The Builder's Blog: Hidden benefits IV: Scheduling and forecasting with EstimatorXpress

Are you wasting money instead of making money on your building projects? Other than some of the items we have already discussed in eeking out a profit and cashflow, materials management is something that EstimatorXpress can really help with AND save you money on using our Materials Ordering reports which operate very much like a BOQ.

Materials management – a massive cost to builders is the actual vehicle and fuel cost of regularly going to merchants, and the often unmeasured cost of time going to the merchant. One of the chaps at a recent London course calculated that at a cost of 60p per mile plus his hourly rate for his time, he was effectively spending around £11,000 a year going to and from merchants.

By making effective use of the assorted materials reports the software has, builders can reduce significantly the amount of merchant visits.

Also having a complete schedule of materials required for an entire job can be given to a supplier to improve bargaining power. AND it will help you avoid over ordering which can be expensive with merchant restocking charges at about 20% of the price!

Instead of endless trips to the merchants - one trip to agree a good deal on the entire job with delivery to suit your build program.

There's more - forecasting. By linking jobs together as a Workload Project, you can see a profit forecast for ALL the upcoming work. Also an overall cash flow, and again an overall set of costs. This means there's a way of seeing these figures for the business as a whole.

You can see exactly how much money the company is proposed to make over the next X months. This can then help in making business decisions about expansion, more employees, new equipment like a van etc, essentially giving you a way of seeing into the future!