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Hey everyone. I wanted to let you all know about an event Surface Fabrication magazine is putting together in a couple of weeks. We are hosting our second Web cast seminar — this time on software designed for the fabricator.
If your shop isn’t using some sort of software suite for job tracking, quoting, estimating, drawing, inventory or accounting, among other things, you may want to check it out.
Basically, we brought together several software companies that offer software specifically designed for operations like yours to provide an overview of their software systems and services, provide some insight into what modern software can do to assist fabrication businesses and take questions from Webinar attendees. Crystallyne, Moraware, Suitable Solutions and Pinnacle are all going to be giving presentations at the event, which is free to all fabricators.
To find out more about it and/or to register for the event (which is to be held June 28) you can click here.
Feedback I received from our first event on digital templating, which we held back in December of 2006, was all pretty positive and a lot of fabricators got some good information on some of the digital templating systems that are out there.
Let me know what you think.
Kevin
Yes, Crystallyne (credited above) is the producer and distributor of Quick Quote.
Just to clarify, Moraware makes Moraware, Pinnacle makes Counter Intelligence, and Suitable Solutions offers a variety of softwares and integration services for them.
Kevin
Kevin,
I hope that time fits our schedule. We NEED a cohesive estimating system that generates a professional looking document direly.
Tom,
If you have gotten any more info on the QQ I would love to hear it. I looked over thier site and based on a cost/function ratio it looks perfect (OK not PERFECT, PERFECT would be like $29.95) for my needs.
Chris
I’m learning CWP Cabinetry’s Price-it at the moment, but what I did with QQ looks good so far.
I will hate having to price stuff in a mopre restrictive fashion, but there seems to be the most inter-variety that I have yet to see right in QQ.
One question I have is if we can price sheets of estone and add labor in as a sq. ft., plus access. That would be killer. I can always add teh sheet cost after, but what the frag?
I’m gonna hate entering all that data.
Shhh, I don’t want to screw any deal by showing that I like it.
You know what I’d really like Chris?
Just the dang drawing/measurement part for now. Keep the calculation bit, of course, but that would speed up the quoting a lot, even if I still use my spreadsheets.
I’ll get the other half after I do some figuring on a new pricing style.
What is the purpose of the drawing for the quoting process. We just enter the measurements and it figures the price. Am I missing something here?
I always give my customers a copy of the same drawing I use to finalize the price. Do you use a spreadsheet that is formulated to take measurements along edges and figure sq. ft.? That would be awesome to completely rip off from you.
I keep getting trapped pricing stone/estone jobs, because we redraw everything and compute sq. ft., etc. from CAD measurements. Accurate as heck, but it takes a bit of time. I could probably use some spread sheet to first give the quote, then draw after template. It’s a thought…
But this software has enough pre-set shapes that it seems rather fast to get the data into it, get your numbers out, and then print the drwg.
Tom, I use a very basic Excel spreadsheet to figure sq. ft. and in. based off my measurements I input and it spits out the cost broke down. I tell you it is very basic but I could shoot you a copy to see if you want to intergrate or use it for whatever for now….or just trash it if it doesn’t help you tell you find what you are looking for.
Robert, I’d love to take a look at it. Thank you for the offer.
Send it out to info”at”mathertops.com.
I’d like to get that monkey off my back. That would only leave FedSawDave and Gordon to worry about.
Tom
It’s on the way Tom. Glad to be any help I can with this monkey problem.
Now with those other two monkey’s, ummm sorry…I got nothing…I can only do so much.
Robert,
Got it, thanks.
I’m going to have to spend some time with this one. It looks like you do not have to ‘break apart’ the top, correct? I just pick the shape and work the dimensions?
By the way, Travis was asking the same thing in a different thread. Mind if I let him in on my findings once I figure this out?
Tom
Oh, well they beat me to it I see. I actually had a window open from like two days ago with a little news post that this was coming up since many of you had questions for me in the other thread. I was just waiting for the official link.
Yes, I’ll be there to drone on and on about how incredibly fantastic QuickQuote is and how you need to stop listening to me and call us up to purchase it…
Tom, I do believe QuickQuote can price the way you’re looking for. What a lot of our stone customers do is to put the labor in as per/sqft pricing for the countertops. Then they use the non-countertop items to handle the actual material since the cost is variable. The Non-Countertop items allow you to set a different price for every quote, so they take the total square footage QQ tallies up and just stick it in there with whatever the material is going to cost that time. Or those pricing by the slab will just enter how many slabs they’re going to use in there instead. Fortunately for the latter group, we’re working on a sheet nesting add-on that will do the slab counts and remnant charges for them.
Another way to do that is to use a service for your labor charge since they also can price by the total square footage of the job. A lot of customers use that option for Tear-out/Remove & Dispose. If by Access you’re talking about getting to the jobsite, we have people that add service charges for that too.
The great thing about QuickQuote is we can almost always figure a way to price the same way as a given customer, and some of the fabricator-folk come up with some really, really odd pricing schemes. And when we do hit a wall, we use that as a suggestion as to how to improve the program.
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