If you issue claims for payment to your client as your job progresses, you can use Benchmark Estimating Software’s Progress Claim function to make your claims more accurate and your processes more efficient.

Overview

The Progress Claims feature within Benchmark Estimating Software has always been popular with users as it helps you save time preparing claims for payment, and also helps you ensure your Progress Claims are accurate and free from errors.

Some of the main advantages of Progress Claims include:

• The ability to enter progress data for each Item in your Project, and produce Progress Claim reports directly from your estimate, which you can then submit to your client
• The flexibility to issue claims either by percentage complete for each Item or a Quantity complete for each Item
• When you price Variations in Benchmark Estimating Software, they flow through to your Progress Claims but remain separate from the rest of your claim making it easier to keep track of them
• The Progress Claim feature also handles Retentions. For each claim that is entered, the system will automatically calculate the Retention based on the amount claimed and the Retention percentage set. Benchmark Estimating Software will continue to calculate Retentions until a nominated, maximum retention value is reached or Practical Completion is reached
• Your accounting department can use the Progress Claims generated by Benchmark Estimating Software to form the basis of invoices that you send to clients. Using the total of the Progress Claim, they can raise an invoice for that amount then simply attach the Progress Claim generated by our software to support your invoice. This saves your accounting department having to retype information into invoices
• There are four different Progress Claim Reports for an individual claim including a one-page Summary (cover sheet), detailed reports Item by Item, a Claim Report with Options so you can customise the format of the report, and a report showing summary data for the last four claims. This gives you a better overview of your claims and gives you greater flexibility to create claims to suit your and your client’s needs.

What clients say about Progress Claims

“Benchmark Estimating Software’s Progress Claim feature is fantastic. Using our previous spreadsheet system, producing different claims for the different jobs we have running at the one time, took many hours and was fraught with potential errors. Benchmark’s Progress Claim feature makes our Claims process a lot more efficient and eliminates the possibility of mistakes. It works really well for us that’s for sure.”    

Claudine McBeath, Financial Controller / QA Manager.  Eire Contractors, Port Macquarie, NSW, Australia

Enhancements to Progress Claims in 7.4

With Version 7.4, we’ve enhanced the Progress Claims feature to make it more encompassing of all of the tasks associated with making claims to your clients throughout the life of your Projects. Improvements made include:

• You can now edit Item descriptions in the Progress Claim Input window without having to return to the Project Items window
• You can add comments to an Item in the Progress Claim Input window and these comments will flow through to your detailed Claim reports
• You can flag a Progress Claim to indicate that “practical completion” has occurred. This will allow you to “release” Retention held based on user definable % or lump sum values
• You can flag a job as “Complete” meaning no more Progress Claims are required
• We’ve added a new Progress Claim Summary report that can be accessed from the Project Browser. It provides you with a 360 degree view of all Claim summary values for “un-complete” jobs.

The Progress Claim Summary Report is accessed from the Project Browser

 How to create a Progress Claim

To add a Progress Claim to a Project, follow these steps:

1. In the Project Details window, right click and select ‘Go To’ > ‘Progress Claims.

The Progress Claim window is then displayed. This window shows a list of all of your Progress Claims already made for this Project. In this example, two claims have already been made against this job

2. Right click and select ‘Add’.

3. Enter the details for the claim including ‘Date for Payment’ (this may already be populated depending on your Administration settings), the date range for the claim and the terms of the claim.

4. Claims are automatically calculated by ‘Quantity Complete’. If you wish to claim by Percentage complete, select the ‘Claim as Percentage not Quantity’ check box. If you always claim by percentage, you can set this as a default in the Administration settings under the Progress Claims tab.

5. You can also include Retention at this stage – check your User Manual for instructions on how to include Retentions in your Progress Claims

6. Right click and select ‘OK’

The Progress Claim input window will be displayed, ready for you to begin entering Progress Data.

7. Right click and select ‘Edit’.

8. Select the ‘Completed %’ or ‘Completed Qty’ column for the first Item you wish to claim, and type in the total % or Quantity Complete for this Item. Press <Enter> or the down arrow on the keyboard to move to the next Item.

9. Continue entering data until you have entered data for each Item you are claiming for this Claim.

10. Right-click and select ‘OK’

You have now completed your Progress Claim. You can generate a Progress Claim report which you can send to your client.

