software consulting, custom reporting, financial resources

Articles:

Credit Card Transactions

Entering Fixed Assets as Journal Entries

Estimating

Estimating-At-A-Glance

Estimating, Project Management Overview

Paying Liabilities and Transfers Between Accounts

Payroll Overview

Profitability

Proposals

Profits - Strategies to Improve

Responsibility As A Motivator

Risk Management

Schedule Variance

Take Your Business to the Next Level

Teamwork As A Motivator

Time Management

Time Management Matrix

Timetable of Procedures

The Balance Sheet, Part 1

The Balance Sheet, Part 2

The Balance Sheet, Part 3

The Balance Sheet, Part 4

Training Saves Money

Value As A Motivator

Year-end Close

Proposals in Master Builder

The Proposals screen (6-9) is one of the most difficult for Master Builder customers to deal with. On the one hand, customers want to create a nice-looking Proposal or bid to present to the potential client. On the other hand, the default setup of this screen and its output require a fair amount of work to produce that kind of result.

When I work with a new MB customer, one of the most popular topics is Proposals. I’ve had many conversations something like this:

Customer: “I have a really nice bid form [or contract form] I’ve set up in Word [or Excel], and I’d like to import that into Master Builder’s Proposal screen so that I’m only using Master Builder.”

Me: “How is the bid displayed? By cost code, division, sections of work, or one lump sum amount?”

Customer: “It depends on the bid; it could be one or more of those displays.”

Me: “Then we would have to create different reports and forms for each display.”

Customer: “Doesn’t Master Builder’s Proposal just display what I type on the screen?”

Me: “Not necessarily. The generic Proposal in Master Builder looks like this.” [In the Sample Company, I display a Proposal]

Customer: “That’s not what I want. I need it to be in a letter form, and I need to be able to present different types of breakdowns, maybe more than one per job.”

Me: “That will require a fair amount of custom reporting and form design. In addition, you’ll have to use the Proposal screen in a very specific way by inserting the text before the number breakdown in one place and the text after the number breakdown in a different place. And the text can only be edited by e text editor like Notepad, not a word processor like Word.”

Customer: “Forget it, I’ll stick with my bid form and spend a lot less time and money.”

The above conversation is usually not that short, and it can be more frustrating than that.

There are a couple of solutions I can recommend:

1) If you’re adept at using Excel and have a bid form set up in Excel, import the MB Budget into the MB Proposal screen. Then export the Proposal using the Print to Excel feature. Manipulate the numbers there, and paste them into the Excel form which you’ve already built;

2) If you’re using the Takeoff screen (9-5), by using custom reports and form designs, you can create many variations of bids. For examples of this, see my Reports page (http://www.missiondevelopment.com/reports.html) in the Estimating/Bidding area.

It’s important to remember that, in Master Builder, Proposal is often synonymous with Contract. If you submit a proposal or bid to a prospect and it becomes an agreed deal, the Contract amount should be entered in the Contract field in 3-5 Jobs.

Additional notes about Proposals:

If you do use the Proposal screen, you can import those marked-up amounts into 3-7 Progress Billings. The normal logic would be:

1) create a Takeoff in screen 9-5.

2) If you use Bid Items, you can Export to a Proposal by Bid Item. The Bid Item Numbers will not display, but the Descriptions and dollar amounts will export intact. Then you can import them to Progress Billing as a schedule of values. It’s the only method in Master Builder where Bid Items will flow through to billing.

3) If you use Cost Codes for billing, it is much like the process above. If at all possible, I recommend using Cost Codes all the way through the process, because the Project Management and Accounting staff will be speaking the same language (there are no Bid Items in Accounts Payable, Payroll or any type of billing other than Progress Billing).

Just as with Budgets, Change Orders do not affect the Proposal screen. They do display as changes to dollar amounts (and in certain cases, hours) on Job Reports.

As I stated at the beginning of this article, the Proposals screen can be difficult to deal with. If you would like to discuss this, please contact me.

Please contact me if you would like to learn more about instituting a comprehensive training process. Thank you.

Andy King
T: 805-771-8400
service@missiondevelopment.com