I have very basic understanding of Exel. I use it for line items when bidding, payroll journalling for 941s, and simple material take-offs.
I’m getting ready to build a spec house, and I’m going to have to keep track of a lot more things…I know a lot of folks in the BT commnity use Excel, so thought I’d ask for a little, ok a lot<G>, of direction towards using spreadsheets to my advantage.
Oh God said to Abraham, “Kill me a son” Abe says, “Man, you must be puttin’ me on” God say, “No.” Abe say, “What?” God say, “You can do what you want Abe, but The next time you see me comin’ you better run” Well Abe says, “Where do you want this killin’ done?” God says, “Out on Highway 61.”
Replies
I did a complex spreadsheet to estimate the cost on the "Spec House from Hell".
I'd be happy to email it to ya if you don't think the curse would come along with it.
(-:
I ain't scared of no ghost!<G>Send it along, and thanks in advance, I hope?<G> Oh God said to Abraham, "Kill me a son"
Abe says, "Man, you must be puttin' me on"
God say, "No." Abe say, "What?"
God say, "You can do what you want Abe, but
The next time you see me comin' you better run"
Well Abe says, "Where do you want this killin' done?"
God says, "Out on Highway 61."
I can't email you an attachment - You need to email me first and I can reply to it with the spreadsheet attached.
What could porn actors possibly do for fun during their time off?
Okey dokey Oh God said to Abraham, "Kill me a son"
Abe says, "Man, you must be puttin' me on"
God say, "No." Abe say, "What?"
God say, "You can do what you want Abe, but
The next time you see me comin' you better run"
Well Abe says, "Where do you want this killin' done?"
God says, "Out on Highway 61."
If you think it'll help ya, I can send you the spreadsheet file we're using for the $330 million hi-rise condo project we're currently building. Of course, your head may explode after opening that one.... ;)
Bob
LOL. I was going to offer to send him one I just did for $1.75 billion, but you beat me too it.
I gots lots o' spreadsheets. I love 'em.
Email me and I'll type or talk or otherwise walk you thru what you need to do.
I have spreadsheets to create quotes, invoices, run payroll, trak time, gantt charts for scheduling, estimators, my own concrete business estimator, project expense tracking, address books. Whatever.
I'm currently building a generic Bookkeeping spreadsheet for SOHO DIY'ers.
SamT
Now if I could just remember that I am a businessman with a hammer and not a craftsman with a business....."anonymous". . .segundo
Great, I've seen you posting 'em for years, just never thought I'd need them<G>...if I keep your stuff and Boss Hog's in the same folder...think it'll take the curse off of his;-) Oh God said to Abraham, "Kill me a son"
Abe says, "Man, you must be puttin' me on"
God say, "No." Abe say, "What?"
God say, "You can do what you want Abe, but
The next time you see me comin' you better run"
Well Abe says, "Where do you want this killin' done?"
God says, "Out on Highway 61."
Hey Sam, did you get my email? not sure if the taunton tin can is working<G> Oh God said to Abraham, "Kill me a son"
Abe says, "Man, you must be puttin' me on"
God say, "No." Abe say, "What?"
God say, "You can do what you want Abe, but
The next time you see me comin' you better run"
Well Abe says, "Where do you want this killin' done?"
God says, "Out on Highway 61."
Dunno, haven't checked since 5:30 or so.
I'm digging out my files from a wounded HD as I type.SamT
Now if I could just remember that I am a businessman with a hammer and not a craftsman with a business....."anonymous". . .segundo <!----><!---->
I sent you an email with the spreadsheet attached. Let me know if it doesn't come through...
Always listen to experts. They'll tell you what can't be done and why. Then do it [Robert Heinlein]
Thanks Ron, It came through fine...I've got a lot to learn<G> Oh God said to Abraham, "Kill me a son"
Abe says, "Man, you must be puttin' me on"
God say, "No." Abe say, "What?"
God say, "You can do what you want Abe, but
The next time you see me comin' you better run"
Well Abe says, "Where do you want this killin' done?"