Progress Claim Reports can be accessed from the Progress Claims window under the 'Reports' Tab

For more information on Progress Claims and how this feature can help your business, contact us today or request a staff guided demonstration.

February marks the official release of Version 7.4 of Benchmark Estimating Software, the most advanced version of our software to date. Along with some great new additions, we’ve also improved some of our most popular features to make your estimating even faster and more accurate than ever before.

Summary of Version 7.4

Over 30 enhancements and new features including:

• New integration with “On-Screen Takeoff” for faster and more accurate quantity takeoffs and estimates, whilst eliminating the risk of data entry errors
• New “Application Service” module which can integrate Benchmark Estimating Software with your other mission critical business systems (e.g. accounting, ERP, CRM systems) to reduce double entry of data, save you time and improve operational workflows
•  Improvements to “Auto Allocate” to help you to simplify your estimating further, resulting in greater automation of your estimating and significant productivity gains
• Over 30 new keyboard shortcuts make the software even easier to use and improve day-to-day efficiency
• Enhancements to “Progress Claims” to help you produce more professional Claims faster, for improved cash flow, while being more transparent with your Clients
• New reports
  
• Improvements to import/export features
• Support for the latest development framework from Microsoft, Microsoft .NET 4, offering improved user interface responsiveness and text clarity, for an even better end user experience.

Below is an expanded rundown on some of the major improvements.

New Features in Version 7.4

Takeoff Integrator

On-Screen Takeoff (OST) from On Center Software is a popular and easy to learn quantity takeoff system. In our capacity as an Integrated Business Partner with On Center Software, we’re pleased to be able to offer clients the ability to integrate OST with Benchmark Estimating Software.

The Takeoff Integrator works by allowing you to import a Bill of Quantities from OST directly into Benchmark Estimating Software. If you amend your Takeoff in OST after you have imported the Bill of Quantities, the Takeoff Integrator will allow you to view what has changed and update your estimate with new Items and/or updated quantities.  Where quantities are changed, this integration will also update your cost for you automatically.

The Takeoff Integrator is located in the Project Details level under the 'Takeoff' menu and is available in the Professional and Corporate Editions of Benchmark Estimating Software V7.4

The Takeoff Integrator Screen in Benchmark Estimating Software shows all of your takeoff conditions

Download the Takeoff Integrator flier

Application Service Add-on Module

The Benchmark Estimating Software “Application Service” module is designed to facilitate automated and customised integration between our estimating software and your other mission critical business systems.

The Application Service module can help your business overcome many common challenges in businesses today including:

1. Having one source of Customer and Subcontractor/Supplier data and having this synchronised with Benchmark Estimating Software’s Libraries
2. Having one source of financial Cost Codes and having this synchronised with Benchmark Estimating Software’s Codes feature
3. Creating a consistent Budget format and populating your accounting/ERP/job costing system with a budget automatically from your estimate.

Overcoming these challenges and others helps to eliminate errors, saves you time having to re-enter data, improves operational workflows and helps you to improve job costing reporting which can also help to improve your estimating accuracy and profits.

The Application Service is available as an add-on module for the Professional & Corporate editions of Benchmark Estimating Software

Download the Application Service Module flier

Enhancements in Version 7.4

Progress Claims

Progress Claims have always been a popular feature of the Professional and Corporate Editions of our estimating software. The ability to generate Progress Claims directly from Benchmark Estimating Software saves users time by allowing them to avoid retyping lengthy estimates and also cuts down on errors that can easily occur in spreadsheets.

Version 7.4 of Benchmark Estimating Software includes significant improvements to the Progress Claims module.

• You can now edit Item descriptions in the Progress Claim Input window without having to return to the estimate
• You can add comments to an Item in the Progress Claim Input window and these comments will flow through to your detailed Claim reports. This is a great way to communicate to your clients and make it easier to have your claims approved without the need for extra explanation
• You can flag a Progress Claim to indicate that “practical completion” has occurred. This will allow you to “release” Retention held based on user definable % or lump sum values
• You can flag a job as “Complete” meaning no more Progress Claims are required
• We’ve added a new Progress Claim Summary report that can be accessed from the Project Browser. It provides you with a 360 degree view of all Claim summary values for “un-complete” jobs.

