This article is a re-print from the April 1995 Building & Remodeling News article by Patti and William Feldman. It describes the previous generation of our Scheduler's Add-Vantage program. Some of the observations about the prior version are no longer true with the new version. The changes are detailed at the end of the article. The article itself has been left intact.

The Scheduler's Advantage, by Add-Vantage Software, delivers excellent project management capabilities to home renovation contractors in an easy-to-learn, easy-to-benefit-your-business package. This program will set your projects on track quickly and efficiently so everyone, from workers and subs to suppliers and customers, knows what's what and exactly when you expect it done.

Within a half hour or so, you can have a $70,000 or $170,000 job scheduled, with printouts ready to distribute to and share with all interested parties. On one sheet of paper, everyone can see all the task events, order and delivery dates, and project cash flow that you and they need to know about for short- and long-term planning. No confusion about intentions; no excuses for tie-ups or slowdowns need apply!

The feature-rich program, which runs within Microsoft Excel V. 5.0, was created expressly with the home remodeler and small custom builder in mind. It is a manual "critical path" scheduling program that calls upon and works in concert with the experience of the user to develop time-frames and interdependencies that determine start and finish dates for individual tasks. (The delay of any of the tasks affects subsequent tasks and thus the completion of the project.)

Pre-formatted scheduling templates save time in setting up each job. Across the bottom of the color-enhanced program screens are a series of 20 pre-defined buttons for selecting color-coded lines for various aspects of a project, such as excavation and electrical, plumbing and painting, all the way through to punch list. Slot in the time you estimate for each task, click on the category, and the software puts it into the schedule.

Delays by others are easy to document- just pick the corresponding dates of the delay and the tasks affected and the program automatically will move everything relevant down the proscribed time in the pre-scheduled format.

Printing multiples of schedules periodically and passing them around is almost as good as taking out performance insurance. Not only does The Scheduler's Advantage provide work schedules (daily, weekly and monthly templates are all included), ordering of materials schedules, and delivery of materials schedules, but it also provides a daily cash flow analysis. By watching the bottom line, you can jockey payments, events, and billings to keep you ahead of -or at least even with- the customer. It's easy enough to flash the cash flow printout in front of your customer to what is due or show him the schedule only.

A printed schedule presented to a customer at the beginning of a project serves as a qualifying document; it justifies partial payments. Should customers make alterations in the plans that require change orders, showing revised schedules will help to justify the price and time increases and the impacts that delays have on the total cost of the project.

Also, when you keep your customers continuously apprised with updated schedules, they will have no easy justification for not meeting "decision" dates, or for not being in attendance for important deliveries.

If a new job is similar to a previous one, involving new roof, kitchen, bath, or other "stock" home renovation, you can pull up a copy of the old schedule and use it as the basis for the new, altering it as necessary to accommodate the differences. This pre-formatting can save a lot of time.

Overall, we feel The Scheduler's Advantage is a wise buy for those contractors eager to stay in control and contain job costs. It will set the ball rolling on the right paths, fast, for all projects

The following changes have been made to the current version of the program, which we feel have improved its quality, reliability and ease of use.

• The program no longer requires Excel to run. In fact, the program includes its own full-featured Windows spreadsheet program.
• The new version includes a fully-featured Windows Help System that is context sensitive and includes pictures, definitions, table of contents and search capabilities.

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Add-Vantage Software Inc.   PO Box 173   Medway, MA 02053   tel: 800-768-5636   fax: 508-533-5266   e-mail: info @ addvantage.com