I have read guys posts where they talk about using Excel to estimate etc. Now there is an Excel program for sale somewhere on Jlc or Taunton that advertises Excel for builders to use in this way. Is this an upgrade to Excel or just good old Excel? Any body know? I use Excel for my books and budjet and do not want to invest quite yet in a more expensive estimating program.
Thanks Nicky
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Replies
I don't know of anyone who's created and Excel spreadsheet for estimating and then tried to sell it.
I did a spreadsheeet for estimating a house once. I can email you a copy of it if you'd like to look it over.
I think spreadsheets are perfect for estimating. You can set up your own formulas to calc things any way you like. And once you change an entry, the whole sheets recalcs itself so you can see what you've got.
They take quite a while to set up - That's the only downside that I see.
Don't bother me, I'm living happily ever after.
You may be talking about UDA office, which is basically some pre-formatted Excel templates with some macros. or EstimatorPro, which is an Excel based program for estimating.
In my opinion, neither of them is that spectacular, as they're designed around the way the creator of the spreadsheet estimates- not the way you estimate. To me, that's the beauty of Excel- you can set it up to work however you'd like it to. I've estimated projects as large as $420 million using Excel, so it can't be half-bad.
Bob
I am not by any stretch of the imagination an Excel power user, but I use it to do all my estimating, and then again to record all costs against my estimates, as I go along and build a project.
What I like the most is the ability to create a whole file of worksheet pages, and link them all into a summary page, to give the big picture.
I used to create multiple Excel workbooks, each for a given specialty. Thus my framing package would be in one, window schedule in another, doors, hardware, etc., etc.
Now everything is in one big book, with many "pages" or worksheets. My summary page brings forth each line item of dollars, from the totals on the referenced pages.
I love Excel. But I think you are right about any "estimating" overlay marketed for it being useless, unless it matched your style, perfectly. And that ain't gonna happen.