The spreadsheet works until the day it quietly does not.
Most shops price jobs in a spreadsheet they built themselves, and for a while that is the right call. These are the specific places it breaks, and what changes when the same math is enforced instead of retyped.
A spreadsheet you wrote yourself beats software you do not understand. It matches how you actually work, it costs nothing, and you can see every formula. Shops that price well in a spreadsheet are pricing well — the tool is not the problem.
What breaks is not the arithmetic. It is that every quote is a copy of the last one, so a fix applied in January is missing from the file someone duplicated in March, and nobody finds out until the year-end numbers do not match the work.
The three failures below are specific and checkable in your own file. If none of them apply, keep the spreadsheet.
The spreadsheet: correct once, copied forever
A file that encodes your pricing as formulas, then gets duplicated per job. Every copy is a fork: rates drift apart, a fix lands in one lineage and not the others, and the version that priced a job a year ago is whichever file happened to be open. Nothing is wrong with any single copy — the problem is that there is no single copy.
PlankCAD: the same rules on every job
Your materials, rates and defaults live in one place and apply to every estimate, so changing a rate changes the next quote rather than the next copy. Cost lines carry quantity, unit and unit price; labour is hours against a rate; waste and overhead are explicit percentages; and margin is gross margin, computed as profit over selling price. The quote exports as a customer-ready PDF with scope, line items, tax, total and terms, and what a job actually cost can be recorded against what you estimated.
Where the two differ.
| Dimension | an estimating spreadsheet | PlankCAD |
|---|---|---|
| Where the rules live | In each copy of the file | In one place, applied to every estimate |
| Changing a rate | Applies to files made after it | Applies to the next quote you write |
| Margin vs markup | Whichever formula was typed | Gross margin — profit over selling price — with the math shown |
| Customer output | The sheet, reformatted | A PDF quote with scope, line items, tax, total and terms |
| Finding an old quote | Filename and folder memory | Saved to your account, openable on any device |
| Estimated vs actual | A second spreadsheet, usually abandoned | Recorded against the estimate |
| Cut list | Retyped from the estimate | The same parts, nested onto your sheet sizes |
When the spreadsheet is still the right tool
- You price a handful of jobs a year and know every number in the file.
- Your pricing logic is unusual enough that you would fight any software that assumed otherwise.
- One person writes every quote, so there are no forks to drift apart.
- It is working and you can prove it from your own job outcomes.
Moving across
There is no import to run. Open your current sheet beside a new estimate, enter the same materials, rates, waste and overhead, and price a job you have already quoted. If the totals disagree, one of the two has a bug worth finding — that comparison is the point, and it is worth doing before you trust either.
PlankCAD and an estimating spreadsheet.
No. A spreadsheet you wrote and understand beats software you do not, and plenty of shops price accurately in one. What fails is duplication: every job forks the file, so a corrected formula reaches only the copies made after it, and the version that priced last year’s job is whichever file was open at the time.
Applying markup and calling it margin. Marking cost up by 40% gives roughly a 29% gross margin, not 40% — margin is profit over selling price, markup is profit over cost. A shop that has confused the two has underpriced every job by the difference, compounding across a year.
That is the recommended first move. Price a job you have already quoted, entering the same materials, rates, waste and overhead. If the totals disagree, one of the two has a bug worth finding before you trust either.
No. There is no import step — you enter your materials, rates and defaults once and they apply to every estimate after that.
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Deterministic Estimate Math · Your Quotes On Your Account · No Hidden Fees