Estimates

Estimates: what it does and how it works

An estimate from scratch for a “Construction: Sites” site: a number by the company’s rule, the client from the site or Contacts, the site’s currency, sections and lines. A line is a work item with quantity, unit, and the cost per unit of materials, labor, equipment, contractor and other expenses, overhead %, a coefficient and tax (on top or included in prices). The server calculates all line, section and estimate totals to the cent with no accumulated error; figures sent by the window are never taken on trust. Table entry, pasting rows from Excel, copying a line or a section, ordering, section templates from the site’s types of work.

Statuses: draft, in approval, approved or rejected with a reason, ratified, archive; approvers are site participants with the right to ratify estimates, with targeted notifications. Editing a ratified estimate creates a new version with a mandatory reason, the old one stays unchanged; two versions are compared line by line: changed, added, removed, quantity, price, total, author and date. After ratification, separate buttons: the site’s planned work (pressing again updates the plan instead of doubling it), the approved budget by cost item, materials into the site’s requirements, a purchase request, tasks by section. Estimated cost is compared with accepted quantities, the original estimate with the current one.

Money is visible only to those with access to the site’s finances; a contractor doesn’t see estimates at all. Export of an estimate and version comparisons — CSV, XLSX, print. What it doesn’t have: a database of estimating norms and unit rates by country standards, automatic postings and legal compliance with estimate forms — the estimator sets up the forms and norms.