God says, "Out on Highway 61."
I do house building projects using Excel as my tool and record-keeper, but I am only doing one project at a time.
I've found it useful to use the multi-page feature, doing a sheet (page) for any line item that requires more detail than that in my summary cost and margin sheet.
For example, my summary sheet being where I have the litany of line items that typically begin with things like plans copying costs, engineering fees, permit costs, and so forth, all the way down to final cleanup and window washing, when a line item says, for example, "foundation cost," I'll have a sheet in the Excel file called FOUNDATION, on which I drill down deeper and go into all the details. LF of each type of footing, steps, yadda, yadda, yadda, until I can bottom line all the rebar, forms, crete, pump truck costs, etc. and call it complete.
My FRAMING AND ENCLOSURE MATERIALS sheet will have, at first, a rough takeoff of sticks, sheets, felt, shingles, etc., and some guesstimates for the rest, but by the time I'm ready to do ordering, it will contain all the boring detail, and will be copied into purchase releases.
Lump sum buyout items such as plumbing will have one line on the summary, but a detail sheet might have all my notes about fixtures.
Any material buyout package that is scheduled as a list, such as exterior windows and doors, gets a line item in the summary, and a worksheet page with all the schedule detail. I log the multiple quotes as detail on the shedule page, and include important notes about each, then bring the one I decide to buy into the summary page with Excel's ref copy feature.
Excel helps me do my sheetrock estimate, and other things, when I list out in a schedule on a page, all the rooms in the project by L, W, and ceiling H, then do little Excel formulae to come up with PERIMETER, WALL AREA, CEILING AREA (=FLOOR AREA), and such. Perim gets copied somewhere when I am summing base trim, WALL + CEILING goes into the sum up for SHEETROCK, etc., etc.
My window and door schedules, with additional columns, that play on L and W and quantity, are used to copy out and sum up casing and trim summaries.
Once I start a job, I build in extra sheets as required to log in all the as-built costs and quantities, and do an as-built cost column adjacent my estimate, so I can see how I am doing.
Hope this helps.
Gene, it sounds like like you're figuring a lot of stuff I need to do. I 've got a semi- grip on line items, but your sheet breakdow?out sounds very helpful, if I understand it correctly...would you mind giving me a visible example? I'm on a mac, so something translateable would be appreciated...in lieu of that, I've got windoze stuff on the dark side of this machine<G> Oh God said to Abraham, "Kill me a son"
Abe says, "Man, you must be puttin' me on"
God say, "No." Abe say, "What?"
God say, "You can do what you want Abe, but
The next time you see me comin' you better run"
Well Abe says, "Where do you want this killin' done?"
God says, "Out on Highway 61."
Billy,
Send me an email and I'll send you what I have.
Jon Blakemore
RappahannockINC.com Fredericksburg, VA
Thanks Jon, it's on the way.... Oh God said to Abraham, "Kill me a son"
Abe says, "Man, you must be puttin' me on"
God say, "No." Abe say, "What?"
God say, "You can do what you want Abe, but
The next time you see me comin' you better run"
Well Abe says, "Where do you want this killin' done?"
God says, "Out on Highway 61."
Jon sent his estimating sheets, lemme tell y'all, this guy is detail oriented...it's a great example, thanks Jon.And, no problem with excel and macs.
Oh God said to Abraham, "Kill me a son"
Abe says, "Man, you must be puttin' me on"
God say, "No." Abe say, "What?"
God say, "You can do what you want Abe, but
The next time you see me comin' you better run"
Well Abe says, "Where do you want this killin' done?"
God says, "Out on Highway 61."
Sounds like you probably got enough, but if you need anymore I live and breathe excel daily. I also have one that I used on my own house that might be suitable for your project. E-mail me if you need it.
I'm emailing you, but I don't know if Taunton's mail service is working, Boss Hog 's didn't make it.[email protected]tanks Oh God said to Abraham, "Kill me a son"
Abe says, "Man, you must be puttin' me on"
God say, "No." Abe say, "What?"
