Material takeoff worksheet
Quantity worksheetQuantities you measured, against the drawing you measured them from — with a line cost only if you have one.
Quantities, and the set you measured them from
A takeoff is only worth keeping if it says what it was measured off. Item, spec reference, location, quantity, unit — against a named drawing set and revision, with an assumptions box for what you did not measure. That is the sheet, and it is checkable six weeks later.
Every number came from you
No price database, no rate, no factor, no waste allowance, no lookup. The line cost is quantity times the unit cost you typed, to the cent; the totals are sums of the rows with a number in them. Nothing is marked up and nothing is assumed.
Around it
A priced document you send a customer is the estimate builder. Ordering the material is a purchase order, what arrives is the material delivery log, and what it took to install is the labor productivity record.
A quantity worksheet. It holds no price database, labor rate, regional factor, waste allowance or productivity assumption, looks nothing up, and adds no markup, overhead, tax or contingency. Every figure comes from a number you typed. Everything runs on your device.
Questions people ask
- Does it have prices in it?
- None. There is no price database, no supplier feed, no regional cost factor and nothing is looked up anywhere. A line cost appears only where you typed a unit cost, and it is your quantity multiplied by your figure, to the cent. A line without a unit cost shows no cost — not zero.
- Is there a waste allowance?
- No. A waste percentage is an estimating judgment that belongs to whoever is doing the estimating, and a default printed by a website would quietly become everybody's number. Add waste into the quantity you enter, and say so in the assumptions box.
- Why does it ask which drawings I measured from?
- Because a takeoff that does not name the set and the revision cannot be checked, reused or defended — and drawings get reissued. It is one field and it is the difference between a worksheet and a number somebody found.
- Is this an estimate?
- No. It adds no labor, no equipment, no overhead, no markup, no tax and no contingency, and it applies no productivity assumption. It is quantities, and optionally the arithmetic on your own unit costs. An estimate you send a customer is the estimate builder.