Joanna Mulgrew, Managing Director of HBXL Building Software reminds building firms what they’re in business for.
Are you a building firm owner, director or manager? What does success look like to you? Is it a job completed without too much interference from the homeowner? Deliveries arriving when they should? Subbies not letting you down?
It’s very easy for relief to be the overwhelming emotion when a job ends – but let’s not forget why you were doing the extension, loft conversion or new build in the first place – to make money. So, did you?
When we ask our builder community what motivates them – a few goals are regularly repeated – decent holidays, more staff, family time, a nest egg for retirement, off the tools… You know you’re successful when your business is making the kind of money that gives you these well-deserved rewards.
But cash in the bank can be hard to come by. It’s not the number of jobs you do in your working life that will give you the lifestyle you’d like. It’s down to the type of jobs you go after, and importantly, whether you 1) charge the true and accurate amount for the ‘physical’ job and 2) charge for the ‘behind the scenes’ costs.
Why you need to quote accurately
An accurate estimate isn’t easy to achieve with pen and paper, or a creaky spreadsheet. Plus, these methods don’t exactly instill the courage needed to charge every last penny for the job – like your management time, a share of the van insurance, the wheelbarrow with a hole, broken tiles and so on.
But you should. Every penny matters. Over time you could lose serious money and certainly not make any. And that’s where estimating software comes in – not as a ‘nice to have’ but as an essential tool of the business.
EstimatorXpress for example, tracks the latest prices and works out not just today’s cost but the job start date cost as well – useful bearing in mind the continuing price increases. Material schedules are produced automatically so suppliers get advanced notice. And the onboard Gantt chart will also take a date change in a job and cascade the consequences.
But perhaps better still, are the nudges EstimatorXpress gives the user to charge the full amount and not round down, or knock a few hundred quid off. Firstly, it calculates every single hour, every last nail and tube of mastic, and it knows all the plant you’ll need and for how long.
Secondly it gets you to think about the cost beyond materials, labour and plant. Give it a percentage for your overheads and it will do the sum, same for the wear and tear, wastage and inflation. Go with it. Trust the process. There are customers out there who will pay the right price for quality craftsmanship and a professional service. And they are the ones with the projects that help building firms expand and grow.
And these in-depth calculations don’t mean more work – the opposite. Over the last few years EstimatorXpress has been re-engineered to be even more straightforward for the user. The whole process is ‘step by step’ with visual aids and hints and tips that appear in the window as you go. An extension can take less than hour, a new build no more than a few hours.
Uncapped support comes as standard
All new users receive an onboarding session, help with their first estimate, and have the option of eight free hours of live-streamed training to sharpen their new found skills if they feel they need it. Telephone support is included in the first year as part of the software package, thereafter there’s a small annual fee for support and software updates.
So isn’t it time to charge the full amount for your work… and build retirement, nights off, a family holiday, a bigger office, a new van… into your future?
You can put EstimatorXpress to the test during a free 14-day trial –download it instantly from the HBXL website at www.hbxl.co.uk/trial-request
