Automatic Job Costing Feedback

NOTE-- We retired the MacNail estimating program in 2000, and replaced it with Goldenseal construction estimating software. There are still a significant number of die-hard MacNail users, so we keep the manuals online for them! Goldenseal is an integrated program that also includes accounting, scheduling and contract writing.

MacNail Customizing can feed back your job cost experience to your 'price book' on a semi-automatic or automatic basis.

Since The MacNail construction management software doesn't know exactly what happened on the job site, it won't be quite as clever as you would be when adjusting unit prices. But if you've completed and job costed enough projects (say ten or more), the laws of averages should allow MacNail to do a pretty good job of coming up with the 'right' prices anyhow.

The feedback process looks at the ratio between 'estimated' and 'actual' costs from your Cost Control worksheets, and uses that number to adjust all items in your 'price book' that fall under that category. MacNail takes a weighted average of all the projects you've run through the feedback process, so the numbers will grow more and more accurate, the more projects you complete.

If you turn on 'Use only completed items' under Feedback Options and you've made a Project List or a Schedule for the job, then only those items that were actually part of the job will be adjusted-- so it's a good idea to make one or the other from each of your estimates before running the feedback command. If neither of those files is available, The MacNail construction management software will feed back to all unit prices in each category.

When MacNail feeds back job costs, it updates labor and material adjustment factors in the Price Master. These adjustment factors are multipliers which will adjust the listed labor and material unit prices upwards or downwards, whenever you transfer unit prices with the Move Prices command.