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Okay...what you want is to calculate a ROI - Return on Investment.
You base your ROI on the costs of doing business over the
revenue returned.
Hardware is a one time investment and can be calculated
with a purchase price against the total yearly rental hours.
Most hardware can be assigned a value based on a number of things...
But the easiest is to look at a rental companies price for the gear
rental over a month. That gives you a baseline value.
Software is different - it has a baseline cost and a update cost.
It's straightforward. A DAW costs you X...and you can look at the history
to see what upgrading costs.- which you can then calculate how many upgrades
you actually need.
Then you have maintenance costs which are configured separately. That's easily calculated
by the figuring the cost of paying someone to maintain your equipment. If that kind of person
is available part time at $18 per hour...then figure 8 hours a month for a busy computer based
studio or 40 hours a month for a busy Tape Based Studio. Repairs are different - the simple way
to calculate is to call a repair shop and ask about your gear - how often they see a given piece
and what is usually wrong with it. It's vague...but it's better than nothing.
Consumables like tubes, tape, coffee, markers, and others can be calculated based
on how those items are used. Tubes in a Preamp for instance will come with a definite
length of use...say 3500 hours before degradation. You build that into a yearly budget.
Coffee is the same - and you calculate that trust me. It's part of your costs.
Miscellaneous costs...like the aforementioned Speakers being blown. It happens but there is no way
beyond using a general FUBAR budget that accommodates an unknown. But if you have a FUBAR budget
then you also need written contracts that state explicitly that if client X FUBARs a piece of gear they
are responsible for the cost of replacement or repair.
Everything is just a matter of calculation based on known facts that are everywhere.
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