Proposals for residential remodel, basement finish, service work

[HuntNJ]

I think you are over thinking the bidding process. Depending on how big the jobs are sometimes it doesn't make sense to do cost per item.

I would try to mess around with numbers two ways. One way is guessing how long rough and finish work will take then add your material plus mark up.

The second way is to give the price per item. light/switches/receptacles/homeruns etc.

Compare the two to see if one is way off from the other.

You are not going to win every bid and that is fine. Sometimes its better to not because some jobs aren't worth it.

 

[Omid]

A spreadsheet would be great. This is the way I envision getting these thing done in the future. May I ask what fields you would be entering for, lets say, a simple basement finish. I can kind of bring this back to my original premise, I'm currently breaking these jobs down by material and projected labor. I have to assume this is the most time consuming option that I have, and possibly less consistent (i have found fluctuations in my numbers) although it does still work. Lets put rates, and how we come up with rates, aside. What is the preferred method?

$ per sq ft
$ per opening
projected parts & labor

As I remember, I had a table for my settings such as overhead and profit rates. In another sheet, I had a table for standard cost data: a list of materials with units, prices, and labor hours. In the third sheet, I built up my assemblies using VLOOKUP to get the data from the settings and cost data tables. I built the proposal in another form in another sheet using the prebuilt assemblies or directly from the cost data table. I did this many years ago, but I still use Excel for different applications. These days, I get help from AI apps such as ChatGPT if I need to use excel advanced features or macros.

This works well in unit pricing or per opening. Square foot (sqft) pricing is simpler and faster, but I think it is difficult to come up with an accurate unit price per sqft and may need some actual data from our previous jobs if we want to calculate it accurately. Also, Sqft pricing has its own limitation and should be used with care.

 

[DooWop]

The only time I did T&M is when I had a possible chance of unforeseen problems. T&M limits profit by being too cheap.
As a new business you'll not know what your true overhead until you keep track for a few years. Until then you;ll need to
SWAG the problem. That's a scientific wild assed guess.
I doubt a "small parts markup" will cover your investment because like all investments they need to be profitable.
You've invested capital in an inventory and it's your piggy bank.