How exactly do budgets work?

[Bear Meat]

I've only played this game a little bit, and I'm getting back into it and noticed jobs have budgets. I accepted a job via email, ordered the part I needed, then ended the day. I completed the job and noticed I still had the entire budget left? I'm confused. Am I meant to accept the job and go to the next day before I order parts? I can't find an explanation anywhere.

[BonPadre]

Not sure to understand.

You have the budget, (let's say 160$)

In your job you need to replace :
- a mobo (100$ for sake of example)
- a HDD (60$)

You have on your "hud" top right part of your screen, your usual [ Replace parts ] list, BUT you now have a second TAB with the budget for the parts.

If you click on that tab, you'll see that in my example you should have that once job completed :
Budget : 160$ (0$ remaining)

Now if you checked before replacing the HDD, it would say
Budget : 160$ (60$ remaining)

Hope it make sense

And yoiu get your LABOUR paied over the part's price, and now, nope if you go over budget, customer will not be happy, HE will pay for that, and you'd still get your FULL labour, so nope over budget is not deducted from your labour

[Bear Meat]

Oh ok.. So the budget amount decreases as you install parts based on their cost?

[X-SR71]

Would be cool to get the budget cash upfront so we could order the parts with the money. Alas, you receive the budget money only when completing the job.

[Turbo]

Originally posted by Cub Knight:

Oh ok.. So the budget amount decreases as you install parts based on their cost?

Yes? As you install parts, their cost will count against your remaining budget.

[Turbo]

Originally posted by X-SR71:

Would be cool to get the budget cash upfront so we could order the parts with the money.

This does happen IRL, but it's extremely uncommon and is usually only ever seen with highly reputable and well established shops.

[joseph.iudice]

You can overdraw your account up to 1000 dollars, which should be adequate to fix at least one computer to get some cash if you somehow manage to mess up your finances.

Although after the first day of completing orders, you should be able to budget your finances properly to not go into debt again.

Edit: Sorry for necro-ing a thread. I do searches for topics and reply when applicable....even when a thread may be a whole year old...oh my goodness what's wrong with me? What a maniac!

[BonPadre]

Originally posted by joseph.iudice:

Edit: Sorry for necro-ing a thread. I do searches for topics and reply when applicable....even when a thread may be a whole year old...oh my goodness what's wrong with me? What a maniac!

Just don't do that with PCBS, please.
Here you are somewhat lucky, because this thread was created just when the new budget was overhauled in career mode. A thread just a few month older and all the thread was irrelevant, due to the changes in game's mechanics. In older game's version, you had an initial amount of money, and you were paied the whole amount, when you completed the job, should it be a $1200 budget and you could reach job's request just by OC customer's part (like reaching a certain score) which lead all older players to always build as minimalistic as possible to reach the job's targets, so we could make more money.

Originally posted by joseph.iudice:

You can overdraw your account up to 1000 dollars, which should be adequate to fix at least one computer to get some cash if you somehow manage to mess up your finances.

Then if you are really maniac, I can be too XD, you can actually go -$3000 before you can't buy anything more. There is even a steam achievement for coming back from what -$2500 I think ?

[Aldodrem]

So is shipping costs included in that budget or is it withdrawn out of your salary for the job?

Also what is the point of USED parts? Like some jobs say "and don't put any used parts in" but why would we if personally I don't benefit from using them since I only get budget money paid to cover part costs?

[spanki2]

Shipping costs do not count against budget, only cost of parts.
You are right there is no point to put used parts into the customer's PC. Used parts should be used solely to assembly PCs to be sold on PC Bay for profit.

[BonPadre]

Originally posted by Aldodrem:

So is shipping costs included in that budget or is it withdrawn out of your salary for the job?

the latter, hence why there are a few takes on how to complete jobs.

I personally try to "guess" as much as I can upfront when accepting a job, what parts would be broken, but I also have quite a decent inventory as well, so basically I mostly am able to get most jobs done the same day I recieve the customer's PC, while using the $30 same day delivery as I order all the parts the same day I accept the job.

Sometimes though I have to resort to the $100 same day delivery, because I guessed wrong.
I alsways complete all my 3-4 daily jobs the same day I recieve PC's, and as thus keep my shop clean of customer's PC when I end every day.

Other peeps accept jobs and then resort only of the $100 same day delivery to still complete all the jobs the day they recieved the customers PC, and as thus never ever failing a delivery date as well. A tad more expansive but safe as well.

And finally some keep procrastinating, recieving PC's then ordering with $30 next day delivery, and as thus missing the "urgent" delivery dates.

Originally posted by Aldodrem:

Also what is the point of USED parts? Like some jobs say "and don't put any used parts in" but why would we if personally I don't benefit from using them since I only get budget money paid to cover part costs?

When the game was on early access, whe had a total budget, and we were paied that full budget, no matter the cost of the parts we installed, as long as it met the job's requirements.
As thus, the used parts were useful to complete jobs as cheap as possible and allowing us to make better money out of those jobs.

But at the time the only possible use of PCBay was BUYING used parts. We were not able to sell used computers on PCBay.

Now most players assemble used PC's from used parts, overclock them to the max, benchmark them and sell those PC's on PCBay, that's where the best money in game is made.
You make more money out of used parts that way than putting them in the very few jobs that indeed allow you install used parts.

[Tisina]

Originally posted by BonPadre:

Originally posted by Aldodrem:

So is shipping costs included in that budget or is it withdrawn out of your salary for the job?

the latter, hence why there are a few takes on how to complete jobs.

I personally try to "guess" as much as I can upfront when accepting a job, what parts would be broken, but I also have quite a decent inventory as well, so basically I mostly am able to get most jobs done the same day I recieve the customer's PC, while using the $30 same day delivery as I order all the parts the same day I accept the job.

Sometimes though I have to resort to the $100 same day delivery, because I guessed wrong.
I alsways complete all my 3-4 daily jobs the same day I recieve PC's, and as thus keep my shop clean of customer's PC when I end every day.

Other peeps accept jobs and then resort only of the $100 same day delivery to still complete all the jobs the day they recieved the customers PC, and as thus never ever failing a delivery date as well. A tad more expansive but safe as well.

I have another way.
With the use of the cloudnote.
When I get jobs, I look at what they need. Replace is the same item, "guessing" to the broken part, etc.
Then, when they have a low / no urgency, I order the parts. Make a note with their name and parts I ordered for them. But also when the parts arrive and then to accept the day before arriving of the parts.

This can be done for the 'build' jobs as well, especially with the big (unlimited) storage, you can keep ordering those parts without cluttering the hallway with cases. Put the case for builds in the storage.

By this way, I play more with the delivery cost and have almost all days of the week something to receive or to build.

https://imgur.com/a/b1ekcBv