Labor Estimator

[IRConsultant]

Do your sales folks use a labor estimator when bidding on a project. If not, you may be losing more bids than you need to. A Structured labor estimator can keep your company competitive and in complete control of the sales process. I find that consistant labor estimates between your sales staff will give the customer a sense of trust.

[Sparky49]

We use an Excel spreadsheet labor estimator that I created that estimates all of our fire alarm, access control, CCTV and security proposals. It automatically exports data to Word form letters for our formal proposal letters and calculates cable, boxes, connectors, fire putty, etc and generates material lists for them. Works great.

[IRConsultant]

Sparky,
I believe it is the only way to bid a project and insure your margin. I use a similar spreadsheet and sit down with the PM and Leads to insure we all agree on the Labor prior to quote submission. In this situation I believe we all share ownership of its success or failure.

[ProIT]

We use a commercial estimating program that calculates all of the material, equipment, labor & time. It's based on a database (Access based) that is built as you go through the takeoff. We base everything on cost & then we have the flexibility to tweak the Access reporting feature based on special circumstances & the difficulty of the project. It allows us to change pricing when there is a change from vendors, up or down. While you're doing the take-off, it constantly builds your material list so when you're finished, you know exactly the amount of time, material & labor at cost plus markup. You can then export your material list, give it to your supplier & have your order built from it. Wasn't that expensive & will run on a network for the licensing & sharing of info with different estimators.

[IRConsultant]

I have a basic Labor Estimator that will work for almost anyone. It can be modified to suit your needs. If you look at the top there are several catagories of time allocation..I charge a differnt price for the technicians than I do an engineer or programmer but you can modify as you like. PM if you would like a copy with your e-mail.

[Mike Hutcheson]

Although we have the software I prefer to customize each quote based on their ability to pay. It's not so professional but I meet the needs of my customers better this way. Where I scrimp on markup I make up in creative monitoring. All my proposals are hand delivered upon completion where I read their response. This has allowed me to fine tune my method which cuts back on wasted time and energy stressing over lost sales.