard 20% | Boolean coverage, seats, analysts |
| Correction and archive | Hour | Recurs on reissue | £150-£500 legal or comms; developer £300-£600 per day | Reviewer confirms, typically standard 20% | CMS, audit trail, reissue |
| Incident support | Day | Recurs on call-out | £600-£1,200 agency crisis day; NCSC guidance prescribes no spend | Reviewer confirms, typically standard 20% | Out-of-hours, severity |
| Exit and transition | Project | One-off | £2,000-£15,000 for data export, migration and handover | Reviewer confirms, typically standard 20% | Data volume, contract, archive |
Cedar Vale, filled line by line. The deliverable is one approved 1,200-word employee announcement, one newsroom page, four accessible PDFs and 30 days of monitoring. The acceptance event is publication of the approved page in the newsroom. Each figure below is a planning illustration built from the typical rates above, not a quote.
| Cedar Vale line | Basis | Figure | One-off or recurring | Cash in route total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Discovery and factual evidence | 2 consultant days at £600 | £1,200 | One-off | Yes |
| Audience research | Fixed project fee, survey and interviews | £3,000 | One-off | Yes |
| Drafting | 1,200 words at £0.45 | £540 | One-off | Yes |
| Editing | 1,200 words at £0.20 | £240 | One-off | Yes |
| Legal and claim review | 3 hours at £250 | £750 | One-off | Yes |
| Privacy and PECR review | 2 hours at £200 | £400 | One-off | Yes |
| Accessibility remediation | 4 PDFs at £120 | £480 | One-off | Yes |
| Design and production | 1 designer day at £400 | £400 | One-off | Yes |
| Publishing and newsroom | WordPress.com Business, 1 month | £25 | Recurring monthly | Yes |
| Monitoring | Paid tool, 1 month at £500 | £500 | Recurring monthly | Yes |
| Correction and archive | Allowance, 2 hours at £250 | £500 | Recurs on reissue | Yes |
| Incident support | Allowance, 1 agency day at £600 | £600 | Recurs on call-out | Yes |
| Exit and transition | Archive export and handover | £2,000 | One-off | Yes |
| Approval and stakeholder time | Internal, 62 hours across three roles | No cash figure | Recurs each approval round | No, economic schedule |
| Route cash total | Sum of the lines above | £10,635 | One-off and recurring | Yes |
VAT is recorded per line, and a qualified tax reviewer decides recovery, so the route total excludes VAT. Internal labour of 62 hours across three roles sits in the economic schedule at the finance-approved employer cost.
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 with figures from the table, not blank. 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.
Before you act
- Name the exact deliverable and acceptance event.
- Capture currency, VAT status, unit and quantity for every line.
- Return any quote that omits a material field to the supplier.
- Record internal time in a separate economic-cost schedule.
- Document ownership or permission for each asset used.
- Add a switching field for when the route is no longer affordable.
Common questions
What should you do if a supplier quote omits a material field?
Send it back and leave the line out of the total until the supplier supplies the missing field. Record who chased it and when. That keeps the costing record honest and keeps unsupported figures out of the budget.
How should internal time be recorded in the costing model?
Put internal time in a separate economic-cost schedule. Record the role, approved time source, period and finance-approved employer-cost method. Typical employer on-costs run at 20% to 30% of salary, but the approved method governs.
When should a budget be rejected according to the article?
Reject a budget that cannot fund correction and exit. The approval section above sets the full test, and the specialist reviews stay independent.
