A Reintroduction to the Superyacht Cost Calculator

In October 2018 Luxury Yacht Group launches the third major revision to our superyacht cost calculator. The newest version has been built using our experience as professional yacht accountants and financial advisors. Our yacht management team has over 100 combined years of experience working with real operating numbers for superyachts. Additionally, we took feedback from hundreds of owners, captains and yachting industry experts who have been among the 15,000 users of the previous versions of this tool to make some major changes.

Some of the big changes:

• Expanded chart of accounts. Six major categories divided into 20 sub categories and a further 70 detail categories, making for a very detailed report.
• Advanced option to manually enter specific details and override our defaults, making the report completely customizable.
• Ability to save multiple budget versions and share your report with colleagues and other interested parties.
• Reports can be generated in US dollars, euros or pounds sterling.
• Very quick basic mode with sliders to adjust budget categories within a range of practical numbers.
• Easy to read graphical design.

Our yacht budget algorithm has been built to give yacht owners a realistic and honest budget projection. We have not created a tool that presents unrealistically low numbers to support our brokerage team. We are in the business of operating yachts to a high standard and the numbers that this tool outputs are realistic to achieve that goal with prudent and sensible decision making.

When using the sliders, we make the following general recommendation for where to position them:

Low – 0 to 25%: Operating at these levels requires very careful planning and prudent decision making. To maintain budget levels in this zone requires compromises from the owner. Owner visits need to be planned well in advance and the captain must be an excellent trainer to bring up crew from lower pay grades to perform well. We generally only recommend a budget in this zone in very special circumstances.

Conservative – 25 to 40%: Yachts operating in this budget level are operated very efficiently. Ownership gives the crew a good amount of notice to plan trips that don't require significant travel between locations. Owner allows for some engineering deficiencies to carry through the cruising season so that they can be repaired efficiently during planned maintenance periods.

Sweet spot – 40 to 65%: Our yacht management team likes operating within this budget area. Owners are still good planners providing at least 21 days' notice before using the yacht, but there is budget available to make urgent repairs should something break during the cruising season. The yacht runs to a high standard and you are hiring great crew.

Generous – 65 to 85%: Standards and flexibility are high. You are operating a busy yacht with occasional last-minute visits. Crew are at the top of their game and delivering to a peak level. Due to heavy work load you may see the need to have extra crew available and possibly rotate some.

Perfection seeking – 85 to 100%: In this zone there are no excuses for the yacht to be anything but perfect at all times, and we would class the yacht as running with unlimited budget.

If you would like a budget expert to discuss your specific yacht and her operating costs, please email accounts@luxyachts.com.

Our price list for our accounting and all services is available on our website at: Price List