[99cents]

The partners and I had a meeting last night. We started off with an agenda and stayed on track, discussing past performance and how we will change things moving forward. This wasn't a bull $hit session.

This morning, I will write the "minutes" of the meeting and send them out to the guys. You gotta treat business like business.

We discussed the Contractor Cost Calculator and how we can incorporate that into job tracking. I want to be able to track job progress, comparing actual to estimated, in order to determine ongoing profitability. Ultimately, I would like to push a magic button that gives me a snapshot of the financial health of the company but that ideal is probably out of reach, at least for the time being.

So how do you guys do it? Do you have a magic spreadsheet? It's just not good enough to say, "I THINK we're doing okay on this job..."

Thanks

 

[Hack Work]

I do it in an absolutely horrible way. I make a spreadsheet for each job :laughing:

For the level of work I am doing, it's easy. But I know you are looking for a software suite much larger, I'm interested in what other people are using.

 

[99cents]

I do it in an absolutely horrible way. I make a spreadsheet for each job :laughing:

For the level of work I am doing, it's easy. But I know you are looking for a software suite much larger, I'm interested in what other people are using.

It's better than a gut feeling, Hack. A gut feeling usually means I'm gonna puke.

 

[sparkie2010]

I imagine you do new work not service.

Conest has jobtrac, quickbooks has job costing, Jonas, aptora on and on.

Spread sheets work good too. However uou need to ask yourself if your a pm or a field tech. If your more on the office then sure use a spreadsheet. You'll have plenty of time. If not then you probably need to up the game and get a all in one type program to automatically do the reports.

 

[macmikeman]

This only seems to be worthy for larger projects but investigate "Resource Loaded Networks"

Primavera is the king of the companies that produce software to track financials and labor on projects. But generally somebody needs to be hired just to attend to the daily needs of the software to keep it up to date with the job.

Anything over two million in size and you better be using it.

 

[Gregdrose]

For jobs larger than $500K we use task codes and production reports, all self made excel spread sheets. It takes an hour to set them up and about 15 minutes a week to input the data. They are very accurate and helpful.

 

[sparkie2010]

We have some sheets that might work

 

[wcord]

The partners and I had a meeting last night. We started off with an agenda and stayed on track, discussing past performance and how we will change things moving forward. This wasn't a bull $hit session.

This morning, I will write the "minutes" of the meeting and send them out to the guys. You gotta treat business like business.

We discussed the Contractor Cost Calculator and how we can incorporate that into job tracking. I want to be able to track job progress, comparing actual to estimated, in order to determine ongoing profitability. Ultimately, I would like to push a magic button that gives me a snapshot of the financial health of the company but that ideal is probably out of reach, at least for the time being.

So how do you guys do it? Do you have a magic spreadsheet? It's just not good enough to say, "I THINK we're doing okay on this job..."

Thanks

Quickbooks Contractor can do the comparing aspect. I would assume you could set up cost codes too if you wanted too

 

[10492]

So how do you guys do it? Do you have a magic spreadsheet?

Thanks

It's not a magic one, it's just a template that has basic work site tasks broken down into labor hours. Each job gets customized as needed and saved in each job file, per customer.

I do it in an absolutely horrible way. I make a spreadsheet for each job :laughing:
For the level of work I am doing, it's easy. But I know you are looking for a software suite much larger, I'm interested in what other people are using.

I must be horrible too. I am sure their are many fine products out there that will do everything, but Excel works just fine.

And I won't spend the time or the money to learn something new. I'm kinda stubborn this way.

The lead man on site keeps track of hours per man per task, and feeds it to me every week, before he gets his check. I can load numbers and see which tasks came over, or under and whether we need to adjust them next time.

FWIW....



(add)----I use QB for material tracking and costing

 

[twoten1957]

sage

Anyone using SAGE 300 for contractors?