Using Adjusted 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. It is much easier to maintain recent pricing in Goldenseal!

To use the newly adjusted unit prices from the Price Master in the MacNail construction management software, use the Move Prices command to get them into your estimators (see pages 221-223).

To see how many projects have been used to feed back costs to a line item, check the 'experience' column.

To see how far off your labor and material unit costs are, check the 'lab adj' (labor adjustment) and 'mat adj' (material adjustment) columns. A blank cell means that the the MacNail construction estimating software has not yet fed back job cost data to this item.

An adjustment factor of 100% means that actual costs were exactly the same as estimated. A number greater than 100% means the unit price will be adjusted upwards, and a number less than 100% means the unit price will be adjusted downwards.

If the adjustment factor is greater than 120% or less than 80%, you may want to adjust the material quantities or waste factors used for that item in the Assemblies file. If you do that, type a 1 (one) or 100% into the mat adj column so the adjustment factor will no longer be used for that item.