Access the Project Claim Summary Report from the Project Browser window

Improvements to Auto Allocate

Auto Allocate is a useful feature for businesses who price schedules of items (Bill of Quantities) provided to them by their clients. With Version 7.4 we have made some useful enhancements to Auto Allocate to make it more flexible and assist in the automation of your estimating making your business more productive.

You can now tailor Auto Allocate so that it searches for matches in your Item Library based on the following options:

• Item Description ONLY (as it currently does in V7.3)
• Item code ONLY
• Item Allocation Code ONLY
• Item Description AND Item Code
• Item Description AND Item Allocation Code.

You can use the Administration screen to configure your default Auto Allocate Settings system wide or you can configure default settings on a user by user basis.

The Auto Allocate confirmation dialog box

Over 30 new keyboard shortcuts added

More than 30 new keyboard shortcut keys have been added throughout our estimating software for some of the more common day-to-day features. We’ve also made existing shortcuts more consistent across the software.

All new shortcuts are included in the right click menus to help the user learn them and utilise them.

Support for Microsoft .NET Framework 4

Version 7 of our estimating software is based on the Microsoft .NET Framework application development platform. Version 7.4 of Benchmark Estimating Software supports Microsoft .NET Framework 4, the current version recommended by Microsoft for application development.

Microsoft .NET Framework 4, together with our commitment to keep up with the latest development framework from Microsoft, translates into various benefits for our customers:

• improved overall application performance
• improved visuals with better User Interface responsiveness and improved text clarity
• better application memory management
• better interoperability with the Microsoft Office suite
• better parallel programming support for more complex operations including Three Point Estimating simulations.

Microsoft .NET Framework 4 is installed for you as part of your Version 7.4 upgrade.

If you are a client with an up-to-date Support and Maintenance and Agreement, you should be receiving an upgrade to Version 7.4 within the next week. If you are a client who is out of maintenance and would like to take advantage of the latest features and enhancements, please contact us and we can arrange a new Support and Maintenance Agreement for you.

You can keep up to date with new versions of our estimating software on our current version details page. Or to make sure you never miss an announcement, why not sign up to our newsletter or RSS feed.

If you have any further questions regarding Version 7.4, please contact us

Not a client yet?

• Overview of Benchmark Estimating Software features
• Read Case Studies
• Read Client Testimonials
• Visit our Industry Pages
• Request a guided demonstration

To make your estimating even more efficient, we’ve introduced over 30 new keyboard shortcuts in Version 7.4 of Benchmark Estimating Software. The shortcuts can be used for common everyday tasks and have also been made more consistent across the software. Below is a cheat sheet for the keyboard shortcuts in Benchmark Estimating Software.

* Denotes shortcuts that are new to Version 7.4 of Benchmark Estimating Software.

For more information on the 7.4 release of Benchmark Estimating Software, please visit our current version details page or contact us.

Members of the Benchmark Estimating and MacDonald International teams have formed a team to participate in this year’s World’s Greatest Shave for a Cure.

Called the MacDonald Group team, members will be shaving their heads or colouring their hair to support the Leukaemia Foundation, a charity that raises money for people suffering from blood cancer.

About the World’s Greatest Shave

Every hour of every day, someone in Australia is diagnosed with leukaemia, lymphoma or myeloma. Every two hours, someone dies from one of these blood cancers. There are 40,000 people living with blood cancer in Australia alone. The World’s Greatest Shave for a Cure helps to raise money to put towards research, which is needed to find better treatments as well as cures for blood cancers. Donations also help patients and their families during treatments helping them out with accommodation near hospital, transport to appointments and emotional support.

From 15-17 March 2012, thousands of people will get sponsored to shave, colour or wax their hair to help people with blood cancer. Since 1998, over a million people have shaved or coloured their hair, raising in excess of $120 million.

What can you do?

We’re asking our friends, family and clients to sponsor the MacDonald Group team before we shave or colour and help us reach our fundraising goal of $500.00. You can sponsor online by visiting our team page or give our office a call on +61 2 4422 3444 and we’ll help you sponsor our team. Donations over $2.00 are tax deductible.

We are very excited to be taking part in the World’s Greatest Shave for a cure and would love your help in reaching our fundraising goal.

Update – 23/2/12

We’re already over half way to our fundraising goal! Thank you to everyone who has helped us so far. If you would like to support our team, please visit our team page.