God say, "You can do what you want Abe, but
The next time you see me comin' you better run"
Well Abe says, "Where do you want this killin' done?"
God says, "Out on Highway 61."
Just got your email, but now I can't find the danged spreadsheet. I know I have it at work, and I'll be stopping by there later to pick up my check. When I get there I'll make a point to do that.
Mary had a little lamb, the doctor was surprised;
but when Old MacDonald had a farm, the doctor nearly died.
I'm getting ready to start a new home for myself and would really appeciate some help with simple spreadsheets for (a) estimating, (b) budgeting and (c) cost comparison (budget to actual). Any help would be great! Thanks. [email protected]
Here's one that will rock your world, a pretty incredible
Excel project manager spreadsheet (which I got somewhere
on the Net, not my work, way beyond my Excel ken).
No need to buy MS Project Manager with this one. And, in fact, I've
found that Open Office (or Neo Office on the Mac) is actually
easier to use for Excel spreadsheets, too.
I've signed up for an excel class, looks like it'll be handy<G>thanks Oh God said to Abraham, "Kill me a son"
Abe says, "Man, you must be puttin' me on"
God say, "No." Abe say, "What?"
God say, "You can do what you want Abe, but
The next time you see me comin' you better run"
Well Abe says, "Where do you want this killin' done?"
God says, "Out on Highway 61."
You might want to check out Lynda.com (http://www.lynda.com/) for some great online training videos for Excel or just any other piece of software you can think of.
That is a beautiful example of how to use Excel Names and Formulas. And a decent limited use Gantt scheduler.
For sheduling, I much prefer the free jxProject.
1/2 the size, more versatile, includes documentation, and a very short learning curve.
SamT
Now if I could just remember that I am a businessman with a hammer and not a craftsman with a business....."anonymous". . .segundo <!----><!---->
Edited 12/23/2006 10:50 am by SamT
Sam, I'm not trying to bug you, buuuuuutttttttt, you were going pass along some schedualing stuff, among other promises...did ya?Only reason I ask is, I like the view from where you're sitting, it's different. If it's too much trouble, I understand , I'll just have to send the boys down<G> Oh God said to Abraham, "Kill me a son"
Abe says, "Man, you must be puttin' me on"
God say, "No." Abe say, "What?"
God say, "You can do what you want Abe, but
The next time you see me comin' you better run"
Well Abe says, "Where do you want this killin' done?"
God says, "Out on Highway 61."
I should pay more attention<G> Oh God said to Abraham, "Kill me a son"
Abe says, "Man, you must be puttin' me on"
God say, "No." Abe say, "What?"
God say, "You can do what you want Abe, but
The next time you see me comin' you better run"
Well Abe says, "Where do you want this killin' done?"
God says, "Out on Highway 61."
Whew!
Had me worried there fer a minit.
Gots no place to put any more bodies here.SamT
Now if I could just remember that I am a businessman with a hammer and not a craftsman with a business....."anonymous". . .segundo <!----><!---->
I have, oh, I dunno, 200-300 sample SS's.
But. The latest version of the accounting SS I'm currently working on is on a dead drive.
So. I'm in the middle of learning an MBR editor. It is fully documented in a 1.13MB text file(!) that is about as easy to understand as a Sanskrit interpretation of a shuffled deck of flash cards made of Koran and Quantum physics sets.
So as soon as I can I'll send everybody a pretty good (I say so) general accounting SS,
But first, I gotta fix the HD,
But first I gotta understand that editor,
But first I gotta rewrite the help file.
Jest gimmee anudder 10 minits.
Bwahahaha!SamT
Now if I could just remember that I am a businessman with a hammer and not a craftsman with a business....."anonymous". . .segundo <!----><!---->
You have been successful with JXProject?I downloaded it and played around for a while but hit a major snag.I could not get the schedule to omit non-working days from the schedule (meaning Saturday, Sunday, holidays, etc.).I emailed the developer and his response was laughable to me. I told him of my problem, that a 7 day task was starting on Monday and finishing on Sunday (obviously with a normal schedule it woudl finish on Tuesday) and he said, and this is pretty much a quote, to change the duration of the task from 7 to 9 days to account for the non=working days.That pretty much ended my experience with the program.
