Woodworking Price Estimating Wizard

The Woodworking Price Estimating Wizard is an online utility from our friends at Bridgewood Design, creators of CutList Plus. It walks you through the process of creating a cost estimate for a woodworking project. You just answer a short series of questions (many of which are already filled-in for you) and it generates a professionally formatted estimate that you can print right from your browser.

The inputs to the wizard are fairly straightforward: material types and costs, hourly labor rates, labor estimates for various tasks, overhead rates, desired profit margin, shipping costs, payment terms, contact information, and so forth. If you hit a snag, the wizard has a nice help page that does an admirable job of explaining various estimating basics.

The Woodworking Price Estimating Wizard is designed specifically for custom woodworkers with small shops - either hobbyists or professionals. It lacks the bells and whistles that big-time woodworking operations require but it's just right for us small guys that need something that's fast and easy.

The wizard dovetails nicely with CutList Plus which can be used to figure out the best way to draw your cutting diagrams, add up the board-feet for any rough-milled lumber, and figure many of the project costs for you automatically. Once you have these costs in hand, you can then enter them into the wizard and you're off and running. Likewise, the Tabulator here at WoodBin could be used as a first step for deriving your lumber costs.

A sample cost proposal created with the Woodworking Price Estimating Wizard is shown below.

Proposal

Date: Friday, December 16, 2008
Project: Entertainment Center

Prepared by:
Wilhelm Schmidt
Eager Beaver Woodworking Inc.
746 Ressler Blvd
Hometown, PA 18344
(101) 144-1224

Prepared for:
Fred Mortinsen
Homeower
4572 Old Buzzard Rd
Buzzsaw, PA 18322
(101) 264-5432

Description		Amount	Total

Materials
	Rough-milled lumber	$130.00
	Plywood	$150.00
	Hardware	$45.00
	Finishing supplies	$30.00
	Sub-total		$355.00

Labor
	Design (10 hours)	$350.00
	Milling (24 hours)	$840.00
	Assembly (12 hours)	$420.00
	Finishing (12 hours)	$420.00
	Sub-total		$2,030.00

Overhead
	58 hours at $8.00		$464.00

Allowance
	10% of above costs		$284.90

Profit
	12% of above costs		$376.07

Terms: Net 30		Sub-total	$3,509.97
		Tax (6%)	$210.60
		Shipping	$50.00
		Total	$3,770.57