Capital request

Field record

The case for a piece of capital expenditure — what, why now, what it will cost, and where each figure came from.

Every figure with its source beside it

This is the whole design. Estimates are fine; unattributed estimates are not. A column that asks where the number came from costs the writer nothing and tells the reader everything — whether they are looking at a quotation, a comparable job or somebody’s recollection. Requests written this way get answered faster, because there is less to go back and ask.

What happens if it is not done

The free-text block under the grid is the part that actually decides these, and it is deliberately the last thing on the form rather than the first. Write only what you know: what fails, what it stops, what it costs to keep patching. A case that overstates is a case somebody discounts.

Where it sits

Ordinary buying is a purchase requisition; money against a piece of work is a budget request. What the asset is actually doing comes from the capital plan and the condition assessment, and quotes are compared in bid comparison.

A written case, printed. CompliMaint computes no total, payback, rate of return or depreciation; it makes no determination that anything is capital rather than expense, which is an accounting judgment; it approves nothing and confers no spending authority. Everything runs on your device.

Questions people ask

Why does it ask where each figure came from?
Because a request full of round numbers with no provenance is the one that gets sent back, and rightly. A quotation dated last month, a like-for-like replacement two years ago, a contractor’s verbal estimate — each is a perfectly good basis, and saying which it is turns a number into something the reader can weigh.
Does it calculate payback or return on investment?
No. Those figures depend on assumptions — rates, horizons, what counts as a saving — that belong to your organization and not to a form. If your process needs a payback figure, work it out where your process works such things out and put the answer in the case.
Does it decide whether something is capital or expense?
No, and it should not. That is an accounting judgment made under a policy and a standard this product has never seen, and it varies by organization and by jurisdiction. This form is called a capital request because that is what people call the conversation; it makes no determination about how anything should be treated in your books.
Why is Why now a set of options?
So that a stack of requests can be read side by side — end of life, failure, capacity, a regulator or insurer asking, efficiency, safety. It is one word in your own judgment, it scores nothing, it ranks nothing, and no part of this product reasons about it.