Organizing Your On-Screen Takeoff, Quick Bid, and Digital Production Control Projects and Bids - OST QB DPC

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Question

What is the best way for me to organize my Bids?

Answer

We are glad you asked! One of the best things you can do to improve your team's efficiency and keep your bids organized is to use databases named for:

  • Different Job Statuses - keeping your Bids organized into different databases helps you to focus on current work better. (Examples: Bidding, Pending, Sold, Lost, Completed, etc.)
  • Years, Quarters, or Months - depending on the number of Projects/Bids your teams creates, it's a good idea to create new databases regularly (see Related Articles for details). (Example: "April 2022") (At a minimum, we recommend you create a new database at least once a year - just to keep your Bids list manageable.)
  • Some customers even create a new database for each Project/Bid to isolate them and make it easier to keep "just what you need" in front of you. (Example: "Hilton Hotel Tower - Houston TX - 2007"
  • Office, Location, Team - some of our customer with multiple sites create SQL databases on a team-level. This is a great solution when multiple teams work out of the same SQL Server. (Examples: "Houston Estimating", "Interior Finishing", etc.)
  • For each estimator - this allows users to see only their Bids and they do not have to try to weed out other estimators' work, nor can other employees modify/see their work. (Example: "John Smith - 2017"
  • "Archived" or "Lost" - moving Bids you are not working on actively to a different "Archive" database, gets them out of the way of your day-to-day work.

You can apply any variation on these themes. We recommend that you develop a format that everyone uses when creating databases and that your employees/estimators are trained in appropriate bid and database management.

Note

It is important that each database is named uniquely, whether they are separated into different folders or not. This just makes it easier to find the particular database when you need to install on a new machine, run a backup or send the file to Technical Support. It also reduces the chance that an estimator will use the wrong database inadvertently.

If you are sharing an SQL database within a team, it is important that you use the Estimator (OST) and Lead Estimator (Quick Bid) fields in the Bid's Cover Sheet. This allows user to see who is responsible for a Bid, right on the Bids Tab without having to open it. They can also filter the Bids Tabs by Estimator/Lead Estimator to weed out those Bids they don't need to see (in OST, you must enable database login to filter the Bids Tab by Estimator).

How to Organize Your Bids by Database

First, create new databases for your various job statuses, offices, time-boxes, whatever you choose. For assistance creating databases, see Related Articles.

Once your new database(s) are created, COPY bids to the new databases (we recommend copying Bids, pasting into the new database, then deleting the original Bids, versus moving/cutting Bids, to ensure that your Bids are copied to the new database correctly.

Caution
When copying/moving Interactive Bids, do not delete anything until you are sure the bid exists in the new database for each product and has been reconnected - see the Quick Bid Help for assistance with reconnecting bids.

Once you have verified that the Bids are copied to the new database, return to the original database, right-click on the Bid(s) and select Delete. This moves them to the "Deleted Bids" folder.

To clear out/empty the "Deleted Bids" folder, simply right-click on it and choose Empty Deleted Bids Folder

This permanently deletes the Bid from the original database.

Keep any databases (for example, Archive, Lost, etc.) in which you are not actively working on bids closed. See Related Articles for details on how to open/close databases.