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Estimate development

Does anyone use C&P for the development of the initial estimates for clients? If so, does anyone have this process streamlined and/or can offer some good suggestions. We currently have our Account Executives take a guess at the number of hours a task will take and then traffic/production will develop the estimate, give it back to the AE, he will adjust it, then we re-do it with changes...not a very efficient method. Any help or wisdom on this matter is greatly appreciated.

Thank You!

Lisa Tschauner
Traffic Coordinator
David & Associates

Our process is as follows: 1) AE takes all necessary notes from client regarding estimate production request. 2) AE calls for a team meeting with art director, creative director and/or broadcast production manager. The purpose is to get their input, how many hours it will take in order to complete the job as specified. 3) Then the job will go to traffic to be edited, milestone additions, and if necessary, add outside costs. 4) Every Friday, traffic will take all approved jobs from that week, produce a weekly production schedule for the following week. She than passes out production sheets to all involved. She also pre-assigns any and all PO's for any outside costs.

I hope this helps. Good luck!!!

Felica Sparks
Office Manager
Benton Newton & Partners Advertising

Here's an idea that might help.

We use C&P's project code to group our jobs into Radio, TV, Brochure, Logo, etc. After a year of using C&P, we gathered the stats on each type of job. We were able to see similarities between jobs and put together a job type template of how many hours a job takes to complete based on the job type. We also compiled a "list of services" including a price sheet. The list has 3 basic price points for each job type and has examples of work completed within the price ranges. Our list also shows the breakdown of % of Agency Fees and % of Outside Costs based on past history.

This "template" always changes based on who the client is, which staff members are working on the job and the level of detail the job requires. At least we have a valid starting point - other than the AE's guess.

Laura Karns
Logistics Manager
Hanon McKendry

We have some basic templates set up that we use ... and they're almost always customized. But we can also pull some historical jobs and use them for reference, looking at what they actually came in as ... not just the estimate. That helps quite a bit.

Jennifer Larsen Morrow
marketing being
Creative Company, Inc.

At our agency, we use the "templates" that the other messages reference. We call them standard costs and developed them the same way as described. One technique we developed involved creating a "client code" for the standard rates (STD). Then we created "mock" jobs and entered all the estimates, etc. for each type of job (e.g., STD0032 = standard cost for a full page 4 color trade ad). Then when an AE needs to produce an estimate they simply clone the STD job and modify it based on the client and other factors such as photography. It saves a lot of time!

Tracie McKnight
Associated AdTracTracegency

Budget Calculations

Does anyone use the budget calculator function? In other words, how do you calculate what the actual cost to your firm is vs. what the estimate that the client actually pays?

Our firm requires us to calculate budgets in the estimate work sheet so that they can track profit margins, and until recently all these calculations were done by hand - i.e. a certain amount for VPs, another amount for AEs, a third amount for interns times the number of hours worked. We now have a plug-in application that calculates the budget if the AE goes through the steps, however, many times AEs forget that step, so no budget appears.

I have to believe that other agencies have to track their profit margins in similar ways. Any ideas?

Thanks, Kristen Hill Hayslett Sorrel