Cost per brick decides more than most owners give it credit for: what price an order can be accepted at, whether a season actually made money once everything is accounted for, and whether one round of firing performed better or worse than the last. Yet at most bhattas, the number in the owner's head is a rough season-end estimate, not something checked round by round.

That estimate is usually not wrong by a huge margin—but it is often wrong in a direction that hides a real problem, because it is calculated from totals that blend a good round with a bad one.

What actually goes into the number

  • Raw material: mati, sand, ash or other input material bought or extracted for the round.
  • Fuel and firing: coal or other fuel used to fire the kiln, which is often the single largest variable cost.
  • Direct labour: piece-rate or daily wages paid specifically for production work on that batch—Pathai, loading, firing, unloading.
  • Wastage and breakage: bricks lost to cracking, poor firing, or handling, which reduce the sellable count without reducing the cost already spent.
  • Overheads: lease payments, permanent staff salaries, equipment maintenance, and other costs that continue whether or not a particular round goes well.

Where the common shortcut goes wrong

The usual method is simple: add up total expenses for the season, divide by total bricks produced. It is fast, and it is not meaningless—but it hides three things that matter for a real decision.

  • Total produced is not the same as total sellable. Dividing by fired count instead of sellable count after wastage understates the true cost of what actually reaches a customer.
  • A season average hides a bad round. If one round had unusually high fuel use or heavy breakage, averaging it against three good rounds makes the problem invisible until the whole season is reviewed.
  • Labour advances not yet worked off get treated as spent cost immediately, when part of that money is still owed in future production, not this round's output.

A more accurate approach

  • Separate direct costs (material, fuel, direct labour) from overheads, and decide upfront how overhead will be allocated across rounds—evenly, or by production volume.
  • Divide by sellable bricks, not fired bricks. Wastage should raise the cost per sellable unit, not disappear from the calculation.
  • Calculate per round or per batch, not only per season. A round-by-round number surfaces a bad batch while there is still time to investigate why, rather than after the season closes.
  • Keep a baseline. A single number means little without something to compare it to—the previous round, the same round last season, or a target the owner has set.

What changes when this is tracked in eBrix

eBrix connects production entries, expenses, and stock in one record, so cost per brick can be calculated per round from the actual entries already made for that round—not re-built by hand at season end.

Because production, wastage and sellable stock are recorded from the same entries, the calculation divides cost by sellable output automatically. And because past rounds stay in the system, a current round's cost per brick can be compared against a baseline—the last round, or a similar round from a previous season—so a bad number is visible immediately rather than at settlement.

Being honest about the trade-off

Software calculates from whatever is entered—it cannot fix a vague expense entry any more than a register can. If fuel purchases, labour payments and material costs are not tagged to the round they belong to, the per-round number will be as unreliable as a season average, just presented with more precision.

The real requirement is discipline in tagging: recording which round an expense belongs to at the time it is spent, not reconstructing it later from memory.

Starting to track this more accurately, even before switching systems

  • Note the round or batch number on every expense entry as it is recorded, on paper or otherwise.
  • Record wastage and breakage as its own line, not folded into "total production."
  • Decide once how overhead will be split across rounds, and apply it the same way every time.
  • Compare each round's number to the previous one as a habit, not only at season close.