I have a small construction business and am looking for a computer program that will help….Any advice?
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Well, let's start with what you'd like this "program" to do for you?????
I want something that can do accounting, bookkeeping and generate bids and estimates. I currently us a combination of quicken and word....Help!
Edited 12/30/2002 9:03:33 PM ET by chyinyang
For accounting, move up to Quickbooks Pro if Quicken isn't cutting it. As far as estimating, you either need to plunk down the $$ for an estimating package (there are dozens out there in various price ranges and feature ranges), or my personal opinion is to create an Excel spreadsheet to prepare your estimates. The Excel sheet will let you tailor the estimating format to exactly what you want, and it can be exported to Quickbooks for job costing.
Bob
CHYINYANG in my own personal and professional opinion
your best bet for accounting, bookkeeping and even (to a degree) generating
bids and estimates your best bet is probably going to be Intuits
QuickBooks Pro .
room to grow into the product
always be able to find other contractors who use it that you can talk
to
the product over on JLC with Karen Mitchell who has also written a few good
books on the product too. The
Contractor's Guide to QuickBooks Pro (try to make sure you get the right
book for whatever edition you get)
the product for the Macintosh platform again too.
that I confess that I don't know much about right now (and no I'm not
referring to Master Builder another Intuit Product)
Next on the list you should probably consider MYOB's
Account Edge or First Edge.
There are some other but the user bases for those products are getting pretty
small so the chances of finding others that use it when you do need help are
going to be slimmer so that's why I not taking the time to mention them now.
As far as "real world" estimating if you could tell me a little bit more about
what kind of projects your "small construction business" is going to handle
I might be able to help you a little bit more. Not all estimating solutions
work for all the different kinds of contractors out there. What do you want
to do this year and where do you see yourself in five years. All that will
help narrow down the possibilities.
Also you mentioned using MSWord. Is that a standalone or do you have it as
part of MS Office (in other words do you have Excel?).
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Thanks for the response. I'm a general contractor with one partner, and we do it all. We specialize in custom and remodeling home in Northern California.We are looking to expand the business to be able to run 2-3 job simultaneously; And the old system of accounting and biding longhand is inadequate.I don't have Excel, and am not a big fan.
Wow, not a fan of Excel huh? That's actually pretty rare. Most contractors
are most comfortable with the spreadsheet based estimating applications and
some of the better ones run off of Excel such as BuildWorks™ (which
integrates with Microsoft Office and QuickBooks Pro). I started out years ago
with Turtle Creek Software's
MacNail for estimating which was also based on Excel but I never was
satisfied with what I felt was the clumsiness of these huge spreadsheets. Don't
get me wrong I think Excel and subordinately BuildWorks™ and MacNail are
very good products but they necessarily didn't suit what we were doing and
as I just mentioned I think spreadsheets can be clumsy.Both of those products
are fine for GCs and I often recommend them for people who WANT spreadsheets
but I prefer systems that are database driven.
That may seem ambiguous in that there are sections of spreadsheets that are
defined as databases and databases often communicate with spreadsheets. Yeah
they are sort of the same thing. Sort of.
Okay all that paradox and ambiguity
aside years ago I got a look at a FileMaker database driven system from a
company called Eclectus and
I was pretty impressed and was inspired enough to go out and take the time
to learn both database development and FileMaker. I then designed our own
custom system to fit what we did. Over the past couple of years some of the
other contractors I've worked with or for have said I should sell our system.
Well it wasn't quite ready for prime time and still has probably a month or
two before it will be ready commercially. I'll be glad to send you the scaled
down simplified version of our estimating system (Simplified Estimating Worksheet)
when it's ready (probably an other week) so you can at least get an idea of
what
the
more comprehensive
system (The
360 Small Office Home Office System) is like and
see if that something you might like to try. What you do with it is look up
an item in a costbook select it and then plug it in to an estimate worksheet
and enter the quantity you want to use for that
item. One of the changes I been working on putting into it too is a way for
the user to select an item from the FileMaker based CostBook and then plug
that information directly into an Excel spreadsheet.
The reason we needed something a little different was the scope of projects
we do runs from General Contracting to Specialty Contracting (Architectural
Woodworking, Stairs and Railings) as well as building Trade Show Exhibits and
Theatrical Environments. The items in the BuildWorks and MacNail systems didn't
cover what we did and how those applications worked was geared more towards
General Contracting than specialty contacting where we actually were manufacturing
some of the products were installing.
You might also want to take a look at what HomeTech has
to offer too. I'm not sure if you are familiar with their estimating data books
but their computerized systems are based on the data from their books. I hate
the look of their system's interface and I find their price book data to be
way too generic to work for what we do but a lot of GC type contractor's
I know love there stuff. They have just 24 line items devoted
to stairs and railings while our price book has 338. However on the plus side
I was using one of their databooks this morning to quickly work up a budget
price for a small two story addition project that would contain one of our
stairs (I often plug thier data into our CostBook system). Sometimes the more
generic information and data is more helpful than the specific detailed stuff
when
you quickly
need
to work
up a
budgeting
estimate
just to clarify and sell the project.
There are other estimating systems that I am sure I'll recall as I think some
more about it but I think that's at least a start for you to look at and consider
and I am sure that some of the other people here have some other suggestions
and ideas to offer too.
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