How to use the Bid Assistant sheet

Note: to watch a tutorial video on using the Bid Assistant, scroll to the bottom of this article.

You can access this sheet from the ribbon tab (or Menu sheet) using the ‘Bid Assistant’ button.

This sheet has been designed to help speed up the creation of budgets. It will be most helpful to those that create many budgets with the software.

The sheet has two sections:

· Number of Days section

· Day Rate section

Before discussing these two sections, the first thing you’ll want to do is enter the total number of days on your project. While it is not necessary to do this first, doing so will make it easier to understand how the Bid Assistant works.

Total Number of Days on Project

Start by clicking on the button labeled ‘Enter Total Days’ at the top of the sheet.

A new window will appear.

Enter the total number of days on your project for each ‘day type’. If you don’t need one (for instance, if you don’t have any Build days), you can leave it blank.

The menu will automatically calculate the Total Days based on what you enter.

If you’d like to hide the columns for the ‘day types’ you don’t need, check the box at the bottom of the menu.

Number of Days section

Now that you’ve entered your total days, let’s take a look at the Number of Days section.

There are two different ways you can enter the number of days for each Line Number.

The primary way is placing an ‘x’ in a cell. For instance, let’s say in the Total Days menu, you had entered ‘5’ for Prep Days. If you place an ‘x’ under the Prep column for a certain Line Number, it will add 5 days to the Total Days for that position.

Instead of placing an ‘x’ in a cell, you can also place a number. If you do that, the number will be reflected in the Total Days for that position. Continuing with the example above, if you place a ‘1’ in the Build Days column, it will add 1 to the Total Days column, giving you a total of 6.

The Adjust Days column is if you want to add or subtract any days from that Line Number. Let’s say you’ve put an ‘x’ in all of the cells for your Producer in Line 1, and the Total Days currently is 17. If you feel like that is one too many days, you could place a ‘-1’ in the Adjust Days column, and the Total Days would change to 16.

Because Sections A and B cover the same crew positions, you can decide if you want the Prelight Days and Strike Days to be assigned to Section A or B. By default, they are both assigned to Section B. If you want to change it, you’d do that in the Options menu of this sheet. We’ll go into more details on that a bit later in this article.

An important note:

The next time you wish to use the Bid Assistant, all you’ll need to do is click the ‘Enter Total Days’ button and change the number of days for each day type. The Total Days column will then automatically recalculate based on the numbers you’ve entered.

Day Rates section

This section is for storing different day rates for different scenarios. For instance, let’s say you do shoots in both Los Angeles and New York, some being union and others being non-union. You can store your various day rates in this section.

This section can have up to 8 columns, but you don’t have to use them all. You can hide the unneeded columns in the Options menu of this sheet, as well as change the name of each column.

Options

This menu has two tabs:

• Number of Days Section

• Day Rate Section

In the ‘Number of Days Section’ tab, this is where you decide which section you want to assign the Prelight Days and Strike Days to. By default, they are both assigned to Section B, but you can change that. For the section that you don’t choose, those columns will be “greyed out” and you won’t be able to type into them. If you want to be able to type into them on both sections, uncheck the box next to ‘Disable non-relevant days in Sections A & B’.

In the ‘Day Rate Section’ tab, this is where you decide how many columns in the Day Rate section you want to use. You can have up to 8. This is also where you can give them a name. For instance, if you have rates for Los Angeles and New York, with union and non-union rates for each, you’d select ‘4’ for the number of columns to use. In the section where you name the columns, you might choose this:

1 LA Union

2 LA NU

3 NY Union

4 NY NU

Once you press OK, you’ll notice that only 4 columns are visible in the Day Rate section. Since you selected ‘4’, it hides the ones you don’t need.

Sending the Data to the Budget

Once you’ve filled in the sheet, you can easily send the data you want to the budget. Click on the Send Data to Budget button at the top of the sheet. This menu has two main checkboxes, corresponding to the two sections of the sheet.

If you want to send the Number of Days, check that box. That will reveal additional checkboxes. You now need to select which Sections of the budget you want to send them to. You’ll notice that one of these checkboxes is for the Cost Summary sheet. If you check this, it will fill in the numbers of days area on that sheet, which is located just below the Client Info section.

If you want to send the Day Rates, check that box. First, you must select which column you wish to send. Then, like above, you must check the Sections of the budget you want to send them to. 

Tutorial Video

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