Business management · CAPEX & Investments
Every capital investment gets a budget by item, a business case with calculated NPV, IRR, payback, and ROI, a place in a ranking against the year's budget, and approval by authority level and committee with a frozen baseline. During execution, purchase orders and payables are linked without counting the same money twice, the S-curve shows planned versus actual, and overruns are blocked until someone approves extra budget. Once finished, the project becomes an asset in Fixed Assets, and the post-investment review shows whether the promised return showed up.
The problem and the fix
If any of these situations sounds familiar, it is because they happen in almost every graduation company, until the right system comes in.
Expensive equipment gets bought because someone insisted, without any return calculation.
Business case required by category, with a simple mode that calculates NPV, IRR, payback, and ROI from a few numbers and explains each indicator in one sentence.
Every year there are more investment requests than money, and no criteria to choose which ones fit the budget.
Ranking by financial, strategic, risk, and urgency scores, with legally required projects above the cutoff and the budget line drawn on the table.
A project approved for one amount ends up costing much more, and nobody saw the overrun happen.
Budget, committed, and actual per project, S-curve, and a block on new links above the tolerance until extra budget is approved at the authority level for the total amount.
The order and the invoice for the same equipment show up added together in the investment report.
Linking the payable of an already linked order deducts that order's committed amount. Committed and actual are moments of the same money and are never added together.
The build-out is finished, but the asset never entered fixed assets at the right value.
Capitalization from each item's actual cost, with adjustable useful life and asset category, sent to Fixed Assets as a draft asset for confirmation.
Nobody goes back to check whether the investment brought the savings that justified the purchase.
Post-investment review with realized benefit by period, revised NPV and IRR, and a rated achievement, plus lessons learned for the next project.
In practice
Everyday situations at graduation companies, from the problem to the result, using the modules on this page.
The board had budget for only one: renovating the photo studio or replacing the gallery servers.
Both projects got a business case, the simulator showed NPV and payback in pessimistic and optimistic scenarios, and prioritization put the server replacement above the cutoff line because of the risk it eliminated.
The decision was recorded in the committee with the votes and the minutes, and the studio renovation moved to the next plan with its business case ready.
The event hall renovation was approved with one budget, and change orders kept appearing month after month.
Every order and every invoice was linked to the project. When committed plus actual went past the tolerance, new links were blocked and the extra budget request went to the authority level for the total amount.
The committee approved less extra budget than requested, moved money from another project in the plan, and the S-curve was tracked again against the new budget.
The solar energy investment was approved on the promise of cutting the electricity bill by a certain amount per month.
After completion, the items were capitalized in Fixed Assets and each month's savings were entered as realized benefit with the energy bill attached.
The six-month review showed achievement against the approved business case, and the revised NPV went into the presentation of the next annual plan.
How it works
Every step is a real module, and what comes out of one goes into the next without anyone typing it again.
Module by module
8 modules and 58 features on this page, all running on the same class, graduate and event records.
Every investment of the year, each area's budget, and the stage of each project.
Return calculated by the system and explained in plain language.
Which projects fit in the year's money, and why those.
Who approves depends on the amount, and the committee votes with a quorum.
Where the approved money turned into orders, invoices, and payments.
The finished project becomes an asset with value, useful life, and origin.
Did the promised benefit show up? The answer with numbers.
Who proposes, who approves, who executes, and who configures.
Compare the modules and choose the setup that fits your operation.