Financial-benefit worksheet

Learning objectives

• Estimate hard and soft financial benefits of a garment project.
• Separate one-off from recurring savings.
• Present benefits so the sponsor and finance both accept them.

Hard versus soft benefits

Hard benefits are traceable to the ledger: less rework labour, less scrapped fabric, less freight for delayed orders. Soft benefits are real but harder to book, such as reduced audit findings or improved on-time delivery reputation.

A credible worksheet lists both, marks each clearly and only asks finance to approve the hard figures.

Copy-friendly worksheet template columns

• Benefit description.
• Category (hard / soft).
• One-off or recurring.
• Assumption source (baseline data, invoices).
• Year-1 value in the reporting currency.
• Confidence rating (low / medium / high).

Garment-factory example

A DHU-reduction project saves 4,200 rework minutes per month at a burdened rate of USD 0.12/minute, giving USD 6,048 in recurring annual savings. A separate one-off airfreight avoidance of USD 8,500 for one late shipment is captured as one-off. Finance signs both because each row cites its baseline source.

Method

1. Anchor every figure to a baseline that Measure already published.
2. Discount aggressive assumptions rather than defending them later.
3. Get sign-off from a named finance contact before Control closes.

Common mistakes

• Mixing hard and soft benefits in a single unlabelled total.
• Claiming avoidance savings without documented invoices or history.