Attached below is a spreadsheet with formulas built in to tally the total number of bf of lumber I cut or sell to a customer. I just fill in the size and quantity info and the sheet computes my bf. Then all I have to do is fill in the blanks that apply for Mobilization or mileage, broken blades, and any other billable costs to the customer. I type in the cost for sawing or price of the lumber (assuming all the lumber is the same price) and the total bill for the customer is computed and shown. My form is set up for 6% sales tax which is what we charge in WV. If you want to use the form and have a different (or no) sales tax just click on the field below "Sales Tax (6%)" and change the .06 in the formula to whatever your state rate is and it will compute for you.
At the end of a job or sale I type in the customers name and print or e-mail to him and this is his invoice.
When sawing for stock at home I just plug in the totals and let the form compute the bf I sawed each day for my history records and disregard the cost info.
If this is any value to you feel free to use it.
Nice.
My virus scanner cleared it.
I always check.
Thanks.
Quote from: esteadle on May 18, 2017, 09:03:44 PM
Nice.
My virus scanner cleared it.
I always check.
Thanks.
What, is WV Sawmiller sneezin on the monitor again?
Question: Do you tally as you saw or do you count the lumber after it is stacked? Next question: Do you keep a laptop at the mill as you are sawing?
Warren,
On a multi-day job I usually tally at the end of the day on a little spiral notebook then plug in the numbers when I get home. On smaller jobs or last day I take my laptop and plug the numbers in directly as we tally. I'll often let the customer do the counting and call out the numbers and I just type them in to the spreadsheet then can show him the numbers.
I can't print in the field although I probably should get one of the little Neat brand printers that run off the laptop for power then I could . I have one of their scanners I have used since my days in Iraq when I had to provide all my own support in the early stages. It works great but only can scan a couple pages at a time/per file.
I haven't run into this with selling lumber but if someone wanted a detailed invoice for multiple priced lumber I'd have to run more than one invoice showing different rates/prices. Its not a high tech form but it does most of what I need it to do for simple bf computing.
Most of the time the customer declines a copy when I offer or they just say send them a copy on e-mail. I use it much mostly for my own cost and history calculations.
If I am counting stacks of lumber (1" for example) I just put thickness as 1, width as the average width of the stacks then length then the number of rows and compute that way. That works fine too.
I'm pretty much spreadsheet illiterate, however, I was able to plug in some numbers for price, thickness, width and length and I did change the sales tax to 0% for OR and it did all the calculations. Pretty cool. Now all I need to do is figure out how to get it to automatically keep totals for all invoices. I downloaded the numbers app for my iPad this morning so that I could give this a try. It looks like it will be a real asset once I get it all figured out. Thanks for sharing it with us.
Darrell,
Yeah I don't know how to do that either. I do keep all my records on Excel spreadsheets. I have another I use to record sales. I have one column with a one letter code for different categories (Lumber sales, sawing, firewood, tomato stakes, taxable vs non taxable, etc). I do have a formula built in so if I sell something tax included I input the total sale and it splits out the taxes and before tax sales and puts the info in different columns.
I do the same thing for expenses and sort by categories. I scan copies of all receipts as back up.
At the end of the year I just sort by category then run autosums to show income and taxes due and send the results to my accountant to do our taxes.
I make a folder for each year then more folders for expenses, income, history, etc. and just start over January 1st.
I am pretty good with excel. I may be able to help. But I cannot guarantee it will be done in a timely matter.
Doesn't everyone charge different prices for different species? Be real easy to setup a master price list on a separate tab that can be modified at any time and fully update every invoice.
Maybe I can find some time to help and add some more usability this weekend? Maybe not. A 2 year old is quite challenging when you want to play with your computer :)
Crusarius,
If I did much of that i would modify the form to put a rate/cost field multiplying against the bf on each row then tally at the end. Would not be hard to do. I designed this form for my sawing computations. I have used it a time or two for lumber sales when all the same species.
If you are asking about different rates for sawing - No, I charge the same no matter what the species (although some people do have a different hardwood and softwood rate). I do sell lumber for different prices based on species.
Okay, here is a revised form intended just for lumber sales. Just enter the price/bf and the sizes and quantity of the lumber and it will compute. Once done with that enter any other fees such as delivery, special handling, etc. Its still set up for WV sales tax so you would need to change that if different in your state. If non taxable you could just override that column with a 0.
Quick and dirty but should work.
oh, my bad thought you used that to invoice your customers. I must have misread. My reading comprehension skills are not what they used to be.
