Master Estimate Code – Best Practices
I had a blog a while back on best practices for coding estimates but this blog is on actually coding Master Estimates. When I am setting up a new company I always recommend not using the “ESTMAST” estimate as the default Master estimate for the…
Change Material Costs & Non-Add Activities
If you have been reading my blog posts for a while you know that I like the Change Material Cost screen. If you are not familiar with this screen and its powerful change options watch my Youtube video on it (LINK). But I found a…
Lock Estimates
An estimator leaves your company and brings with him or her some or all of your company’s estimates. That is a huge amount of intellectual data that is on the streets. I see other company’s estimates at my trainings so I know this occurs. HCSS…
Holding Accounts & Self Perform Work
This is one of those blogs that probably most estimators using HeavyBid won’t know what I am talking about but there are those users that setup Self Perform work with Holding Account activities. So if the sub is selected more than likely the holding account…
HeavyBid in Dark Mode
I was at a customer site and one of the people I was training asked if HeavyBid had a “Dark” mode. If you don’t know what “Dark” mode is, it was recently rolled out for IOS (Apple) products. What this mode does is reverse the…
Addons-Job Value Calculation
I am pretty sure Addons has been around since the first DOS version of HeavyBid. In my recent blog I covered how to use an Addons entry to calculate G&A expenses so that they are separated from markup. Many companies calculate it on “Job Value”…
Part III: G&A Walkthrough Video
I made a quick video walking through my favorite way to deal with overhead costs in an estimate. Estimating best practices is to separate G&A Expenses from Markup. HERE is a link to the video or click below.
HCSS Support Team Bios
I enjoyed scrolling down the list of support people at HCSS and see who I have been talking to. After you talk to someone on the phone it is fun to go read their bio. Who knew that Michael Pham taught in Qatar after graduating…
Part II – G&A Expenses in HeavyBid
In Part I, I outlined the reasons to separate markup from your general overhead expenses (all costs that are not allocated to an individual job). There are two areas in HeavyBid where I recommend putting this cost. The first option is to put the G&A…
Part I – Allocating G&A Expense in HeavyBid
One subject I always introduce in my HeavyBid training is separating markup and G&A (general and administrative expenses). Every company should know what their total overhead expenses as a percentage of total sales or some other measurable cost like yearly total labor. If you don’t…
HeavyBid – Basics and Beyond is devoted to everything HCSS HeavyBid and estimating. Updated regularly with helpful insights and tools of the trade, this blog is designed to make your estimating easier and more successful.
