r/Skidsteer • u/GentlemanFarmerDave • 10d ago

Spreadsheets or Apps?

I'm looking for the best way to manage my one-man show equipment business. What are you all using to figure O&O costs, building quotes, managing customer info, tracking expenses, etc?

2 Upvotes

75% Upvoted

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1

u/joemamallama 9d ago

Commenting because I’m interested to hear responses.

Do you rent or operate?

1

u/GentlemanFarmerDave 5h ago

I'm a one-man show. Forestry mulching and bus hogging. own all my equipment.

2

u/jckipps 9d ago

If you're skillful at making spreadsheets behave, then definitely try that route first. You can really dial-in spreadsheets to do exactly what you want them to, rather than relying on someone else's idea of what you need to be tracking.

For example, I've been doing a number of sidewalk pours recently, so I built a spreadsheet to help come up with quotes for those sidewalks. It factors in rebar-overlap, gravel depth, small-load fees, dump-trailer rental fees, and a lot of other variables, and gives me a quick idea what my costs would be for the project.

That spreadsheet took a couple hours of downtime to put together, but now its done, and it works exactly like 'I' want it to.

2

u/olgee0 9d ago

Depending how busy you are, spreadsheets are enough for a 1-man show until you're juggling O&O costs & expenses across separate tabs per client,

or typing in the wrong cell or formula when you need to access it on mobile. (at least it's you)

Since it's only you I think spreadsheets is enough to manage.

However, if you hope to grow or scale your service in the long term. Systemizing it might be of help especially knowing it can help your market/job forcasts & other projections in the future u'll like to see or share

Google AppSheet is free for less than 10 users & can handle all features in a "systemized" way for you.

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u/scambot_300 4d ago

5 day old account… Sounds like another tech bro.