Still be happy to play with it if anyone wants.
Crusarius,
If a customer wants a breakdown of costs I give them one. I use it to determine the costs for sawing and for large orders. I don't invoice in order to get my payment. I get paid at the completion of services or at the time of sale. When the customer leaves my house with his wood he leaves behind the cash. When I finish a mobile sawing job and pack up the mill I leave with the money in my pocket.
I don't have Office. :(
you can use open office free. Not all the power but still works for basic stuff.
Fishfighter, get a gmail account the google docs are free too and are kept online so if your computer fries they are saved. Lots of support online for it and most universities/school systems are moving over to that. Not quite MS office but very very handy. Better still you can share them with others just by giving a link.
With a Google (Gmail) account, you can also upload an Excel worksheet, and convert it to Google Sheets. The functions largely work, but the formatting is likely to change.
Sheets apps are available for iOS and Android that allow offline editing.
We have been using Sheets for offline data entry. It works very well.
Open Office is no longer being updated and may have significant security issues. LibreOffice is a better, free, open source alternative. There are a number of alternative office suites and individual applications.
http://www.libreoffice.org
Can't attach .ods
ISO/IEC international standard ISO/IEC 26300 – Open Document Format for Office Applications (OpenDocument)
I'm laughing over this guys. Here's y'all doing this hi tech stuff in the field with spreadsheets and scanners and all that stuff. I walk in the office with an offcut of 6x1 or something with numbers written all over it and say "email Joe or Fred a bill for this, its on the truck tomorrow." And I am known to get annoyed when people throw out scraps of wood with writing on them - that might be an order, or an important phone number, or me quoting stuff on the fly. People ring, I write with what I have available - blue lumber crayon - on what I have available - scraps of wood, shed walls, loader mudguards, the log at the front of the infeed.
Technology has revolutionized my business :D :D :D
I am also smiling because I use an invoice book from Wal-Mart. I count up what I saw times my bf rate and have a total. The original goes to the customer and I keep the copy for my records. ;D
thats how my tally is in the shop. I use a piece of material I am working on to keep track of everything. Then I get technical. I take a picture of it, come inside and sit at the computer and make the invoice. I like having records of everything.
Office? What's an office? My office is wherever I and my laptop are. May be my truck in the field or my living room. I have some of those invoice books from Staples like the MM mentions and have used 2-3 of them. Most of my customers don't want anything. The spreadsheet was built as a tally form to do the math for me so it does the multiplication and division to compute bf and costs at the same time. I just plug the numbers in at the job site or off my spiral notebook or a cutoff board like LL uses when I forget my notebook or it has gotten too sweaty to write in.
The good thing about the tally sheet when used as an invoice or just shown to the customer at the site is it helps them understand how the rate was figured.
We are all doing the same thing whether LL on a board or MM scribbling on a scratch pad multiplying height width and length and dividing by 12 then multiplying times his hourly or bf rate. I just took the extra one time step of putting that info on to a spreedsheet/form.
If it works for you then you are welcome to use it or not. Remember: Free advice is worth what you paid for it (and sometimes less).
Thanks to Jeff (https://forestryforum.com/board/index.php/topic,96273.msg1485249.html#msg1485249), we can now attach .ods spreadsheets.
Here's WV Sawmiller's spreadsheets saved in open document format. (My version of LibreOffice is not the latest, so I don't know if there's any formatting loss in the conversion).
Sometimes I wonder at it y'know? Sure I scribble things on boards but thats only when the phone rings. Problem being that half the time the phone doesnt ring... it goes ding and we have mail, and I'm standing there in the middle of a working sawmill trying to squint at a too small screen held at the end of my too short arms because I dont work with reading glasses on, and kick out an ETA delivery by return mail with my too big thumbs on that dinky little touchscreen. And people tend to email/phone me direct: no-one rings the office when they want to know have we got or how soon we can get it.
Its good. Its quick. Its somewhat sorta convenient. But I wonder at times how all this stuff is actually making my life better. We use excel based invoicing and accounting systems but I cant do that from my phone. I can do a paper invoice from the mill which then goes to the office to get turned into an electronic invoice... which seems dumb to me but I'm a sawmiller not a bean counter. Same with tally sheets... hard copy then transcribed to excel. We got a PC based set of books , a backup PC based set of books, and two remote sets saved to some cloud somewhere...
