Thanks for the kind words, glad you enjoy it. As for the ideas for improvements/additions: shoot!

As far as it being marketable, I don't know about that, with great software out there like:

estimatesoftware.com

I'm not sure that anybody would be interested in paying actual money for a proggy like Shane's Signage Price Generator. But a note telling me how you like it would sure boost my ego!

That's pretty cool! I've actually been shopping around for a program that I could use to print out quotes for my customers that would show different line items and let me adjust the tax rates as there are several different rates surrounding us. Ever thought about making all of the stuff print out so it can be handed to customers? Obviously it wouldn't show profits and things of that nature.

Did you use Visual Basic?

Amy, I'm not sure I understand exactly what you mean. The price prints out on the quotation, do you mean have the tax print out as well? That isn't a big deal at all actually. Let me know.

Yeah I used VB.

I found myself right away wishing there were programable fields for commonly used materials and labor items which could be assigned prices. Instead of typing out "18# HDU" and entering a sq/footage amount, and a price per unit amount, I would have liked a scroll down list, and when I entered a unit amount it already knew the price per unit. (I like the global markup %). A particular advantage of having a scroll down list, especially in the labor fields, is the visual reminder of all the common steps in a fabrication that can easily be overlooked - the design and selling time, color matching, tracking down uncommon hardware or materials (purchasing), cleaning up after a project, etc.

I found the '0's in the amount fields a little troublesome too. Instead of just tabbing over to that field and entering an amount, you have to delete the zero. I kept accidently leaving zeros in, instead of 1 unit, it comes up 10.

The presentation printout function was pretty cool - More editable fields there to really customize font styles and sizes would be even better. One thing I would really like to see added is the ability to print out the estimate calculation sheet too, for shop use, showing the breakdown of all the materials and labor units as a checklist and reference during and after the project. That could be filed with the job info for future reference, a big plus for me.

Thanks Joe for the suggestions. I'd really like to implement some of those, and probably will sometime (Shane's Signage Price Generator 2.0?). All good ideas.

The 'zero's' problem, yeah I know what you mean. Because of the way that I wrote the subroutine that handles input in the quantity and price fields, it kind of has to be that way. As long as you can get used to this though, I don't think it's a real big deal. All you have to do is double click inside that box and it will hilight the entire thing.

Anyway, keep the suggestions coming. All of these are doable, i'll probably try to accomplish some, if not all of this the next time I decide to sit down and update this thing.

Upon second consideration, I don't see why (even with my meager programming skills) it should be difficult to make the box automatically highlight when you tab over to it so that you can just type in your numbers. I'll work on this as soon as I get a chance. Thanks for your input.

Interesting program.
Thanks.

Well, I didn't design it that way, but I can add an option to let those things print if selected in the next release.

I just wouldn't ever print that out, because when I sell an item, I don't really care to tell the client, "I used 3 yards of A8 vinyl, 3 yards of app tape, 1 piece of acrylic, and it took me three hours of labor, and 1 hour of driving." Typically, I like to just present the package to the client as a whole, but I can see where you might want to do that in some cases.

I think I was asking you to write a whole new program that fit my needs! Ha! I wouldn't want to hand the customer my material costs either.