Attached Documents
The subject of where do the attached documents reside was discussed among the HeavyBid trainers the other day. A preview of the attachments or links is not printed out with the cost report however if you want to see where they are located it is…
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…
Cross Estimate Analysis Report
I find that a lot of estimators don’t know about this report. I think HCSS could put this in a better location so that it is more easily found. The same report can be found in SETUP>SYSTEM WIDE MORE and it is called “Estimate Management”…
Replace Crew Feature V2019
This is one of the new features of Version 2019.0 that you might have missed. The replace crew feature has been around for a long time allowing the estimator to swap out one crew for another. But the issue was it would also replace modified…
Review Fuel Price Setup
Judging from current events overseas the price of fuel is going to go up. Many HCSS customers work on projects that are equipment-intensive and if that is the case then fuel usage is high and certainly a significant cost to the construction budget. Even a…
DOT Biditem Descriptions
If you import in biditems into HeavyBid from the Expedite/Aashtoware many state DOT’s will have biditem descriptions greater than 50 characters. Issue is the information truncated beyond HeavyBid’s 50 character limit can be the most valuable information of the entire description! HeavyBid has many options…
Cost Estimating Definitions
I found this in Wikipedia and highly recommend this for review for all estimators, project managers and even people who are in accounting that work with budgets and day to day construction operations. This is actually better than what I find in most construction estimating…
HCSS Custom Reports
If there was “my most important blog post of the year” category this would be it. HCSS has a great custom reports group that can do amazing things for a very reasonable price. It is a service that HCSS struggles to get the word out…
Optional Setting – Quote Folders
In Quote Folders there is a function that requires the estimator to update the quote folders from the current estimate information. It is called “Estimate has Changed“. The default is that it will show you only the actions that can be modified. For example the…