Custom Cut Bids

To estimate custom cut projects, you’ll use the Google doc, Job Estimator Template. To find the template, go into the American Stone Employees Shared Docs folder, then Job Bids. See the external links for this template. Make a copy of the template, and leave it in the principal folder so others can see other custom cut jobs. Note: Updates have been made to the spreadsheet template: 1. Product name is in the first column. 2. Number of pieces populates when you enter the square footage, which is typically how product is ordered, not by the piece. Copy the template and leave your bid spreadsheet in this folder. Over time, this folder will become a library of custom jobs that anyone can refer to, to see how to bid certain jobs. And this way we can go back and have a record of past projects to base more educated guesses on pricing variables. Ask for permission if you do not have it. The sheet contains tabs for estimating cut pricing for sandstone, quartzite and custom finishes. If you have a product that has both custom cuts and finishes, you will need to add pricing for both as separate line items. The fields in gold are those where you’ll enter your variables. You’ll enter the width, length, and thickness of the stone. The square feet per piece is in column E calculated by the width times length. You’ll determine the number of pieces which the customer needs, and then the finished-material total square feet will calculate in column F. In column G, the finished-material cubed feet (including the thickness) is included. The raw material price is calculated at 80% of the per-ton dealer price (Level 9), at the location you’re cutting in. To find the dealer price, you can: Look under the Odoo Discuss private Star Stone Sales channel, you’ll find the most recently issued PDF pricelist. Got to Sales ... Pricelist Items, and for Cherokee, you would start typing the product code to pull the range (ssscr11). Group by filters Pricelist and then End Date. In the video, this was 80% of $125 initially, but was then corrected to $116. The reason for this is that “landscape slabs” were selected instead of “saw slabs.” The price for Cherokee saw slabs was found not in SL but in Heber, where Cherokee comes from, it was 0.06 a lb. or 120 a ton, however we need to add in freight to Salt Lake; this made the dealer price 145 a ton, and 116 for the raw material price (also called Level 12 pricing). This works out to a total of $1,721.96 in raw material cost. Toby has calculated there will be around 55% waste, and this means that from around 30,000 lbs. of raw material, only 13,360 lbs. remain as finished product. The “Saw Cost” is a figure that includes the worker’s labor, cost of blades, and other maintenance on that saw. You’ll enter the per-piece hourly estimate. Said another way, how much time does it take for one worker to complete one piece of product in the sizes you’ve specified? If it were to take 24 man-hour to product 133 pieces, then to produce one piece would take 24/133 = 0.18. In the table, we round up to 0.2. The major variables that affect pricing are the waste you estimate and how much time it will actually take to perform the work. Estimating these correctly is something that comes with experience … going back and figuring out whether we were right later, for example, and one of the motives of the library of past projects so you don’t have to start from zero. You could start with 50% waste to start with something, and you can call the Saw Shop manager (Eric Ward) to ask him what he believes how much labor will be involved), but don’t be in a rush to get customer a price. A quick rule of thumb: an additional 6 inches in one or both dimensions will likely result in an added 10 to 15% of waste. So if you will lose 60% in a 12 by 18 cut, with a 18 by 24, you would lose 75%. Random lengths decrease the amount of waste — and greater randomness lowers it further still. It’s important to ensure you have all of the customer’s parameters on the job, and that you can present options that allow for value engineering as well. Deciding between saw slabs and saw blocks: If you are cutting top and bottom, and you don’t want seams, you want to use saw blocks. You’ll use saw slabs when the customer is calling for natural cleft (with seams). You should always get at least 2 or 3 people involved in assisting you and reviewing the pricing before issuing a bit to the customer. Remember that according to Action Selling is very last in the steps of the sale. When we refer to “the matrix” it is the third tab of a sheet that was designed originally for quoting steps and slabs. This is in external links as well. When a customer has a few custom cuts, the matrix can be used; however, the matrix has not been updated as of this writing and since it doesn’t take into account all dimensions, it can be wrong, particularly for larger cuts.