Jon Blakemore RappahannockINC.com Fredericksburg, VA
Jon,
Yeah, on my other box, the one with the dead HD, I set up a theoretical schedule that included site visits, permits, inspections, excavation, forms pours stripping cleaning curing . . .everything I could imagine.
Threw in a holiday, limited some workday dates to 4 hours, limited some crews hours, ran shifts. . .everything I could imagine.
Hold on. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Aha! I did redownload it to this box. Heres a C&P from the documentation.
1. Calendar: A Calendar can have its own time zone and can have an unlimited number of Calendars and Resources underneath it. However, only Calendars which are directly underneath the root Calendar or Zulu Calendar can have their own time zones. A Calendar that is more than 1 level deep must inherit the time zone from its parent Calendar. In our example above, the “Part Time†Calendar gets its time zone from the Silicon Valley Calendar.
2. Resource: A Resource always inherits its time zone from its parent Calendar. A Resource cannot have any nodes underneath it.
3. Zulu Calendar: This is always the root Calendar and it has a fixed time zone of GMT+00:00. You can add or remove Rules from the Zulu Calendar and all nodes underneath Zulu will inherit those Rules.
4. Base Schedule: There must be one and only one node designated as the Base Schedule, and it can be any Calendar or Resource which resides in the table. The Base Schedule determines the point of view from which the entire project plan is viewed. All dates in the schedule and Gantt interfaces are presented in the time zone of the Base Schedule. Also, the days which are determined to be “non-work days†are determined by the Base Schedule and appear as gray days in the chart backgrounds. In our example above the Base Schedule is the Calendar named “Silicon Valleyâ€. You can set the Base Schedule by right clicking on the name of the node, you will get a pop-up menu with one option which is “Set as Base Scheduleâ€, click that option and you’ll see the red arrow move to your selected node.
Setting workdays and lunch hours is tricky. Play with it.
One thing I remember having done, ICR if it had to do with this issue or not. Damme CRS. Instead of assigning personell to resources, I assigned crews, ie forming crew of leader + carp + helper, rebar crew of ..., etc. Maybe a "Curing crew/calendar/schedule" that worked 24hr days? CRS again. Anyway, I was pleased when I assigned 30 days curing as a prereq to backfilling and it worked.
Ask me again when I announce that I've restored my HD.SamT
Now if I could just remember that I am a businessman with a hammer and not a craftsman with a business....."anonymous". . .segundo <!----><!---->
Talkingdog, that workbook looks like a commercial product and not something that is freeware or shareware. I have to wonder about posting somebody else's hard development work here without their permission or even due credit. You wouldn't want somebody giving away your hard work for free would you?
Dunno if it's commmercial, like I said, somebody posted it
in another forum, without attribution, and so here it is.
No copyright notice, so whaddami gonna do.
On the subject of project management, Shared Plan, which I
first read about here, is now available, just like Sketchup,
in a free version that has a companion repository of user
created document templates.https://www.sharedplan.net/Just in case you don't already know about the
incredible, free Sketchup 3D Warehouse, here it is:http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/
Which SharedPlan product is the free one?
I see there is a Pro version, which times out after a 7-day trial, and something called OpenPlan, which is limited to 30 tasks.
I am a big SU fan, and many of my models can be downloaded from the warehouse.
My bad, I thought the Open Planning version was completely
free, but now I see that it's $69 (which is about the same
pricing as the old Shared Plan Lite). The free one is, as you say, the limited functionality one.As for SU, as my four year daughter says "It's easy and fun."
I use SureTrak. It will give you your cash flow and give a graph. You can assign resources to each contractor and it will give the critical path and time line. It will give you a lot of information that ordinarily was not easily obtained. The one thing I especially like is that it shows the relationships between activities. Instead of using the predecessors I use the successors. It saves a lot of time that way.
