I set up all the planets for the challenge, 3 barren, 2 lava, and have the production planet going. I also have a sheet set up to track the costs by line item. I loves me some Excel! Without further ado, here are the costs incurred in buying the command centers, setting up the planets (including a few mistakes in placing and rebuilding PI buildings), and transferring the first production loads from the resources planets to the production planet (also including one mistake):
The Customs Office interface is still horrible, and you can easily transfer crap back to a planet when you think you are loading it to your ship. Why? Because CCP decided that the CO inventory screen should not be part of the unified inventory. That’s great. That cost me about $500k isk. Remember to open your ship inventory and drag the items from to CO to there, and not hit the Transfer button.
The PI interface still leaves important info out of the equation when placing buildings. So if you click the wrong facility, you cannot check what it makes until after you spend the money on it once you are in that process. Yes, I could right click, show info, and then choose and place it. Perhaps the Build Panel could include a PX > PY note right on the screen. So be careful if you are setting this stuff up.
Accounting note: My production planet came online on Eve-day 3/8/13, so the challenge will run until I sell products made withing 30 days of 3/8/13.