Overview

Woodworkers Estimate Helper is a tool to assist in creating accurate price quotes for projects by taking you through a sequence of simple steps to calculate lumber, hardware, labor, and other costs.

Beginning with an existing dimensionsed drawing of your project, you specify the various material, labor, and other costs, project components, quantities, standard board dimensions, waste factor, and so forth.

Woodworkers Estimate Helper will then calculate: board feet for each type of wood, the total wood cost, the number of boards to buy, the cost of hardware and other miscellaneous expenses, the total project cost, a price quote based on total materials and a markup factor that you determine.

Summary of Features

• Customer Quotes - New Built in Word Processor.
• Sub Assembly section - Add and Save estimates parts you use often
• Groups records by wood type.
• Pop up entry and edit dialogs.
• Rounds up costs to the next whole board or sheet.
• Allows multiple wood types and thickness in the same estimate, including sheet materials.
• Enables specification of solid wood waste factor.
• Provides markup factor to add profit margin to final estimate.
• Job save and restore feature.
• Customization of colors and report headers.
• Six printable reports: wood parts, sheet parts, cost summary, customer quotes, customer invoices, and a customer phone book.
• Furniture parts, wood types, and miscellaneous expenses stored in customizable databases.
• New - Board Ft / Linear Ft calculator
• Complete online help
• Free upgrades for one year!

Outputs (Screen Shots)

Woodworkers Estimate Helper provides a number of useful outputs:

• Board feet required for each type of wood, total board feet.
• Number of boards to buy of each type.
• Number of sheets of plywood to buy of each type.
• Cost of each wood type and total wood cost.
• Cost of hardware and other miscellaneous expenses.
• Cost of the total project.
• Price quote based on total materials and a "multiplying" factor.

How It Works

Woodworkers Estimate Helper contains separate databases for wood types (species, sizes, costs), sheet goods (type, sizes, costs), project parts (tops, legs, sides, drawer fronts, etc.) and miscellaneous expenses (glue, sandpaper, hardware, labor rate). The first step is to update each of these databases with pertinent values that will likely be used from sesssion to session. For example, you might want to add red oak 4/4 to the wood database, and specify your monthly electricity rate, cost for hinges or drawer slides, and your hourly labor rate.

Working from a dimensioned sketch of your project, you then define the specific cost elements of this project. As an example, for each wood piece in the project, you would select the wood species (from the database), along with length, width, and quantity. You might also provide the cost for finishing materials, a "waste" factor of perhaps 15 to 20 percent, the estimated hours to complete the job, hardware, and other expected expenses. (the unit cost for most items is already stored in the appropriate database - you are mainly just specifying the "number" of units here).

The final step is to review your cost elements, apply a "multiplying" factor, and have the program compute the results. The multiplying factor can be used to apply a desired profit margin or perhaps to slightly adjust your estimated expenses based on prior experience where you consistently under of over estimate your actual expenses. The output results can be reviewed on the screen or printed.