Construction Estimating Spreadsheet Template Excel Google Sheets | Contractor Bid Calculator, Job Costing, Change Order and Draw Tracker

YOU DID NOT UNDERBID THE MATERIALS. YOU FORGOT WHAT AN HOUR COSTS YOU.

Ask a contractor why a job lost money and you will hear that lumber went up. It usually did not.

Here is a real job out of the sample file in this workbook. A custom home, quoted at 24% gross margin, budget $645,008. It is 46% built. It has already absorbed 108.6% of its budget. Finish it the way it is going and it lands at 17.3%.

6.7 points of margin, on one job, and the profit and loss will not show it until the job is closed and the money is spent.

This workbook shows it in week three.

Across the four jobs in the sample file the pattern is the same: $1,253,513 of contract value, a plan that said 25.2%, a forecast that says 19.8%, and $67,796 that quietly left.


WHAT IT DOES

Works out what an hour actually costs you. Not the wage. The wage plus payroll tax, comp and benefits, plus the share of your rent, insurance, trucks, software and office salary that every single billable hour has to carry. In the sample that is a $28.00 wage that really costs $53.86. Most contractors bid the first number.

Prices your bid from the margin you want to keep, never from a markup. Markup and margin are not the same thing and confusing them is the most expensive arithmetic mistake in this trade. Add 20 per cent to a $10,000 cost and you bill $12,000, which is a 16.7 per cent margin, not 20. To actually keep 20 you have to add 25. There is a table that converts between them both ways, and the estimator always prices from margin so the workbook cannot make the mistake for you.

Measures profit at the finish, not at today. A job that is half built and three quarters spent still looks profitable if you simply subtract what you have paid so far. The Jobs tab works out the cost to complete, adds it to what is spent and committed, and gives you the margin the job is actually going to deliver.

Counts committed cost, not just paid cost. A signed subcontractor or a placed material order is money gone whether or not the invoice has arrived.

Tracks the change orders. An approved change order lifts your contract value and your budget together. An unapproved one is work you are doing for free, and the workbook says so out loud.

Bills through a draw schedule, holds retainage per draw, and keeps holding it until you tick it released. In the sample there is $67,954 of retainage sitting in other people's accounts and $20,000 of work finished and never invoiced.


WHAT IS INSIDE

14 tabs. 10,450 working formulas. 32 integrity checks and a 14 line attention list.

Start Here - five minute setup, and the one thing to read before you bid anything
Dashboard - every job ranked by the margin it will really deliver, win rate, money at risk
Bid Estimator - line item takeoff; material lines pick up waste and sales tax on their own
Bids and Win Loss - cost, overhead recovery, price, margin, won or lost, and why you lost
Jobs - bid versus forecast at completion on every job you won, change orders included
Job Costs - every real cost, coded, with committed and incurred kept apart
Change Orders - what changed, what it cost, what you charged, and whether it was approved
Draw Schedule - progress billing, retainage held and released, invoices outstanding in days
Subcontractors - scope, contract value, W-9 on file and insurance certificate expiry
Materials - purchase orders by job and supplier, promised delivery, what is late
Schedule - phases per job with a 26 week bar chart that colours itself
Overhead and Burden - your true hourly cost, and the markup versus margin table
Settings - your burden, margin, retainage, tax and wage, in five boxes
Lists - the dropdown wording every formula reads


IT TELLS YOU WITHOUT BEING ASKED

An invoice sent and now past due. A draw raised and never invoiced. Retainage on a paid draw that nobody released. A subcontractor billed over their contract. An insurance certificate that expired. A sub with no W-9 on file, which you will care about in January. A material delivery running late. A schedule phase past its finish date. A job whose forecast has passed its budget. A job billing behind the work already in place.

Plus 32 integrity checks that look for the things that are always wrong: a cost pointing at a job that does not exist, a bid with no takeoff behind it, a change order with no status, a won bid nobody opened as a job. Each one says OK or REVIEW, and the ones that say REVIEW tell you which tab to open.


HOW IT WORKS

1. Open Settings. Put in your labour burden, the margin you want to keep, your retainage, your sales tax and your average field wage. Five boxes.
2. Open Overhead and Burden. Replace the ten overhead lines with yours and set your crew size, paid hours and honest billable utilisation. The workbook works out the overhead every billable hour has to recover.
3. Add a bid on Bids and Win Loss, then type your takeoff on Bid Estimator against that Bid ID.
4. Your cost, your overhead recovery, your price at target margin and your true margin are already sitting there.
5. Set the status to Won and the job appears on the Jobs tab. Log costs, changes and draws as they happen.


COMPATIBILITY

Built and tested in Microsoft Excel. Works in Google Sheets: File, then Import, then Upload, then Replace spreadsheet. Every formula is a standard function - no add-ons, no macros, no subscription, nothing to log into.

Calculated cells are locked and tinted so you cannot type over a formula by accident. Everything you fill in is cream and unlocked. There is no password: use Review then Unprotect Sheet on any tab if you want to change a formula yourself.

Realistic sample data is included so you can see it working. Delete the sample rows and every total returns cleanly to zero.


WHAT YOU GET

One .xlsx file, downloadable the moment you buy. Nothing ships.

Step by step video walkthroughs for our templates on the ReadySheetGo YouTube channel.

Free customisation help - message the shop and we will adjust it for your trade.


This is a digital download. Because of that, all sales are final and no refunds are offered. Please read the description and look at the photos before you buy. If anything is unclear, message us first and we will answer.

For personal and single business use. Please do not resell or redistribute the file.

📗 HOW TO OPEN IN GOOGLE SHEETS (free & easy):
This is one file that works in BOTH Excel and Google Sheets — there's no separate file to find, you just import the download once:
1. Go to sheets.google.com and open a blank spreadsheet
2. Click File ▸ Import ▸ Upload
3. Drag in the .xlsx file you downloaded from this order
4. Choose "Replace spreadsheet" and click Import data
All tabs load as a full Google Sheet saved in your Drive — edit it on any device. (Prefer Excel? Just double-click the file to open.)

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VIDEO TUTORIAL INCLUDED
This template comes with a step-by-step video walkthrough to help you get set up in minutes. Your tutorial link is included with the instant download.