I think MM with his scratch pad might be working smarter then I am. I do feel kinda a slave to all this junk that doesnt actually make cutting boards any easier. I can drive it enough to make it work but I cant fix it and my bad habit of double clicking means I often overwrite the formulas...
We're driving to a meeting the other day and the chief bean counter starts telling me how we need to invest in a new integrated set of integrated invoicing/stock control/tax software. And I'm thinking like my biggest problem is I cant cut boards fast enough and I need to invest more in the mill that actually grows the beans, not the backroom setup that counts what I grew after the fact. Hard to argue with the chief bean counter because she owns 25% of the company and cooks my dinner as well but...
My life seems to be full of labour saving devices that require me to labour very hard to afford them and labour very hard to maintain them and I am not always sure if its not a weird trap of some kind, sorta like "The Matrix" but designed by Amex, Mastercard, the banks et al...
Deep philosophical thoughts at 4am on a Sunday morning as I'm heading back in for another 16 hour day at the bean growing factory...
I have never said anywhere that I use a scratch pad which would indicate that I am less than serious concerning invoicing customers in a professional manner.
Quote from: Magicman on May 20, 2017, 09:07:52 AM
I am also smiling because I use an invoice book from Wal-Mart. I count up what I saw times my bf rate and have a total. The original goes to the customer and I keep the copy for my records. ;D
Yes, it is all handwritten, rather than typed, but the quantity of each lumber dimension along with the bf gets a separate line and they are all totaled and brought to the bottom of the page for final pricing.
LL,
There is a happy median and we need to find and use it. I have a very good friend who always talks about the good old days. I tell him I remember the tail end of some of those good old days and I don;t want them. I like electric lights instead of finding and lighting a kerosene lantern and I really like flush toilets compared to walking out to the outhouse on a cold night or wondering if you are sharing the seat with a black widow spider.
I find at the end of a sawing job I can type in my numbers on my tally sheet then all the calculations and pricing is done. And I can type them in as easy as writing them down. If it was not easier on me I'd just keep doing it manually.
I saw a lot of the transition from manual to automated stockkeeping in the USMC and we ran some pilot programs to convert to computerized records and I never wanted to go back. I'm no data dink but I do realize some things are much easier that way. Unfortunately many of the modern kids can't understand the basics and when the power is out they are lost. I can still do everything manually - I just don't like to.
Lynn,
If I said or implied anything that indicated i thought your methods are inefficient or unprofessional I heartily apologize. I never thought or meant that. We all use what we are comfortable with and whatever works for our specific situation.
Good luck and stay careful.
Oh we are OK, and I had no intention of diminishing the validity of this topic. Spreadsheet are good and I personally use an Excel spreadsheet with cell formulas when I do my quarterly report for my CPA. I just do not use one for each saw job because the handwritten invoice serves me well.
I have an app on my phone that will calculate the job but I do not use it because the customer can't see what is input and they may feel that everything is not being disclosed. It is OK, but not my choice.
Thanks Lynn. I sure don't need ill will in Mississippi. :)
I think some clarification may even be in order. As I see the process there are several steps here.
1. Tally - done at the end of the job. Just recording the size and number of boards or stacks of lumber. This can be done on a board scrap, notebook, lined tablet or input directly into a spreadsheet on a laptop or smart phone at the site.
2. Computations - the multiplication and division to determine from the tally how many board feet were cut or are being sold. May be done at the site or back at the office manually, with a handheld calculator, or input into an automated device with formulas entered or already in place.
3. Pricing - multiplying the bf of the lumber sawed or sold by the rate for sawing or lumber prices. May be done at the site or back at the office manually, with a handheld calculator, or input into an automated device with formulas entered or already in place.
4. Invoicing - transferring the tally info, bf computations and prices for the sawing or sale and providing a copy/original to the customer with the expectation of payment. A copy of the invoice may be signed to use as a receipt.
Some of us do this whole process manually with handwritten records every step of the way. Some do part manually then enter into spreadsheets to record and/or do the math. Some choose to enter the raw data in the field on to an app or laptop and let the device compute the bf totals and calculate pricing. There is nothing wrong with a completely or partially manual system as long as it works for you and is satisfactory to the customer.
The spreadsheets I offer let you input directly in the field with a laptop, if you so choose, or back at the office from handwritten field notes. Once input you can use them just as a tally sheet or use one as an invoice if you don't have another preferred form and format.
I am not advocating anyone use them - since I already had them I was just offering if is convenient and useful in your application. 8)