You can download a trial version at http://www.primavera.com/customer/products/suretrak.asp
The trial version will only allow you to do 25 line items though. There is no comparison between it and MS Project.
I'm trying to download it now, thanks Oh God said to Abraham, "Kill me a son"
Abe says, "Man, you must be puttin' me on"
God say, "No." Abe say, "What?"
God say, "You can do what you want Abe, but
The next time you see me comin' you better run"
Well Abe says, "Where do you want this killin' done?"
God says, "Out on Highway 61."
i have that program, and i would give sancho's eye teeth to be properly educated in the use of it. i have the book that comes with it as well, and i have tried to teach myself but need the training. it (suretrak) keeps doing stuff i didn't want it to do, and updates to the schedule are a huge pain
i am already missing a couple of teeth and can't afford to lose any more and since sancho is the sancho i figured i could use his
interesting (long) story on how i got the program, short version is i was hired to superintend a project for a small business rated govt contractor (government contracts state that all jobs must be superintended, doesn't say anything about super knowing his but from a hole in the ground)
getting long already, sorry
anyway when i hired on i told owner and project manager that they needed some type of program to manage this contract, and through my own research (i asked here on breaktime, i'm a genius) came up with suretrak by primavera as the one to get. when i inform them of this a few days later project manager says i think we have that software program on one of the computers....they already had it and didn't use it, incredible.
so where to get the training, ive heard of a school in texas, i think its 800 for a week plus living expenses and it is given by the same company that recruits schedulers for the industry, any thoughts? thanks chris
The program does seem overwhelming at first. An excellent book that guides through every aspect of the scheduling process is Computer Integrated Construction Project Scheduling by John Buttelwerth
Chapter 1 - The Construction Industry
Chapter 2 - Who's Who?
Chapter 3 - What Is a Project?
Chapter 4 - Planning and Scheduling
Chapter 5 - Activities, Logic, and Duration
Chapter 6 - Network Diagrams
Chapter 7 - CPM Calculations
Chapter 8 - Creating Construction Schedules
Module 1 - Drawing the Schedule by Hand
Module 2 - Creating a Project Opening the Software
Module 3 - Adding Activities Adding Activities
Module 4 - Adding Logic (Successors)
Module 5 - Printing the Schedule
Module 6 - Saving and Closing a Project
Module 7 - Opening a Project
Module 8 - Delhi Medical Building
Module 9 - The PERT View
Module 10 - Layouts-Saying, Applying, and Creating
Module 11 - Formatting Columns
Module 12 - Sorting by Early Start
Module 13 - Formatting the Footer
Module 14 - Formatting the Header
Module 15 - Renaming a Project
Module 16 - Working with Calendars
Module 17 - Activity Codes
Module 18 - Budgeted Costs
Module 19 - Resources
Module 20 - Resource Profiles
Module 21 - Resource Tables Project Cash Flow
Module 22 - Target Schedules
Module 23 - Reports
Module 24 - Multi-Phase Projects
Module 25 - Updating the Schedule
Module 26 - Revising SchedulesAs you can see the book has 8 chapters and 26 modules. The chapters are about scheduling and work up to the use of the software. The modules actually take you through the use of the software. By the time you are done with the book you should have a fairly good handle on it.
thank you , i will look into that book.
i have had problems trying to update the schedule, i was not at all happy with what it (software) was doing, even printing reports was a pain couldn't even switch footers and get them to show required information
Updating a schedule can be a real problem because of the relationships with activities. When you begin to update sometimes you can end up with some strange things. That is the reason why it is so critical to have a clear picture in your mind of what is happening. Before I enter the schedule I draw a diagram first showing the flow and relationships. I calculate the critical path too. When I met with the computer salesman for our area he told me that most contractors only use about 5% of what most software can do. The majority of universities and colleges are teach Timberline for estimating and SureTrak for scheduling. Some are teaching WinEst for estimating. Some also teach OnCenter software for on screen takeoffs.
Was just reading on your use of spreadsheets. I've been using them for years but just haven't found a great way to use their full potential. Any chance I could also see what you guys are doing with them. [email protected].
Thanks