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Increasing Goldenseal's Accuracy |
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| How can I make Goldenseal as accurate as possible? This page explains how to increase the accuracy of Goldenseal construction estimating software. Calibrating Estimates To get the most from Goldenseal estimating software, calibrate it to your local pricing and conditions before you use it on real estimates. To do that, follow these steps:
Contingencies You should always add a contingencies line item to each estimate that you create. It will help cover any forgotten items, unexpected conditions or errors. In our construction company we used 3% contingencies for simple work, 5% to 8% contingencies for remodeling, and 10% to 12% for unusual projects or types of work we had never done before. Soft Costs There are other "soft costs" that you can add to an estimate to help cover additional costs beyond the basic line items that you include. We added 1% for general supervision, and 1% to 5% as an inflation adjustment to cover price increases between the estimate acceptance and the completion of work. Frequently we would increase the soft cost amounts for difficult clients, distant work or other conditions that could increase costs. Soft Costs and Contingencies let you use your "gut feelings" to adjust estimates for special conditions that you can't easily quantify as line items. Overhead Goldenseal's estimating philosophy is to quantify your hard costs exactly, and then add specific soft costs to cover other expenses. You can use the job cost amounts from Goldenseal to calculate an accurate overhead percentage, so you can add the correct amount to your estimates. Allowances Use Allowances whenever you need to give a firm price on work that has uncertain or unclear specifications. You'll include the allowance price in the estimate. When work is completed, you can bill for the difference between the allowance amount and your actual costs. For more about allowances in the Getting Started manual, click here. Contracts Goldenseal contracts are based on the actual items in the estimate. That greatly reduces the chances that you'll need to include work that you didn't figure into the cost. You can also use some of the contract clauses to reduce the risk of cost overruns. For example, in remodeling contracts it's a good idea to include "hidden conditions" clauses so you won't be stuck when there is substandard framing or other problems that are not apparent until you start work. Change Orders A good way to increase the accuracy of estimates is to write up and bill for change orders on any work beyond the original specifications. Goldenseal makes it easy to get paid for changes, so your estimates will only need to cover the work you actually include there. For more about change orders in the Getting Started manual, click here. Job Costing The best way to make your estimates more accurate every year? Keep track of your expenses, and use Goldenseal's job costing features to compare them to your estimate so you can see how accurate your estimates are in each area of work. After you "tweak" the unit costs to match your actual operating expenses, you can expect much greater accuracy on future estimates. Click here to return to estimating topics.
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