There needs to be a way to have “Base Bid” items in an estimate when using alternates. When including or excluding alternates, the “Base Bid” value should not change. All of the Totals/Markups that change because an alternate is included or excluded need to be allocated to that Alternate, ie: the “Base Bid” should not change. The percentage based addons seem to work like this, but the addons that utilize a table rate change the base bid when an alternate is included or excluded.
by: Daniel D. | over a year ago | Other
Comments
Thank you for your submission, we have added it to our backlog and will prioritize accordingly.
I feel like the program can do this already with the statues and allocating add-ons appropriately. -Kyle Bonde, Hensel Phelps
If add-ons on the totals sheet are all percentage based or calculations, I think the alternates feature works great. But when you introduce lump sum add-ons it starts to get a little weird, especially on the alternate summary page.
For example if I have a lump some general conditions add-on on the totals sheet and it is allocated to only the "base bid" alternate, when I turn other alternates on/off, the "base bid" changes. I'm sure this has to do with the add-on formulas calculating on the lump sum but if you think in simple terms, the "base bid" should not change whether an alternate is included or excluded.
Thanks, -Daniel Dercher, Nabholz
It would be cool if that Alternates Summary page look and feel could replace the traditional totals page. And just like reporting...be able to choose certain WBS sorts (for instance your already determined spreadsheet sequences) right off a dialog on the summary screen....showing those values across the top and you choose then which to include or exclude. And like in Unit Price bids / give you a unit price derived from the WBS value total divided into the WBS value over line quantity. Would be cool then if that Summary screen could be left open and the values change as you change your estimate. And of course exporting that summary (totals page) sheet to MS Excel becomes most valuable.