BZ-05: Bidding and Estimating Bid-Biz Smith, I. J. $40 #7126/1866 is a bidding program that lets you tie multiple component and phase costs to the bid or primary items. The program uses multiple record windows for viewing, editing and various look up purposes. It can be useful for the quote option as well as for establishing different defaulting burdens to be used for different type estimates, various workers' comp insurance, out of town expenses, etc. You can create estimates with only a few master file records. It should prove useful for many other businesses besides contractors. Requires 512k RAM and a hard disk. Cost-Biz Smith, I. J. $35 #7126/1902 is a job-costing program. It allows for four types of costs: equipment, labor, materials, and subcontractor costs. It allows percentage allocations or units to be used in the cost items. Requires 512k and a 132-column printer. A hard disk is recommended. Files are limited only by disk space. Smith has written several accounting related programs, and all of them are fast, professional looking, and easy and efficient to use. For example, when entering a new part number or account number, you do not keep getting beeped and told to go to another part of the program to set up new accounts. Instead, you are allowed to set up new entries on the fly. Complete Sales Automation System 5.6 [SAS56T] (11-93 CD) Software Innovations ASP $69 #7126/1802 helps business owners, sales people, and other professionals maintain a client database, a simple inventory database, and merge the two to prepare estimates, quotations, and point of sale invoices. You can re-direct output to the screen, printer, or disk file, set a default price class for each client, mass update inventory pricing, enter credit card authorization numbers, enter tax rates with three decimal numbers, print client mailing labels, print an inventory price list, and organize sales prospecting. Other features include vendor, quote and invoice tracking, order summary reports, and automated follow up. Inventory quantities can be tracked, and the sales tax report shows taxable and non-taxable sales totals. The salesman's name will print on each quotation/invoice, and order summary reports can be generated for individual clients or salespeople. Packing slips can be printed for invoices, vendor mailing labels can be printed, and extended product descriptions can be viewed for each item on an order direct from the order entry screen. Items in inventory may be flagged as taxable or nontaxable, and there are three price/class categories. The program is easy to use and very well designed. Documentation is limited, but there is plentiful context-sensitive help and a tutorial which will walk you through the features of the program. Network support is provided. Requires 640k and a hard disk. Easy Quote Smith, I. J. $35 #7126/2128 is a customer price quote program. Two overhead factors are provided for projected cost purposes. Program design allows for the printed quote to be used as a billing invoice also. It uses auto look up tables and scrolling record windows. Quoted products are displayed with extensions in the multiple record windows. Requires 512k. Hard disk is recommended. PC-Bid Plus Smith, I. J. $35 #7126/1154 maintains databases of bid items together with Labor, Equipment, Material and Sub-Contractor costs. Labor costs can be maintained by both time and monetary values, allowing for various costing methods to be used. The program prepares cost estimates and proposals. A hard disk is recommended. If you get the error message that Btrieve is not loaded, it means that you ran the PC-BID.EXE program instead of running PCBID.BAT which loads Btrieve before running PC-BID. Any program which has the BTRIEVE.EXE record manager on the disk must be run from a batch file in this manner. EstiBid $299 #7018/651 [5 disks] is a major estimating program for manufacturers. ESTIBID is both the most extensive and most expensive shareware program we've seen, covering five 360k disks. Power Quote Gee, Gary $50 #7127/2127 (formerly PC Quote) produces customer price quotations and invoices and adds them to a database file. You enter the prices, quantities, and customer's discount rate and the program does the rest. Reports can be printed or viewed on-screen. The system can handle credit amounts. The unit price fields on the item screen can handle a variable decimal position. The Quotes can be saved, retrieved, and modified at a later date. The system also supports multiple templates, and the user can specify the one that they wish to use. Requires a hard disk, 384k of DOS RAM. PRODEV*EPrice 5.0 [PDEPRICE] (11-93 CD) PRODEV Software ASP $35 #7127/2129 is an electrical contractors pricing system. This is a companion package to the PDS*Quote system for electrical contractors. It allows the electrical contractor to subscribe to one of the weekly price update services and selectively and easily import the price updates into the PDS*Quote data base files. PRODEV*Quote 5.0 [PDQUOTE] (11-93 CD) PRODEV Software ASP $70 #7127/0731 aids you in preparing quotations from a large inventory for stock items, sub-assemblies, processes, special one-of-a-kind items, etc. Different groups of items can have different mark-ups. Different hourly labor rates can be assigned to each group and multiple labor groups are allowed for a quote. Supplier information can be stored and accessed. You can build a quote by simply entering part numbers and quantities. Features include virtually unlimited data file size, optional multi-group labor units per material item; state and/or federal tax combinations; print to disk, screen, or printer; optional multiple profit rates and more. Handles non-USA dates. Lets you enter Bulk Quantity and Prices for automatic Unit Price calculations. Other features include a pop-up calculator and calendar and context- sensitive help. A merge feature allows importing price data from PC-File, dBase III+, Q&A, and Lotus 1-2-3. You can customize field names, do bulk pricing, multi-state tax/labor, allow for rental items, do mass price changes, create purchase order lists and much more. Output can be exported into database and spreadsheet importable formats. Requires 520k. Available on 3.5" 1.44mb MegaDisk and CD only. PRODEV*Quote Utility Programs PRODEV Software ASP $10-$15 #7127/2864 is a set of two utilities for use with PRODEV*Quote. The Tracking program is used to track actual costs for a quotation and print exception reports that allow you to see all variances between the quote estimate and the actual costs. The Browse program allows you to rapidly Browse/Edit the ProDev*QUOTE material, labor, supplier and quotation data files via overlaid Pop-Up windows. Quotes Master Database Josef's Software $100 #7127/845 is designed to keep track of a number of different quotes and print them out any time. A "quote" is a collection of part numbers, their descriptions, and their actuals. A bill of material can be printed for any entered quote. PriceBook RJL Systems $100 #1679 lets you keep itemized listings of items with price extensions and totals automatically calculated. Shipping charges and sales tax can also be included automatically. This is a generalized system that could be used for recording and printing price books, invoices, catalogs, etc. We have a tough time evaluating this program. The price seems outrageous to us and the program seems to be hardcoded to use drive A:, although the author assures us it is not. We suspect that this program that will appeal to some people, primarily novices who prefer a dedicated application to doing the same job with a spreadsheet or with a general database program like PC-File. Dyna-Quote 3.0 [DYNAQUOT] 09-93 CD Dynamacs, Inc $25 #4470 (formerly Quotation Faster) is a complete sales quotation program. It is easy to set up and use, with help available at any time, yet it is powerful enough to be in use by the leading manufacturer of laser printers. ]]]]]