When I was recently at the MCAA convention, I had a customer tell me "Rapid Reports is the best project management tool that you guys have ever produced!"  And to think, we didn't even design it for that!

Rapid Reports was really our response to our customers demands to have instant access to ALL their data in Microsoft Excel.  Not just summary information that we could dump into the Final Estimate Spreadsheet or through the Code Manager, all the information that we had available.  Given the level of accuracy and detail that AutoBid provides, that was no small request.  Why would you want to even consider using Rapid Reports?

Use AutoBid's Rapid Reports so that you can integrate your bid summary with AutoBid.  Are you one of our many customers who spend hours each day entering information from the Recaps summary into your own Excel bid spreadsheet?  With Rapid Reports, you can reduce your data entry time and  the risk of "fat finger" errors.  In AutoBid SheetMetal (and soon AutoBid Mechanical), you can find Rapid Reports behind this button:



Currently in AutoBid Mechanical, Rapid Reports is in the Excel Generator screen of Reports - it's its own separate Excel Report.

Once you are in a Rapid Report for either Piping, Plumbing, or Sheet Metal, the layout will be fairly similar:

     - Summary Tab
     - Labor Adjustment Tabs (one for Mechanical and two for SheetMetal)
     - Crew Mix Calculator
     - Quoted Items Tabs (four for both products - although the names vary by trade)
     - Subs - to enter Subcontrator information
     - G&A - to enter General & Administrative Cost information
     - Pivot - this is where you can "slice & dice" your data any way you want to see it
     - Changes - if you update a spreadsheet, we'll let you know what was changed
     - Customization - information if you want to customize the spreadsheet
     - RawData - all of our information exported in a very detailed format

Don't worry, we'll cover each of these in more detail over the next few weeks.  In the meantime, here is some important items to remember with Rapid Reports:

     - Adjusted labor information is exported to Rapid Reports.  If you use Correction Factors or the Labor Adjustment Worksheets (LAW), then the total adjusted hours will be sent to the Rapid Report.
     - Labor rates from AutoBid are not used in the Rapid Reports summary.  Labor rates are applied from the "Crew Mix" calculator tab.
     - G&A (General & Administrative) and Subcontractor information is not exported to AutoBid.  You will enter this information within Excel.
     - In AutoBid SheetMetal, information for items created through Definitions (Turning Vanes, Connectors, Liner, etc) are summarized at the definition level.

Our next blog post in this series will be next Friday - "Give me some of that pivot table magic!"  If you haven't worked much with Pivot Tables, I think you'll be inspired by their flexibility and power that they give you.

I'm off to celebrate my twins' 6th birthdays today.  It's hard to believe how quickly time flies.