What to use for estimating

[Scott]

I am in the process of trying to use excel to help me with estimating jobs,
for millwork, and casework in the construction business. I like excel but I
am finding that it will be hard to negotiate all the products we carry. Would
it be better to design this with access, woukl I be able to still use
functions in access. Will it be hard to use, or is it pretty user friendly.

Thanks for any help.

 

[akphidelt]

You can do just about anything you imagine in Access as long as you know how
to do it. The learning curve is a steep one though. But if you want a pretty
sweet integrated system that does anything you want Access can definitely do
that for you. Let me know if you need any help.

 

[aaron.kempf]

If you're tired of problems in Excel; and you want to use a database
for business purposes-- you should just go on CraigsList and find a
contractor to help you implement SQL Server.

Thanks

-Aaron

 

[Arvin Meyer [MVP]]

Excel is a good tool for estimating, and has been used for that purpose for
as many years as it has been on the market. Before Excel, contractors used
14 column worksheets. For occasional small jobs that are custom millwork,
Excel is suitable, but for jobs which repeat, or that you want to keep
history on, or that you want to be able to easily reuse, a database will be
much more useful.

Unless you want to hire someone to build it for you, I suggest you try
Access because it will work fine with Excel when doing calculations. A long
time ago, I built an Access database that created cut lists output to Excel
for kitchen cabinets. It also did cutlists and material aggregating for
countertops, both in laminate and Corian. It wasn't very user friendly, but
since I produced all the output, it didn't have to be. I've also built
databases that kept track of lumber and scrap sheet goods that could still
be used.

If you really understand the processes that you need, you should be able to
learn enough to build a really useful database in a reasonable amount of
time (say 6 months) although a professional developer with construction
experience could do it in closer to 6 weeks. Keep in mind, that we are here
to help you with the questions that don't have obvious answers, or the
difficult problems.