Hard/Soft Costs in Estimates

Feature

In Goldenseal estimating software version 4.2 and earlier, we used the Cost Area of each line item to split estimating costs into "hard" or direct costs, and "soft" or indirect costs:

• Assemblies, Labor, Materials, Subs, Equipment, Other-- considered as "hard" costs
• Overhead, Profit, Contingencies, Percent Of...-- considered as "soft" costs

Some people want more control over the process of deciding which items will appear in the printed forms for the estimate, and which will be "hidden" as part of the markup. So starting with version 4.3, you can now use the Category value to determine whether a line item is considered "hard" or "soft".

Suggested By

User feature request.

How to Use

To set Goldenseal so it will use categories to determine whether line items are a hard or soft cost, follow these steps:

1. Choose Preferences from the Options menu, and choose Income from the submenu.
2. Turn on the Hard/Soft Costs from Category checkbox.
3. Click OK.

To import a list of categories that probably should be soft costs, follow these steps:

1. Click this link to download a small text file with corrected data.
2. Save the file on your hard drive at a convenient location.
3. Choose Import from the File menu, and choose Payroll Update from the submenu.
4. Locate the file you saved in step 2.
5. Goldenseal will convert the listed cost categories so they are considered as soft costs.

To set each category to be a soft cost, follow these steps:

1. Choose Category Setup from the Costs menu, and choose Cost Categories from the submenu.
2. Click on a category, then click the Edit button.
3. Turn on the Use as a Soft/Indirect Cost checkbox if this is a "soft" cost. Turn it off it it's a "hard" or direct cost.
4. Click OK.
5. Repeat steps 2 to 4 for all categories.

Technical Details

Programmer Note: code changed in CCostBreakdownEntry::IsSoftCost