Sage Timberline Office News & Tips
Manage Your Estimates With Estimating Explorer

If you use the Sage Timberline Office Estimating module, you already know that with this tool you can perform takeoffs and create estimates with speed and accuracy. Did you know that the Estimating component also comes with a tool for managing and analyzing your bids - Estimating Explorer? Let’s learn more.

Find Your Estimates Instantly
As your database of estimates gets larger, tracking down the bid you’re looking for can be a challenge - unless you are using Estimating Explorer. This powerful tool eliminates time-intensive searches by automatically creating an up-to-date master list and description of every estimate in your system. You can locate an estimate within seconds, sorting by estimator, bid date, estimate number, or a variety of other criteria. Once you’ve located the estimate, one more click takes you directly to the estimate’s spreadsheet, right from within Estimating Explorer. From here you can manipulate spreadsheets for improved cost analysis by re-sorting, collapsing or expanding, showing or hiding columns, or requesting the totals page.

But Estimating Explorer is much more than a way to quickly locate an estimate. Iit is also a valuable management tool.

Bid Event Management
When you integrate Estimating Explorer with Microsoft Outlook, you can be sure you never miss an important deadline, such as a bid submission date, pre-bid meeting, or site inspection. Simply log these events in Estimating Explorer and Outlook will remind you according to the parameters you specify.

If you use the bid status field (e.g. won, lost, bidding) in your estimates, Estimating Explorer allows you to track the progress of jobs and to collect and analyze competitive information, such as names of bidders, amounts bid, and bid winners.

Estimate Archives
By compressing and archiving estimates and all of their associated files, Estimating Explorer allows you to save disk space while preserving access to historical bids when you need them. Files are compressed using industry-standard Zip tools for easy manipulation.

Built-In Reporting Tools
Estimating Explorer has a dozen built-in reports that automatically sort and summarize estimates by client, project type, estimator, status, and folder. Cross-Tab Reports display estimate volume by estimator, project type, or status. The Unit Cost Report shows you the average unit cost by project type. You can even print contact lists based on contact type, such as architect, bidder, client, or engineer. The Competitor Bid by Project Type Report can be printed for a month, quarter, year, or any date range you specify.

Get The Big Picture
Use the information generated by the Estimating Explorer reporting tools for further analysis and charting to obtain a clear picture of estimating activity. You can graph estimating volume by estimator or by project type. You can chart your year-to-date estimate volume compared with prior years, and even graph how unit costs vary by project type. Estimate information also can be exported to Microsoft Excel for further analysis and to create custom charts or graphs.

Estimating Explorer works with the Estimating Standard or Estimating Extended components and is already included with the software. Whether you need to hone in on estimate details or summarize your bid results, Estimating Explorer makes estimate management simpler. Please give us a call with your questions.