Three drawings land on a Tuesday morning. That Tuesday is gone.
Each one is the same afternoon: work out for every part which board it really comes off, dig out the oak rate, add the sanding, add the packaging, decide the profit, and then write the whole thing out again on a letterhead. Four hours, if nobody interrupts.
Then two of the three go somewhere else. Nobody paid you for those two and nobody will.
The measurement
That is how long one estimate took by hand, and how long it takes now, once your costs have been entered once. Three hours and forty-five minutes that are now yours. On a complicated project four hours is the floor, not the average.
One joinery, twenty years of it.
With Estifex one estimate takes 15 minutes, once your costs have been entered. That is the only number here that is ours.
Work nobody pays for
| By hand | With Estifex | Difference | |
|---|---|---|---|
| A month | — | — | — |
| A year | — | — | — |
| Twenty years | — | — | — |
—
—
And the loss is the same either way. If you do the estimating yourself, it is your hour that did not go into production. If an employed estimator does it, it is wages paid for work nobody bought. Only the pocket is different.
Ten estimates a month, seven of them not approved, four hours each and your hour at €35: that is 28 hours a month you were never paid for. Over twenty years, 6 300 hours — 787 eight-hour working days, three and a half working years. And the loss is the same either way: if you estimate yourself it is your hour that did not go into production; if an employed estimator does it, it is wages paid for work nobody bought. Only the pocket is different.
Name the product and the quantity. Add the parts: four legs, four stretchers, a seat panel, the felt pads. Give each part a shape — by hand as a run of segments, or drag in the drawing of the whole product and the shape is read off it. A whole set goes in at once, and nothing is written down until you have looked at every row.
The rest the system does: for every part it works out the timber it really comes off, adds them up into one chair, adds the sanding and the packaging, then overhead, then the prototype multiplier, then profit — in that order, because the order changes the answer. Out comes a price per chair and a total for twelve.
Because the place where most of the mistakes are made is the one thing it does not guess.
A blank of 630 × 100 × 23 does not come off a 630 × 100 × 23 board. Length +50 mm, rounded up to a full 50. Width +10 mm. Thickness +4 mm for the planer — and then up to a thickness that is actually produced: 26, 32, 40 or 50 mm. The last step is the one nobody does in their head: 23 mm looks like 26, but with the 4 mm the planer takes it needs 27, and the board is 32. In one chair that is seventeen per cent of the timber.
A sheet goes its own way: fixed thickness, charged by the square metre, +10 mm each way for the saw and the edge, and nothing added for defects that are not there. But when no available material reaches the part, Estifex stops and asks whether it may be glued — in the thickness or across the width — instead of quietly inventing a board that does not exist.
The customer wants a prototype tomorrow. Twelve parts, every one a different size, and not one hour to spend on the sum. So a round number goes out: one price a piece, for all twelve.
That is wrong in two directions at once. The felt pad at that price — the customer overpaid. A turned leg out of fifty-millimetre oak at that price — you did. And which of the twelve was which, you will never know, because that is exactly what there was no time to work out.
Fifteen minutes is not about speed. It is about the round number no longer being the only answer you have.
While the estimate sits between jobs waiting for a free evening, the customer is waiting too. Not an hour — a week. And in that week he wrote to two other workshops.
The second measurement
A price that does not have to wait for a free evening goes out the same day. A faster answer is not a better estimate — it is the same estimate, reaching the customer while he is still looking.
The same joinery, the same twenty years.
A cutting list for the workshop: how much timber one product takes, then per material how many pieces for the whole run, what they are cut to, and the size nobody is allowed to go under.
An offer for the customer: your letterhead, your logo, the product, the quantity, the price each and the total, and the day it stands until. It gets its number when it is sent, not when you price it — five tries must not leave five holes in the record. Your rate, your overhead and your profit are not on it.
Every offer that goes out is kept with what became of it. Sent, approved, rejected. The approved rate counts only the ones that were answered — a draft is neither approved nor rejected, and one still waiting is not a refusal. The same on each customer’s card: who actually buys, and who only ever asks the price.
It keeps no stock. It is not connected to any stock record — no packs, no consumption, no year-end summary, because an estimate is a price, not a movement of material. It does not decide your profit. It does not read a comma as the end of a number. And it does not call a draft approved.
Joineries and blank producers who today price in a spreadsheet or from experience. The more estimates go through the workshop, the more this tool is worth.
An estimating tool for workshops that make parts out of solid timber and sheet. You enter your costs once; after that Estifex reads the drawing, works out the timber that really has to be bought, adds up a whole product and makes an offer with a number and a cutting list for the workshop.
The first takes longer because in it you are teaching the system your workshop — materials with rates, positions, customers. The tenth estimate takes minutes, because you have already done that. The saving is not in one estimate; it is in every one after it.
Because the finished size is not what has to be bought. In between are the saw allowance, the planing allowance, and the thickness that is actually produced. At 23 mm it comes out at 32 mm — about forty per cent more timber than stays in the finished part.
Not as long as the sum takes, but as long as it takes until you have a free evening to do it in. That is usually a week, and in that week he asks somebody else. That is the part this changes.
Yes, single sheets and whole sets. It takes the name and the quantity from the parts list and the shape from the sheet. It never names the material, and nothing is written down until you have seen every row.
89 € a month per workshop, excluding VAT. Fourteen days to try it first — the whole tool, no cut-down version, no card and no seat limit. On ten estimates a month it pays for itself several times over in the first week.
No, and that is deliberate. Kubifex runs material accounting for a workshop with a CoC chain-of-custody certificate, on its own database. Estifex works out prices. An offer never becomes a stock record.
When it is sent, not when it is priced. Somebody checking five prices would otherwise use up five numbers and leave holes in the record. An offer that has gone out cannot be changed afterwards — the customer is holding that exact number; a new offer is a copy.
The share of answered offers that were approved. Only offers that were approved are counted; a draft is neither approved nor rejected, and one still waiting is not a refusal.
Price
€89 a month, VAT excluded. Fourteen days to try it, and the trial is the whole tool, not a cut-down version.
Join Estifex →We count page views with Google Analytics. Nothing is stored on your device until you agree.