I'm not sure if I've asked this before. We are a construction company and our general process is:
estimate a job cost
issue a quote for the job to customer
quote is accepted (hopefully)
material is ordered - can be from many vendors, or a single vendor
vendor invoices comes in for material
we do either one of the following, or a combination of both: install the material, or ship it directly to customer with no installation provided.
In addition to using JC and AP (and other modules as well) we enter our estimated job costs onto a sheet in excel that lists our total estimated cost for each vendor (freight is listed as well separately on the same sheet), and each time a vendor invoice comes in we enter the actual dollar amount onto the excel sheet to see what our actual costs are vs. the estimated cost to immediately see if we are over budget.
Obviously we are duplicating data entry but I haven't been able to come up with a solution using Adagio only to see the variance between budget and actual as quickly as we can using excel.
Does anyone have a suggestion as we are trying to streamline the paperwork in the office and the duplication of entry into excel and Adagio seems to be not only inefficient, but time consuming as well.
I've tried using Gridview but I'm not able to come up with a report that shows me what the excel is able to provide.
Any ideas?

Hi Karen

There are two scenarios:

Scenario 1: you want to compare actual to estimate after you have already posted the invoice to the job (usually what people want here is an exception report).

Solution: GridView or Crystal Reports, GridView if you want quick and dirty, Crystal Reports if you want pretty.

Scenario 2: you want to know as you are entering the invoice if it throws the actual over estimate

Solution: Purchase Orders for Adagio. POA integrates with JobCost in such a way that as you are allocating the PO, receipt, or invoice to a job/phase/category, a screen will pop up and show you how much you have left on the estimate. I believe it even displays amounts of other outstanding POs coded to the same job/phase/category.

If you want to go with Scenario 1, and you are having problems creating a view, let us know what the Excel sheet is providing, and we'll go from there. You can also contact me at steve@sschwartzcpa.com

Steve Schwartz

Hi Steve,

Again I want to thank you (you always seem to be willing to answer my questions!!!) for responding. It's scenario 2 that we need, and as I thought, using job cost and AP without Purchase orders won't allow us to break away from using excel.

I appreciate all of your help!!!!'
Karen