By the Number$: Eeny, meeny, miny, moe; Purchase Orders save Lots ...

By the Number$: Eeny, meeny, miny, moe; Purchase Orders save Lots ...: "It is an undeniable fact! Just pick 3 of your best suppliers and implement a Purchase Order system with them and see what happens. Two weeks..."

By the Number$

Dollars & Cents; Relevant to construction business management; A flow of information and ideas.

By the Number$

Check out a new blog dedicated to news about the construction and housing industry, educational information for businesses and ideas on what to focus on when analyzing your business number$. Post your comments, ideas, thoughts about better financial management of your business. Also hear about construction business success stories from time-to-time.

Hope you enjoy!

Fall 2010 Plus Series Release

Greetings CSG Customers. I am happy to announce our latest release in Beta form is available on our website. You can go to www.csgsoftware.com and click on the "CSG Enhancement Updates" link at the top of the page to login with your customer code.

What is a "Beta" release you ask? A Beta version is somewhat of a test version before we finalize everything that goes into a release. It gives our customer base an opportunity to check out any of the new features, test heavily used areas for any problems and then give us feedback on what you find. This release has been tested by our support staff, however, a Beta version gives us much more exposure of users utilizing all areas of the products, which in turn helps us find issues that may not be seen easily by our support staff. This helps us finalize a release and "lock it down" so-to-speak so we can then focus fully on enhancing the product with the next batch of upgrades in the next release.

We appreciate any help our customers are willing to give us during this time. This release will be in a Beta version for approximately 2-4 weeks, so please get us your feedback as soon as possible on any issues you come across.

Please contact us at 651-777-7716 ext 2, 2 if you have any questions about setting up a test copy of your data and using the Beta version on that first.

Thank you!

Budget vs. Committed Cost. What's the difference?

Many may ask "What's the difference between my budget and committed cost?". It's a great question and the answer lies in the original estimate and purchase orders. In TakeOff Plus when we finalize a Bid we then have an accurately estimated cost budget for a particular subdivision. However, factors can affect what the actual purchase cost will be later in the project that could cause some variance from the original budget. So, first the budget is set once the estimator finishes the initial Bid and then transfers that to Job Accounting. In essence, the Bid determines the Budget.

The Purchase Orders (or Subcontracts) are what determine the Committed Cost. The committed cost can be, and many times is, equal to the budget, but not always. Let's take the Electrical part of the house for example. On one of your jobs, your normal electrician is unable to perform the work at the needed schedule time so you have to find another sub to do the work. This change will happen on the PO or Subcontract, which in turn will update your committed cost, not the original budget.

Purchase Orders and Committed Cost are a deeper level of controlling costs than just using a budget. They also insure that invoices get entered properly to the right budget categories by populating from what the estimator setup and not leaving it open for questions by the office person doing the accounting. It takes the "guesswork" and loss of productivity out of the processing of AP Invoices due to the fact that less communication is needed between the actual estimator and bookkeeper.

Please let me know any questions or comments you have on this topic. Have a great day!

Steve Mallory