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So I was bored today and decided to hop onto excel and make something. its basically a calculator. it figures the price of a decal or whatever based on the price per sq ft of vinyl you charge. same with the app tape. you can also input how many layers. most if not all of the cutting softwares when you make a dual or triple or 4 layer decal will size up the vinyl to use the least amount with the reg marks and all. you can put each specific size on there and it will figure the price add it all up to a grand total. you can change the price per sq ft for the vinyl and the app tape. i threw somehting in there for a discount too off of the grand total if you offer that kind of thing to customers every now and then. its pretty simple. it works for me. although i just made it haha. check it out and test it for me please and let me know if it works or not. take it manipulate it if you want. you can also add other things to it as well, like the cost of a choroplast sign. the formulas are easy enough to understand and implement your own workings into it or let me know and ill do it for you.  :thumbsup:

edit edit edit edit-

here it is...

attached youll find a zip with the calculator and the readme. EXCEL AND WORD 2007 ONLY. unless you have a compatability pack. im not listing the features. READ THE README. let me begin by saying READ THE README please. its very informational (word?)(is now) o and READ THE README. enjoy everyone!

Vinyl Calculator.zip

Vinyl Calculator.zip

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Great job, i love the way the totals are broken down and the option to offer a discount. I'm defiantly going to use this for any future jobs

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:thumbsup: Thank you. Snagged it. Preliminary look, seems easy to use and I can use the help figuring out prices  :thumbsup:

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you all are welcome. i updated it and added coroplast to it. and again im pretty sure i got all my calculations correct and the formulas correct. it seems to work perfectly on my end double checking with a real calculator haha. please let me know if any of my formulas dont work right or are off track a bit. give me a little more time and ill add a per qty discount (well ill try to at least) along with the grand total discount. also i know most if not all cutting programs let you set the size of the weedbox and the distance between copies and such. you guys think that would be a good idea to implement as well? more presice price. even  tho its probably going to be pennies on the dollar. let me know what yall think and enjoy.  ;D

ps. let me know if you dont understand it. ill explain it in detail. i just was bored and whipped it up so it was like a precise calculation with all the layers and such.

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Only thing I changed on my own was Length to Height since width is already there and on my end width and length tend to be the same.

I dont think the weeding box should matter, we can just add that to the original design sizes.

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Very good. I wasn't sure how everyone measured so I just did standard. And your right about the weedbox. What else would you guys like to see?

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Thanks!  I snagged the updated version and gave it a once over.  Looking forward to using it, looks awesome!

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I know what you mean bout the weed complexity  ;D ?  Haha sorry. I just don't know how that would be calculated into the final price. You could always charge a couple bucks more. unless someone knows how weeding is accounted for. Until then if you think you have a weeding nightmare, charge more.

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I know what you mean bout the weed complexity  :) ?  Haha sorry. I just don't know how that would be calculated into the final price. You could always charge a couple bucks more. unless someone knows how weeding is accounted for. Until then if you think you have a weeding nightmare, charge more.

I think maybe a x1.1, x1.2, x1.3, etc would be a way to do that, based on complexity

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alright heres what ill try. ill make a new column labeled weeding or whatever and with 1 being the easiest of course up to 10 being difficult and time consuming. you put 1 in and it multiplies it by 1.1 not changing the price. 2 would be 1.2 up to 10 which would be 1.10. multiply that by the price before weeding. ill play with it and see what i come up with. im not too familiar with excel. i havent used it in years but its all coming back to me. ill try to add drop boxes too clean it up a bit. for those of you who downloaded this how is it working for you? is there anything you want me to add? customize?

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i checked out that site again and i wanted to see if they used a set price for the complex weeding and its only a couple of cents. and it varies for the bigger the size compared to the smaller. i have no idea what kinf of formula they use. if they use a percent of the final cost or if they base it on the size. i dont know how i could make a formula for that and actually make it work. sorry  :)

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Nice job on the pricer.  I use an HP-200lx for my field computer (O-L-D!! DOS palmtop with built in Lotus 123 v 2.4) - I downloaded the pricer spreadsheet you made and found some good ideas for use with my old system.  Thanks!  I use a commercial pricing program in my shop but plan to add this spreadsheet to mu palmtop for quick calculations in the field.

I just looked at the weeding add-on charge calculations for several sizes of RTA prices.  - looks like they are using 1 2 and 3 as levels of difficulty and the changes figure out to be 1.25 1.50 and 1.75 times the base prices (or very close to it).  So a formula to figure this would take the entered value divided by 4 plus 1 and multiply this by the base price.  I tried various values on the pricing website - a value of 4 doubles the base price a value of 8 triples it.

If you want more flexibility allow entries of 1 to 10 - or 1 to 100 and use 10 or 100 respectively as the divisor.

