Goldenseal Estimating Software Topics-- Project Cost Data

Getting Project Cost Data

Here's how you can use job cost info from completed projects, to calibrate the prices in Goldenseal estimating software.

Step 1-- Get Your Own Actual Costs

Before you can see how our estimating prices compare to yours, you will first need some actual comparison numbers from one or more of your past projects. That way you'll be able to fit your own cost data into the Goldenseal cost estimating software system.

What kind of Projects to use

You can use any of the following types of projects to calibrate our estimating software (listed in descending order of reliability):

Projects that you have already completed, for which you kept detailed job cost records. Ideally they should be broken down into cost categories and also into labor, material and subcontractor costs.
Projects that you have already completed, for which you have a total of actual costs spent on the job, and a rough idea of how the costs were divided.
Projects that you have already completed, for which you have at least a ballpark idea of how costs went, or how well it compared to your original estimate.
Projects that you estimated in detail, using a "sticks and bricks" approach. If you have a choice, use a project that has already been completed, or one that is at least partly underway.
Projects that you estimated using simple rules of thumb, or some other approximating technique.

Choose projects that are typical of the kind of work you normally do.

Avoid very small projects, since "unit price" calculations don't work as well for them.

What you need from the Projects

The more accurate the numbers are for the project you use as a comparison, the more accurate you'll be able to make our estimating software. If you can, go back through your old records, and dig up as much cost information as possible about the job that you'll be using for calibrating.

If there were any special situations that happened on the project (e.g. bad weather, disasters or picky clients) it helps to keep them in mind when figuring prices-- you may want to adjust the actual costs up or down to reflect more "normal" conditions.

If you have good, detailed job cost information about a project you've already finished, you can probably use just one project to calibrate your estimators-- although you'll be more accurate if you use more than one.

If you are working with "fuzzy" cost data, you should definitely use several projects to calibrate Goldenseal, if you want to get good accuracy.

NOTE: If you do a wide range of project types, you can create several different estimating templates (e.g. a "high end" estimator and a "low end" estimator) with different prices, to match the different types of projects you do. You'll use the same basic calibrating techniques for each of them, using the appropriate types of projects for each template.

Click here for the next step in calibrating your estimates-- making a comparison estimate.

Click here to return to instructions for calibrating estimates.
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