"Sure, it would be great to have job schedules. But setting it up takes so long. And then everything always changes, it’s impossible to keep up."

"When the schedule gets off, my field crews spend time waiting around. I never know how much time to estimate for labor. I never know if I’m ahead or behind schedule, and my customer always wants to know whether we're on schedule, and when the job will be finished."

We've been there. We understand...

"Setting up a schedule takes too long."

Not with Smart Contractor. Smart Contractor automatically generates a Critical Path Method (CPM) schedule from the estimate. That's right. The schedule is automatically generated from the information in the estimate.

How? It's easy. When you create an estimate, all you do is assign a Job Phases to each estimate item. Smart Contractor already knows the dependency sequence of the Job Phases, so all you have to do is enter a job start date, and Smart Contractor lays out the schedule, starting on the start date, with the job items sequenced according to their Job Phase.

If you don't like the pre-defined sequence of the Job Phases, or if you add new Job Phases, you can easily re-sequence the Job Phases by editing (or defining another) job schedule model.

"But things always change. The schedule is always changing, it’s impossible to keep up with it."

Don't worry about it... the estimate in Smart Contractor lives and breathes with real life construction projects. Whenever you change information in the job (a change order for example), Smart Contractor automatically updates the schedule. That's right, automatically updates the schedule. All you have to do is re-print the schedule, or your work orders. And you can also automatically generate notifications of schedule changes to email to your crews and subs.

"I never know how much time to estimate for labor."

When you create new job estimates, Smart Contractor allows you to easily copy from previous jobs, or job templates, or RSMeans Cost data. When you copy from the RSMeans cost data, you get the RSMeans labor estimates.

When you copy from previous jobs in Smart Contractor, you can copy either the estimated or actual unit costs. This means you can get estimated material or labor costs from the actual costs of jobs you have done previously for the same type of work. If you have any experience using cost databases, you may already know what an advantage it is to be able to use your own actual costs from your own previous jobs in new estimates.

"I never know if I’m ahead or behind schedule, and my customer always wants to know."

As you complete work items in Smart Contractor, all you do is check them off as they are completed, and Smart Contractor will automatically tell you how many days you are ahead or behind schedule.

And Smart Contractor makes it dirt simple to make the job schedule, (and any other information you chose) available to your customers on the web or by email.