PCBA costing is spread across two process groups: Assembly and User Guided. Most costing factors are found in the Assembly Process Group. Only the purchase cost of the PCBA components are found in the User Guided Process Group. Many of the assembly processes allow for user overrides.

aPriori values and calculations have been compiled from various industrial sources and from time studies in industrial applications, to provide reasonable defaults.

Material costs are based on purchased components: The unit cost is extracted from the Component Library, which is maintained by an aPriori VPE administrator. Since these values are calculated per subcomponent, the quantity of identical part numbers is not an issue -- it is automatically accounted for.

Descriptions of the major cost drivers for each assembly process are provided in PCBA Processes -- Assembly.