Does anyone use any type of bidding software? If not how do you do your bids/estimates? I just bought Electrical Bid Manager from Vision Infosoft and am just starting to experiment with it now. Before I did my estimates on manual spreadsheets.

i bid per item installed plus materials ...or estimated man/hours for labor plus materials.

I used Accubid at the company I used to work for when I was a project manager trainee. I highly reccomend it. It's very easy to use and it saves a lot of time. I couldn't even imagine doing an estimate by hand.

The only drawback is that Accubid software is very expensive.

Several years ago I presented a seminar on estimating systems. During the research I found 26 electrical estimating programs on the market. I also discovered that 18 of the systems were being marketed by failed EC's. One of these is still being marketed today. Do lots of research before you commit. If you are a residential contractor you don't need a database with 28,000 commercial/industrial items.
Rowdy

I am about ready to buy the time and material billing program from Vision software . Do you use this spyder?

Yes, I use T&M billing. Its been great and exports nicely into Quickbooks. I also have their pricing data base EPIC. I do mainly residential work, so it will be interesting to see if the estimate/bid package works out or not.

Spyder, I see you are experimenting with your new Vision software. I wanted to point you to a short overview/tutorial that goes over some of the basics of the software. This tutorial is available free on our website. Just go to http://www.visioninfosoft.com/prodtour/ebm3k/tour.htm

The tour covers the Electrical Bid Manager (EBM) 3000 and new Plus software. Many of the features are also found in Electrical Bid Manager Basic (2000).

Have any questions, email me!

Derrick Delliquadri
ddelliquadri@visioninfosoft.com http://www.visioninfosoft.com
Celebrating 10 years of serving the Electrical Industry! 1993-2003