PCBA NRE and Stencil Amortization Per Unit Calculator
Low volume PCBA quotes are won or lost on how one-time costs are handled. This calculator spreads stencil, programming, fixture and DFM engineering plus per-order line setup over your quantity, and shows what share of the unit price is not material or labor at all.
Your numbers
Boards per order. Setup and first article time recur with every order.
1 means the customer pays all NRE inside this order. Higher numbers assume repeat business.
Laser cut stainless stencil, framed or frameless, per side. Add both sides if double sided.
Centroid conversion, placement program, AOI library, feeder setup sheet.
ICT or functional fixture, or flying probe program. Enter 0 if none.
Engineering hours for DFM, panel drawing and process planning.
Kitting verification, feeder loading, stencil and printer setup, reflow profile check.
First article build, inspection and signoff before the run.
Fully loaded blended rate for setup crew and idle line time.
Material, placement, reflow, inspection and test cost per board, excluding NRE and setup.
Margin on selling price, not markup on cost.
Your results
Planning estimate. Amortizing NRE into the unit price is a commercial choice; many EMS providers bill NRE as a separate line item. Margin is applied to everything including NRE.
NRE and setup per board vs order quantity
Sweeps Order quantity from 25 to 2500, holding your other inputs fixed.
Automate NRE and setup in your quotes
An optional review of how quote inputs could be pulled from your ERP routings and BOMs instead of retyped.
Optional. The tool and every export work without this. No spam.
How to use the calculator
Enter the order quantity and the number of orders over which you expect to recover NRE. Fill in the one-time items (stencil, SMT and AOI program, fixture or flying probe program, DFM and panel tooling) and the per-order items (line setup hours and first article hours at a blended rate). Enter your recurring cost per board from your cost model, then set the target gross margin. The sweep chart shows how quickly NRE and setup per board fall as quantity rises, which is the fastest way to explain to a buyer why a 50 piece order costs so much more per board than a 500 piece order.
The formulas behind it
NRE per board is total NRE divided by quantity times the number of orders. Setup per board is (setup hours plus first article hours) times the rate, divided by quantity. Loaded cost is recurring cost plus both. Unit price is loaded cost divided by (1 minus margin), which is the standard gross margin formula, not a markup. These are straight cost accounting identities, so you can check any result by hand.
- NRE total = stencil + program + fixture + DFM
- Setup per order = (setup h + first article h) x rate
- Loaded cost = recurring + NRE/(qty x orders) + setup/qty
- Price = loaded cost / (1 - margin)
Reading the result
Look at the one-time cost share. At 50 boards with the defaults, NRE and setup can exceed half the loaded cost; at 2,000 boards it falls to a few percent. If the share is high, you have three levers: bill NRE as a separate line so the unit price stays comparable across tiers, raise the recovery window if the customer commits to repeat orders, or reduce the NRE itself by reusing a customer stencil or a standard panel. Stencil cost is also a place to check frame type, thickness and whether both sides need separate foils.
Common mistakes
The most frequent error is amortizing NRE over orders that never arrive. Recover it over a realistic window, and state in the quote whether NRE is non-refundable. A second error is forgetting that setup recurs with every order, so it should divide by the order quantity, not by lifetime volume. Third, many shops forget first article time and reflow profile verification. Finally, apply margin to the full loaded cost; if NRE is billed separately at cost, exclude it from this calculation to avoid double counting.
- Do not amortize setup over lifetime volume
- Say whether NRE is refundable or credited at a volume
- Include both stencil sides on double sided boards
- Keep recurring cost free of any NRE you bill separately
Frequently Asked Questions
Should NRE be in the unit price or a separate line?
Both are common. Separate NRE keeps unit prices comparable across quantity tiers and makes repeat orders cheaper to quote. Embedding it simplifies the buyer view but hides cost and creates disputes on reorders. Whichever you choose, state it plainly on the quote.
What does a typical SMT stencil cost?
Laser cut stainless stencils for typical boards are usually in the low hundreds of dollars, depending on size, frame, thickness and finishes like nano coating or step features. Check your supplier price list, as it varies by region and quantity.
How many orders should I amortize NRE over?
Only as many as the customer has credibly committed to. Without a forecast or blanket order, treat the first order as bearing the full NRE or bill it separately. Optimistic amortization is a common cause of margin loss on prototypes that never reorder.
Is setup really per order and not per lot?
Setup recurs whenever the line is changed over to the job, so it recurs per production lot or run. If you split one order into multiple releases, each release can trigger setup again, so enter hours per release and quantity per release.
If your quote inputs sit in an ERP or a spreadsheet maze, we can wire this logic to live routing and BOM data so NRE and setup flow into quotes automatically, on your own servers if needed.
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