I have been podering the question of peposal software for some time just havent opened the pocket book yet. Most of our business is in the $1 million+ home range. And we are looking at doing even bigger homes. I only have 3 guys working for me with a total of 5 in cluding my wife in the office. Right now we are fairly efficent with Visio, Quickbooks and Word. And can mimmic D-Tools proposals and drawings fairly well, mabye not quite as fast. D-Tools and SRS are bolth very impressave, I do see some effeciancy increases in using these progams, but not sure if it's worth $4,000 down and $200+ a month.The guys I have working for me are really good and I don't see the need to micro manage them. If I had 20 employees then I can see the QC factors of D-Tools and SRS but not for 5. But I have to ask at what size of a company should these be implimented? My indications seem to point to a company with possably at least a 10+ employees.

I thank you in advance for your input.
Bruce S.

You might want to look at the number of jobs or proposals you are doing a year instead of number of employees because the real savings will be determined by that, for a very rough example, if you do 40 jobs or proposals a year and lets just say you spend an average of 20hrs per job on data entry, proposal writing, ordering and inventory that comes to 800 hrs and if you just say that equates to $36000 based on a cost of $45hr. Lets just say for the heck of it that an all in one application saves you on average 25% of the time from entering data to manageing orders and inventory, that equates to 15hrs per job at 40 jobs times $45hr for a total of $27000. You may have just saved $9000. Now the question is do you really kknow how much you are spending on management? And can you estimate how much time you may be able to save?

I've used D-Tools for 5-6 years, running a company that has gone between 2-5 techs. I like it, and could not run my business any other way. The cost of the software at the time I bought it was around 4K, and this was prior to the ongoing monthly lease/support cost.

As you may have read elsewhere, the real cost of D-Tools use is not the software, but the learning curve. You will spend enough time learning and implementing the software that the "hidden" cost of learning will eclipse the cost of the software. Think of it in this sense; say you normally bill at $100/hr. Spend 80 hours learning the software (conservative) and you've spent $8000 in unrealized revenue learning the app, on top of the hard costs of software, hardware, etc.

What is your average bid(if I may ask?) We do aprox. 2-5 bids a month(large). we score mabye 1 a month. (Usualy because peoples mouths are bigger than their pocket book.)
Aprox. how many hours of learning would it take initally, and how much is learned as you move along over time? I have found I learn more the more I work with a program. I'm more of a hands on guy than a book guy.

You sound like me. I bought the software on a 30 day approval, and decided that if I was going to make it worth the investment I needed to do everything in it, large projects and small. I forced myself to begin using it from that day forward. It took me 80-100 hours before I could use the software in a proficient manner, making money using it rather than spending longer than other methods to administrate a job.

D-Tools is not useful for the small T&M jobs, really. If the job is larger, runs a long time, has many changes, or needs to be staged in phases, that's where this software shines.

Yea, we still do some T&M jobs. But 80% of our income, comes from new construction of large homes where phases are a major factor of the job. Eventualy within the next year the T&M will be phased out almost completely.I love the smallness of the company, easer to keep QC in check.I don't want to turn into large company. So that is the debate weather this is more sutable for a larger business. but it seems that you have helped me in this dicision. Thanks for your feedback.

Have you searched past posts about D-tools here and over at Integration Pros? Lots of discussions on this. You might try starting with D-tools basic, which just does the drawings. From what I've read your experience in visio will be a big help in coming up to speed in D-tools. the benefit, as I see it, over visio will be better drawings with less work.

You might also want to look at Quotewerks for doing your proposals. It's a pretty slick program and has decent integration with QuickBooks.

And yet, for the size jobs you are doing you may just want to dive in on the full D-tools. You are going to pay a lot more than 4K when it's all said and done though. I'd say closer to 10K the first two years plus the time invested.

That reminds me. What is the benefit of the quicklinks besides compiling purchase orders?