Pitman Training

Costing and Pricing

Course Outline

Invaluable for anyone responsible for accounts or setting pricing within a business, this short course is something we’re sure you’ll get true value from, in terms of real pound signs.

A very hands on, practical course, we deal with real scenarios and help demystify some of the complexities around costing and pricing, so you get the best possible results.

Show your employer you get this, or make it count for your business and you’ll never look back.

We help you see how to be really focused on working smarter to generate more profit.


If you’re responsible for sales or book-keeping and accounts this mantra is key: ‘Turnover is Vanity, Profit is Sanity’

Our course takes a fine toothcomb through the ins and outs of how to make more profit, through effective costing of jobs and shows you how to use Microsoft Excel to help make calculations.

  • The flexibility and value of a self-study course designed to enable you to work at your own pace
  • A workbook to use as a reference guide on completion of the course
  • The opportunity to gain the widely recognised Pitman Training Certificate

If you work in book-keeping or accounts or are a small business owner and need to know how to charge out time for staff, how to calculate profit on a job, or project profit in the next year’s turnover, this course is for you.

Similarly, if you’re a garage owner who needs to cost out parts and labour; a wholesaler struggling to make profit due to squeezes on margins; or a manufacturer trying to find the optimum price for their products, this course can help.

There are three lessons in our Costing & Pricing course. Below is a breakdown of what you’ll cover in each lesson: 

Lesson One: What to consider when pricing a product, factors which affect the profitability of a business. Common price-setting strategies, factors which influence the customer’s decision to buy. Ways to check that the price is right, how increasing or decreasing selling price affects profit, ways to market and sell products, defining direct costs and indirect costs, recovering costs.

Lesson Two: Examples of a service business, identifying overheads of a typical service business, calculating a suitable hourly rate, defining fixed costs, variable costs and semi-variable costs, understanding the break-even point on a graph, formula to calculate the break-even point, limitations of break-even analysis.

Lesson Three: What ‘contribution’ is and how it is calculated, how fixed costs, variable costs, selling price and profit interact, using Excel to carry out appropriate calculations, how contribution theory can help to make business decisions, setting out and interpreting a marginal cost statement, understanding what is meant by ‘absorption costing’

This course will take around 6 hours to complete.

Our Costing and Pricing course is part of our distance learning range – which can be accessed online via our distance learning portal. 

This means that you have the flexibility to study our Costing and Pricing course:

  • In centre, with our friendly course advisors available for support and guidance as and when you need it.
  • At home or from work – with support via email or telephone during working hours.
  • On a blended mix – in-centre for the modules you need help with, at home or from work for those you are gliding through.

Once you’ve decided to go ahead, all you’ll need to do is contact your nearest Pitman Training centre that offers and supports our distance learning platform, and they will arrange for you to have an induction to show you around the system and talk you through how our online training works. After this, you can learn in your own time and at your own speed, but with the knowledge you have support at hand if required. 

To find your nearest centre that offers and supports our online Costing & Pricing, /training-a-z/”>


The best way to make sure your training programme suits you, your skills, your ambitions and your busy schedule, is to get in touch with us for a free, friendly expert career consultation.

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