Estimation software?

I also use hand, paper and custom Excel spreadsheet. I have demoed Accubid few years back, and it left me with impression that by the time I insert all the data in, I might very well be done doing the calculations manually. I'm not saying you can't use it, I'm just saying that learning curve seemed too much for the amount of bid work we do.

One other thing is: if you totally rely on any software, it may leave you with a false sense of security in bidding a job. The output is only as intelligent as the data you put in, so you'll have to watch it almost with the same attention as you would your paper-based calculations.

Allen,

Like Dmitri, I also use a custom Excel templete. I have used this sheet for simple bids (a couple of thousand) to projects of over 10 million.

I have looked at everyone's so called canned packages but you cannot get a feel for the project by just doing mechanical take-offs. In addition, by working in Excel, filling in of the customer/consultant price sheets is much easier as they frequenly also work in Excel.

Joe Golan, RCDD

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Thanks for the info. I have not used spreadsheets a ton. Maybe that's my problem. We use Peachtree Premium Accounting and I typically do that for quotes because I can turn them into PO's pretty quickly as well keep tabs on our current inventory.

If I were to go with a straight spreadsheet method I'm not sure where I would begin as I would have to design it from ground up (haven't had too much luck finding samples on the 'net).

~Allen

I, too attempted to do quotes in Quickbooks, which is our accounting system. What a waste of time that was. Cabling project has sometimes hundreds of different parameters, and there was not way to change anything in QuickBooks, although you could have rather easily allocate costs to jobs. But if you are bidding, you are not supposed to be seeing that in your accounting system until you actually get the job, so it just did not work for me at all.

OTOH, I am sure that someone might have already built some add-ons that can use your accounting software's database for components' and payroll costs (Tiger Paw comes to mind as one of the possible examples, but I am not sure about them)