Equipment rates are always subject to a degree of change, whether due to a change in labor area or other factors influencing price. This blog will explain the two different methods by which users can update their equipment rates on the fly, without needing to stop the bidding process. This blog is concerned primarily with pushing updated information through to the system. For more information on updating equipment rates themselves, see Equipment Rates by Area. The first metho

Most estimating jobs will have numerous vendors attached to the project, all providing necessary materials at various different prices. Users have the ability to print a list of what materials a given vendor has supplied to the job, including important information like sales tax. This blog will explain how. How to: There are two ways to get to the Material Costs report. The video above demonstrates the button in the Summary sheet, in the Material Details tab. Click on the Sum

Linking labor to a piece of equipment is a quick and easy way to tie two frequently used items together. You can link labor and equipment in two ways. Here in the Labor table you link equipment to labor. In the Equipment table you can link labor to equipment. How to: Select the Tables menu from the toolbar. Select either the Labor or Equipment menu from the dropdown. For this example we will use the Labor table, but the processes stipulated are the same for Equipment. In the

A plug item in construction is usually in reference to bid items that were neglected during the course of the original bid for one reason for another; usually these items were missed, excluded, or underpriced. These plug items are not associated with any table-based data, allowing users to enter any appropriate plug item information for a given item of work. The SharpeSoft Estimator does not require that these plug items be replaced before the final proposal is generated, ope

How to When copying bid items, especially between jobs, it's important to remember there are options present within Estimator for registering any changes between prices. This article concerns specifically the option Prompt to keep existing item detail costs during item copy. This is done from the Options tab within the Preferences window. It's located within the Defaults menu on the toolbar. In practice, If the box is NOT checked and you copy an item from another job, the sys

For certain operations, tracking relevant fuel costs for each piece of equipment for a given project may be somewhat difficult to track. Whether you are running smaller crews with workers wearing multiple hats, or larger fleets of equipment assigned to multiple different areas of work, the SharpeSoft Estimator provides users with multiple different options for making sense of these important, if somewhat tricky to manage costs. The method used in the video above is forbidding

The Equipment Threshold Hours window is used to set up a discount schedule for each piece of equipment you own, based on the number of hours the equipment is used per day. For example, if you want to offer a discount for your owned equipment after eight hours of use per day, you would enter '8' in the Day length threshold field. If your owned equipment is used more than eight hours per day, then the discount would be applied to any hours over the threshold of '8' set here.

While creating bid items in the SharpeSoft Estimator is quick and easy, as already shown , sometimes there's no need to bother with the process of making a brand new bid item when an appropriate one already exists somewhere else in the job. Dragging-and-dropping is the solution to this problem; Estimator allows for free manipulation of data when it comes to moving specific bid items throughout the Bid Item window. Keep reading for some helpful tips and tricks on how to make t

Simple Markup and Multiplication Factors The best method to learning how and where markups are being applied in the Summary Sheet is a...

The Summary Sheet inside the SharpeSoft Estimator is a powerful tool capable of delivering a concise overall view of multiple different...

Default Proposal and Conditions Text The Default Proposal and Conditions Text window is used to enter your Default Conditions and...

The Rounding Sheet in the SharpeSoft Estimator is one of the final steps in the process of completing your final bid proposal, where...

Mobile Inspectors are a special kind of labor unit tied to the SharpeSoft IPM's companion product, also called Mobile Inspector. While...

Crews are an important part of any job, consolidating routinely used pieces of equipment and the operators assigned to them for easy...

Oftentimes, in an effort to better consolidate our information, we may end up preventing the system from seeing data we would rather it...

Markups are an important aspect of balancing the budget of a bid. The SharpeSoft Estimator allows for a high degree of flexibility in...

In the Bid Items window, you can either create Regular groups or Alternate groups. Regular groups typically are used for grouping like...

The SharpeSoft Estimator provides multiple different options for personalizing security policies inside the program. Login Policies are...

If you run the same reports each time you bid a job, you can "package" those reports into groups. When you select a group for printing,...

Duct banks are an integral part of many underground electrical construction projects, allowing electrical cables to be safely laid within...