Why use ESTIMATION instead of Excel?
For the management of user rights
Unlike Excel you can create user groups and allow or not allow :
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Modify a price, hourly rate from the catalogue
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Allow entering a project price
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Modify the output of a job for the catalogue
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Modify the composition of an assembly
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Overwrite a formula
Several people can modify elements of the templates at the same time
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In Excel, the second person who opens the database is read-only
Get statistics on projects
Usually, each project is in a separate Excel file. In software with a database manager,
you can easily make queries on all the projects and get the different information:
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What is the average price of an X assembly per square foot?
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What is the total amount we bid for in 2019?
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Estimator X accounted for how many of the bids were accepted by the customer?
Intelligent unit management
Unlike Excel, CBE allows the following operations:
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12 feet X 12 inches = 12 square feet
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100 feet of wall / 16 inches center to center = 75 pieces
Unlike Excel, CBE prohibits the following operations
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2 feet + 2 square feet
Automatic backup
Sometimes Excel does not handle automatic saving well. In CBE each operation is saved after processing.
A more solid structure to manage the databases
In Excel, sometimes the file is corrupted or rows are shifted. It is not a real database manager. CBE is stored in a SQL database see Microsoft SQL Server. It is a relational database and so you can update, or not, the current quote if you change the list prices. see why-don't-use-excel-as-a-database