For a painting contractor, these two programs, the spreadsheet and the word processor, are the most used other than my accounting and estimating software. And I actually use the spread sheet for estimating, also. This is how I set up my mail merge so that I can mail thousands of addressed cards as a lead generator.
I use the most famous brands of this software, they are expensive pieces of software, but they have paid for themselves many times over. And they are made to perform this job relatively effortlessly, together.
Importing a data file or creating your own list it is best to save the file as a .csv to the spreadsheet program, with each field, occupant, address, town, city, state, zip etc. as a column.
Then take your word processing program and prepare the page size and format for margins, etc. I use a card that I have the local printer do for me. Take the word processor and have it find and use the .csv file. Then assign the different field of the .csv file to the address block.
Like this:
Name or Occupant
Street
City, State. Zip
USPSTTF (bar code)
You can download this (USPSTTF file) for free and install as a font into your word processor program. This is why you are able to buy cheaper postage, because theoretically the post office is supposed to scan this and sort it by machine, eliminating a person’s job and thereby saving someone, some money in the post office.
After this is done, tell the word processor what range of addresses that you want to print on the cards, and the word processor will read the .csv file and stop when it is done with the job that you assigned to it.
It might take a little time the first time you do it but it really is pretty easy, and once it is set up all you do is feed the paper into the printer when it is empty.
Then go to the USPS site and download the correct forms as a .pdf file, print them, fill the 2 forms out and take it with a check to the Post Office where you bought your bulk rate permit.) That’s all the post office will take your bundles and deliver them.
By: P E Cavanaugh
Posts Tagged ‘Painting Jobs’
Painting Business – Getting Paint Jobs – Direct Mail Using Excel
April 8th, 2010Painting Jobs – Going Rate, Hourly Rate Or Selling Price
March 9th, 2010
Calculating overhead – Secrets of knowing what hourly rate to charge for your work.
Let me ask you a question. What hourly rate should I price my work at?
Or, What is the going rate for painting work?
I wish I had $5.00 for every time I have heard someone ask that question of another painter.
So what?
Here are two more examples of “so what”.
1 – I am a 35 year old married man with 3 kids, a big mortgage, and my wife is a stay at home mom. I pay all my medical expenses out of pocket. I have two painters and two tucks with all their bills and expenses. I pay for workers comp and liability insurance on our combined payroll. And of course if I get hurt my government won’t allow me to collect disability; because, I am the owner.
2 – I am a 45 year old man living with my wife who is tenured teacher in a big upper class public school. Her job pays all medical expenses and insurance. We bought our home 20 years ago, and the mortgage is small for today’s standards. We are childless and have no major expenses.
Different needs, both business and personal, so what do they charge?
The “going rate”, or whatever that is. The problem with selling our services for the “going rate” is that the “going rate” is someone else’s rate, not your rate. So to ask anyone what the “going rate” is a sure fire way to work for an hourly rate lower than you need.
You should ask yourself what your “going rate” is. That is, what do you need to sell your jobs at in order to do the best job you are capable of and make what you need plus profit. The way to know is to add all your costs including what you need to earn and diving that by the amount of hours worked.
Just add all your costs, for the year and divide by your historical hours worked. That will be your “going rate” not some number thrown out in order to be the lowest bidder. And that is usually what someone else’s going rate is.
The problem with most people in our business when calculating overhead is not including everything.
For example, do you pay yourself to do an estimate? We all advertise “free estimates”, they may be free to our clients; but, they are not free to us. Leaving out things like this will give you a lower number than what is needed. And the greatest challenge of painter/craftsman/ business owner is to learn to think like a businessman before thinking of himself as a painter.
By: P E Cavanaugh
Painting and Paint Jobs – Estimating Methods
March 4th, 2010
Wouldn’t it be great if we could travel into the future and then look backwards to see where we have been? If we could do that we could see how long any job took and just copy it down. As it is we can’t so we do the next best thing. We standardize things.
There is absolutely nothing better than experience to know how much it will take to paint something.
This is one reason for job-costing. And the more we breakdown the units of costing the more accurate picture we get when using these figures to estimate a job.
After that it is easy enough to count doors and windows, or measure walls or ceilings. We then just plug in our historical figures for doors, or take our square foot historical price per square foot and multiply by our total square footage. The way I do any estimate is to take the time to paint an item with very little prep done. If there are special circumstances concerning prep then I add that to the estimate as a line item. Like 2000square feet siding = $312 + scrape and sand = $125 = total price of $437. This is an easy way to compartmentalize your items, otherwise it gets too complicated trying to standardize your historical data. We will have a line item for anything of an amount that can’t be absorbed into the estimate. At the end of every subtotal we have a line item that includes the time to setup and prepare a room. This is where we usually add things like removal of switch plates, small spackling, clean up, caulking and putting it all back together.
As we mentioned before we hate time and material. So the very best way to estimate things like wallpaper removal is to try and see if you can remove a little behind something or just ask if you can take a little off. Compare this with your historical square footage removal costs and multiply it out.
Wallpaper removal can still be a crap shoot, that’s why we always go a little high if there are unknowns.
Imagine painting 6 windows all at chest height, with your paint on a small step ladder next to you, and you are standing on firm flat level ground. Now imagine that the windows are all at least 15 feet from the ground. We have a concept that we use all the time, we call it high time difficulty. What this means is in our effort to standardize we will say that the factor to paint the first scenario is x 1, o r no change. The second scenario is to count windows and multiply by a factor of 1.2, 20 feet we use 1.6. You might use something different. The idea of using a factor like this, saves time in estimating. We use a similar factor when estimating clapboard siding or shingle/shake siding. We take a flat wall price and multiply it by 12% or add 12% to the total siding to account for the time and material extra it will cost to paint the exposed edges of the boards. Another type of factor has to do with texture. A smooth sheetrock wall takes less time to paint than a rough texture stucco wall. Another factor might be to paint brick that has deep joints.
The idea behind this type of estimate is to break the job down in your mind to all of its pieces in relation to a paint job. So that all 6 panel doors take 20 minutes per side, if we have to strip each door then that gets added to the cost of painting each door. By doing your estimates this way you only have to worry about the count, that you use the correct historical and difficulty factors. It also becomes easy to double check your estimates this way. The estimate becomes an objective exercise rather than a subjective estimate based on loose variables.
By: P E Cavanaugh
