When a client says “we have some work, could you give us a price?” use Abio to assemble a detailed, professional quote for them.
The first part of a quote is a checklist. Checklists cover non-monetary aspects of the quote. You can use the checklist to show your client exactly what level of service you’re offering and what you’re expecting of them. For example, you may have a section of the checklist for what you’ll take responsibility for: union labour, supervision, daily inspections, etc. Another section might itemize what the client is responsible for: lockup, electricity, wifi, water, washrooms, etc. Abio lets you set up any number of checklists. Likely you’ll only need to set up a single checklist, but you can use different checklists for different kinds of work if necessary.
The next part of a quote is the monetary component. Cost estimate templates calculate the cost of doing work. They contain a list of different tasks that you may have to do for any given job and the hourly rate for each task. You can also include unit costs for materials you need for the job. You simply plug in the number of hours for each task and the quantity of materials you’ll use and the cost is calculated automatically.
Example 1: An electrical contractor can set up a cost estimate template for electrical work. You can fill in the hourly rates for your electricians, and the per unit costs for the different kinds of wiring, breakers, outlets and switches.
Like checklists, you can set up as many cost estimate templates as you need to estimate the costs of different types of work. If the type of work you do is fairly specific, you’ll probably only need one cost estimate template. Once filled in, a cost estimate template gives a dollar value for one task. You can break the estimate up into as many tasks as necessary. You’ll complete a cost estimate for each task, and the combined cost of the tasks will be the amount of your bid.
When it’s time to submit your quote, you can use our standard report, complete with customizable rich text attachments. Or, we’ll show you how to construct custom MS Word documents as templates for the quote you’ve built. The text, format, and graphics are specific to your company brand. Abio will fill in the details and dollar amounts from the quote you’ve assembled within Abio.
If your client accepts your quote, Abio will create a job for you, and initialize the budget for the cost centres to the dollar amounts from the original quote. Use Abio for Web to track your progress. Each time you do, Abio will forecast how much it will cost to complete your job.