-Mike

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Nice job on the pricer.  I use an HP-200lx for my field computer (O-L-D!! DOS palmtop with built in Lotus 123 v 2.4) - I downloaded the pricer spreadsheet you made and found some good ideas for use with my old system.  Thanks!  I use a commercial pricing program in my shop but plan to add this spreadsheet to mu palmtop for quick calculations in the field.

I just looked at the weeding add-on charge calculations for several sizes of RTA prices.  - looks like they are using 1 2 and 3 as levels of difficulty and the changes figure out to be 1.25 1.50 and 1.75 times the base prices (or very close to it).  So a formula to figure this would take the entered value divided by 4 plus 1 and multiply this by the base price.  I tried various values on the pricing website - a value of 4 doubles the base price a value of 8 triples it.

If you want more flexibility allow entries of 1 to 10 - or 1 to 100 and use 10 or 100 respectively as the divisor.

-Mike

ahhh brain farts firing left n right on that one. ( i fail at math. thank god we have fingers and toes ) after rereading what you wrote about 5x (epic fail) i understand it. thank you for shedding some light. i too was looking at commercial pricing software but im new at this and i really cant afford that yet. and by reading these forums alot of people charge by the sq ft and it comes out to what the commercial would say. give or take a few. i just wanted something to straighten the learning curve a bit. i appreciate your time in checking it out and i hope it works well for you. ill take that equation you gave me and try to whoop up a formula and implement it. thanks again

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Thank you!! for your efforts.  Glad you got me to thinking on this -  I sometimes have trouble building up enough brain power for a decent brain fart - let alone a lucid thought.  Looking forward to downloading the next version-

Mike

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ok instead of attaching it to posts im just going to update the first post with the attachment. Im not very familiar with the complex formulas and such in excel so there are 2 versions. version 1.0 which is fully compatible with excel 97-2003+xp. version 2.0 is fully compatible with excel 2007 only. im working on the formulas to resolve this. i have too many nested if statements for the weeding and excel 97-2003 cant handle nests over 7. but check the first post. to download.

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ok i figured out the formulas. it all should work now on both versions. Im working on a few other things to add as well.

A raw material calculator. for rolls as well as sheets.The roll calculator is to help decide how much you want to charge per sq ft based on the actual cost of material. the sheet calculator just tells you how much it is per sheet. Its probably not needed but its also good to have a reference sitting in front of you.

A letter calculator. If your just doing a sign with letters only this will help in charging per letter at a set size OR a general area plus a per letter charge. as well as space to add another set of lettering like if someone wants a shadow.

An automatic Invoice generator. this will happen on the fly. as you enter information in the calculators and what not it will automagically generate an invoice on a separate sheet for you to print out.

the only thing i cant automagically do is enter your company info or customer info.

fyi i know there are professional estimating software and invoicing software out there but i decided to make this for myself and thought someone else could use it. im new at the vinyl scene so i really dont have alot of money to fork out and buy the professional software. which is why im making this freely available to anyone on here. ill update it as need be and when i get more knowledgable of excel it will only get better and more acurate. if youd like anything implemented either from a personal standpoint or you think it would be a good addition for anyone to use, let me know and ill get it done

and please let me know of any errors that arise so i can get those fixed right away and keep everything updated.

-Bill

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I would like to see a imput for setup (artwork, loading machine with vinyl etc). I usually price my decals by not only the cost of materials but also time required to setup, cut, weed and apply app. tape.

Example uses 1 square foot of vinyl at $5.00 per square and a $40.00 hr shop charge.

Prepair file to cut  .1

cut                    .1

weed                  .1

premask                .1

Total                  .4 x $40hr= $16.00

Material cost X2                    $10.00

Total                                    $26.00

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i was wondering how i could implement an hourly rate into the mix. ill take your idea and see what i can do. (its not just for decals either. can be for anything.)

im figuring i could make a new sheet and put everything into the mix but input would be normal time like 15 mins but the formula would convert to decimal time to actually calculate. but would i add this to the grand total? im gonna say yes.

i dont understand the material cost x2 you have there?

ill work on it. i need somehting to do anyways  :thumbsup:

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Material cost X 2. That's my usual material markup. For most of my prices I double my material costs and then charge an hourly rate for the time I estilmate the total job will take. It would also be great to  be able to input different values for different tasks. I.E. artwork $60.00 hr. Application $45.00 hr. etc.

Ken

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ill see what i can do. thats a good idea to make the price more accurate and tailored to your business.

ill work up the basic setup from your previous post and update the files then ill work on the individual hourly rate and see what i can come up with.

i can put the material cost x2 in there too but ill have it as an option in case some people dont want that.

ill prolly get it done tonight, we'll see.

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