Benchmark Estimating will be exhibiting at the biennial Construction and Mining Expo (CME2012) from Thursday March 15th to Saturday March 17th 2012. The expo will be held at Sandalford Estate, Swan Valley near Perth in Western Australia and Benchmark will be exhibiting our estimating software solutions for construction and mining from stand A23.

The Construction and Mining Expo (CME2012) is the premier Construction and Mining Industry Event in Western Australia and gives visitors an opportunity to see the latest innovations in services, equipment and products that the industry has to offer.

CME2012 organisers are expecting around 4,000 visitors at this year’s show with attendees from a wide range of industry segments including construction, mining, electric, phone and cable, sewer and water, gas, engineering, landscaping, recruitment, training, professional services and public works segments.

This is our first time at the expo so be sure to come and see our display of estimating and cost engineering solutions for your industry at stand A23.

Registrations for the expo are now open. Visit the CME2012 website to register to attend and visit us at stand A23.

For more information on our software features click here

To keep up to date with other upcoming events that we’ll be attending, sign up to our newsletter or follow us on Twitter.

As 2011 draws to a close and you begin to wind down for the Christmas break, please be aware that all Benchmark Estimating Australian offices, as well as the UK office, will close from 5pm Friday the 23rd of December and will re-open at 8:30am on Tuesday the 3rd of January 2012.

Support services will be limited during this time. If you do have an urgent support issue over the break, please call our head office on +61 2 4422 3444 and your query will be taken by our answering service. We will then endeavour to get back to all support queries as quickly as possible during our Christmas closure.

Once again, from all of the team, we wish you and your loved ones a safe and happy festive season and look forward to working with you again in 2012.

This year, we’re letting our software do the talking for us in the form of a specially designed Christmas Routine generated by Benchmark Estimating Software. Follow the Screenshots down the page to estimate the cost of our Christmas tree and presents and reveal our Christmas message…

First we add our Project

Then we enter the details into our Christmas Tree Routine and hit 'Build'

Our Christmas tree is priced and our Christmas message is revealed!

Routines are a great feature of Benchmark Estimating Software and can be written to estimate a wide variety of repetitive activities where multiple variables can affect your price. As you can see from our message, they are very flexible and can even be a bit of fun! If you would like help with writing Routines for your business, contact our team.

Once again, from all the team at Benchmark Estimating, we wish you and your family a very merry Christmas and a happy and safe 2012!

Programmed Facility Management (PFM), part of the Programmed group of companies, is one of Australia’s leading providers of facilities management services, servicing a range of market sectors including Government, Social Housing, Health and Aged Care, Office and Commercial, Utilities, Education, Justice and Correctional, Industrial and Manufacturing.

Programmed Facility Management offer their clients a wide range of facilities and asset management services and can deliver customised support and maintenance services to ensure the efficient operation of buildings, properties and infrastructure.

Benchmark Estimating recently spoke with Rick Pelletier, Business Systems Manager, and Dave Freedman, State Manager for Queensland, at PFM about the challenges faced by their company in their estimating and how they expected Benchmark Estimating Software to help address these challenges.

Challenges faced by Programmed Facility Management

Rick Pelletier identified one of the major estimating challenges faced by PFM as the lack of a consistent estimating methodology across all Australian offices. Rick states that “currently the linkage between activity, opportunity management, conversion rates and lead generation is inconsistent throughout our organisation. Without Benchmark Estimating Software, Programmed Facility Management isn’t able to effectively leverage individual knowledge and synergies”.

The Benchmark Estimating Software Solution

Benchmark Estimating Software is built around a transparent yet detailed estimating methodology that focuses on the capture of corporate knowledge through the use of a library-based, centralised estimating database. Rick believes that with Benchmark Estimating Software, PFM will be able to “provide a ‘consistent’ and ‘transparent’ method of estimating; and it allows us to implement common processes and best practices for all PFM users across the country”.

Benchmark Estimating Software – Aligned with PFM’s long term strategy

Benchmark Estimating Software is a fundamentally flexible estimating software system that aims to integrate with an organisation’s operations and assist in the overall growth of the company.

In the case of Programmed Facility Management, Benchmark Estimating Software is aligned with the long term goals and strategy of the company and, according to Rick, has been identified as “one of fourteen key ICT efficiency projects to be implemented as part of [PFM’s] Strategic Road-map in the near horizon”. Programmed Facility Management aims to have a “fully integrated business management system throughout the business, and Benchmark [Estimating Software] is a key component of that system”.

