SpecWriter Schedule of Values Menu

The Schedule of Values is different largely in that it only includes the headlines of the categories you tagged on the Checklist, not the details.

The original purpose of the Schedule of Values was for commercial contractors who need to submit a Schedule of Values as a part of their bid submission package.

These Schedule of Values are commonly converted into a draw schedule and thus need to include overhead and profit in each line, and not as a separate line at the bottom.

Nevertheless, some SpecWriter users prefer to use the Schedule of Values to perform their actual estimating simply because it’s simpler and they don’t feel they need all the detail of the Estimate Worksheet.

Generating the Schedule of Values involves:

1. Copying the specifications Categories you “tagged” on the Checklist to the Schedule of Values page.
2. Copying the Cost Code Number into the left column.
3. Adding the extra columns on the right of the specifications.
4. Adding a small Schedule of Values total at the bottom of the page.
5. Formatting the print range.

You may generate the Schedule of Values as many times as you wish, although you will lose any prior Schedule of Values in the process.

We recommend that you wait and generate the Schedule of Values after you have reviewed and revised the Specifications.

When you re-generate an Schedule of Values, any existing Schedule of Values will be moved to a new page named Prior Schedule of Values.

Deciding when to generating a new Schedule of Values is a management decision, as follows:

1. If only a couple of specifications were revised, then you probable only need to edit the existing Schedule of Values to reflect the modifications.
2. If you need to add an entirely new item to an existing Schedule of Values, then you may use Excel to insert an addition row in the Schedule of Values.
3. If you determine that there were enough changes to the Specifications that you need to generate a new Schedule of Values, then your existing numbers in the existing Schedule of Values will be saved for your reference in a new page named Prior Schedule of Values.
4. Remember: The Specifications and the Schedule of Values are generated independently of each other, so revising the Specifications so they are picture perfect for the contract does not necessarily require that you re-generate a new Schedule of Values.

This command is identical to the Settings | Program Settings menu command.
Of course, you can always override the percentages in the Schedule of Values at any time simply by entering new percentages as desired.

You can read the descriptions of the different options in the dialog box itself.

You may switch back and forth between the different presentation options as often as you wish with no effect on the numbers you’ve entered.

Many SpecWriter users will switch to the mode that hides the markup calculations when they print the Schedule of Values for their customer.

The default setting in SpecWriter is with the lines visible.

You can switch between the two options as often as you wish, so give it a try and see if you like it.

The Page Break View draws bold blue lines on the Schedule of Values representing the actual pages that will be printed, and ghost-writes the page number in grey lettering across each page. (it doesn’t get printed that way)

The only reason we’ve included this function here is because the Schedule of Values does not actually have designated page footers like the Specifications, and thus when printed the pages will break naturally with the length of the page itself, something you can’t actually see on the page itself.

The default setting in SpecWriter is with the Page Break View off.

You can switch between the two options as often as you wish, so give it a try and see if you like it.

In the Preview mode you can use the menu bar at the top of the page to move between the pages and to zoom in on any portion of a page for a closer view.

You can also use the Margins menu to change the page margins, by we strongly suggest that you leave our default settings as they are.

Use the Close menu button to close the Print Preview function when you are finished reviewing the Schedule of Values.

It’s always a good idea to preview the Schedule of Values before printing it.

If you need to send the print job to another printer, or if you only want to print a page or specific pages of the Schedule of Values, then you should use File | Print Dialog Box instead.

This function will print the Prior Schedule of Values.