Partial Unit Costs

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. Assemblies in Goldenseal can be any size.

Partial Items

It's also possible to split any of your 'basic' unit prices into smaller portions, either as a replacement for the original unit price, or as a supplement.

For example, the 'stock' price book in the MacNail construction estimating software includes only one line for suspended ceilings. If you do a lot of commercial work, you could split that up into wall angles, T's, panels, and installation of lights and vents, to make it easier to estimate ceilings more accurately.

Different Job Sizes

For unit price estimating to be accurate, the cost per unit must be about the same, no matter how many units you use in a particular project. Fortunately, that is usually a safe assumption over a fairly wide range of conditions. If your projects are quite a bit larger or smaller than usual, however, you may need to adjust some unit prices.

If you find yourself doing a wide range of project sizes, you may want to have several unit prices for some items. For example, for concrete, it might be worth having both a small-job unit price (based on bags of gravel mix) and a large-job unit price (based on trucked ready-mix). You can then use whichever unit price meets the specifics of each job.