Programmed Facility Management Estimator Tyson Jeffery, using Benchmark Estimating Software on a Tablet PC.

Flexibility and Exports – Benefits from a user’s perspective

Dave Freedman, State Manager for Queensland was part of the original steering committee that looked at the Benchmark Estimating Software system. He has been a user for two years and talked to Benchmark Estimating about the features that he believes offer the greatest benefits to Programmed Facility Management.

Flexibility: Dave states that the flexibility of the Benchmark Estimating Software system is what he sees as having the biggest advantage for his estimating. He states “it’s the levels within a Benchmark Estimating Software Project, the Section, Item, Sub-Item and Resources, that provide us plenty of flexibility”. For a diverse business such as Programmed Facility Management who deal with a wide range of complex facility maintenance contracts, this flexibility means they can include as much detail in their quotes as needed. This will lead to more accurate estimates and greater cost efficiency over the life of a contract.

Save time and eliminate errors: Dave also tells us that “the ability to copy and paste at all levels of the software is great”. Benchmark Estimating Software contains numerous advanced features that provide ‘copy and paste’ functionality throughout the software. Add Item from Project, Auto Allocate from Project and Allocate Resources from Project Item will allow Programmed Facilities Management to very quickly and accurately price all packages of work done under a maintenance contract by essentially ‘copying and pasting’ original submission prices, Items and Resources thus saving time and eliminating the need to retype details.

Improved Project Management Processes: Benchmark Estimating Software offers users a Resource based export to Microsoft Project. This feature automatically creates a Gantt chart for a project based on calculations of the duration of each Item (activity) in a contract and exports the Resources and costs as well. “The fact that you can export to Microsoft Project means that we don’t have to reinvent the wheel with each Project” says Dave. He tells us that PFM’s estimators can produce a draft estimate for a Project Manager quickly and easily, freeing up more time for their Project Managers. He says this simple to use feature will “tighten our processes” and improve on their overall time management.

Overall, Dave believes that Benchmark Estimating Software system will be a cost saver for Programmed Facility Management and will promote faster, more consistent estimating processes and estimates throughout the business.

Summary

Facilities Maintenance is a complex and diverse industry with companies servicing a wide range of clients. For Programmed Facility Management, the implementation of Benchmark Estimating Software as part of their Strategic Road-map will allow the company to provide a more consistent and transparent method of estimating. It will save time and costs by offering advanced features and the flexibility to provide the detail required by their clients for facilities management projects.

As part of our ongoing commitment to customer support, we are pleased to announce the launch of the Benchmark Estimating Support Centre. This online service is available to customers who have an up-to-date Maintenance and Support Agreement and will help us to better serve our growing, global customer base.

From the Customer Support Centre you can:

• Ask questions of the Benchmark Estimating Support team
• Engage with the wider online community of estimating software users through our forums
• Suggest a new feature for Benchmark Estimating Software
• Track your questions and feature requests
• Search our knowledge base for answers and software tips.

We will be contacting clients with up-to-date maintenance over the coming weeks to set up your login to the Support Centre but if you would like to request a login and begin using the Support Centre immediately, please email our support team.

If you are currently out of maintenance and would like to renew your Maintenance and Support Agreement please contact us.

Version 7.2 and later of Benchmark Estimating Software now support CEILING and FLOOR functions within the Quantity Calculator. These allow you to round up and round down (respectively) to the nearest whole number or multiple of, for example, 5, 10, 100, 1000 etc.

Some simple examples of the CEILING function logic are:

CEILING(1023,10)=1030

or

CEILING(1023.1,1)=1024

These functions are useful in many estimating scenarios, especially when using Materials that come in set units e.g. 10kg bags of cement or 25L tins of paint, and you always want to round up to the nearest whole number. When used together with the other functions in our Calculator, CEILING and FLOOR provide powerful tools that will save estimators time and ensure your estimates are more accurate.

An example of how it can be used in a real life situation is if you have an Item in your estimate to “Pait a Wall” and this Item is in Square Metres. If one 25L Paint Tin covers 100 Square Metres, the PAINT TIN Resource could have a calculation:

CEILING(iq()/100,1)

In the case where the Square Metres of Wall equals 260, this calculation would equate to

CEILING(260/100,1) which would equal 3 PAINT TINS

The FLOOR function works the same as CEILING but it rounds down. For example:

FLOOR(1020,100)=1000