🚀 go-pugleaf

rwk@silver.sbi.com (Richard W. Kreutzer Consultant) writes:

> I am considering developing a product and would like some feed back from
> spreadsheet users.  Does you need:
> 
>     A product which would allow you to organize and retrieve spreadsheets
>     based on user defined criteria such as "Project", "Author", "Title" or
>     "Description", etc.?  I.e., a "database" of spreadsheets.
> 
> If so, what kind of features would you like to see in a product like this?

 I may be a canditate for such a product. I make my living doing lumber
takeoffs for several yards in my area, that is I figure how much wood it
takes to build a house from a given set of plans. My template has been
developed over the past three years and isn't particularly complicated,
using a Dsum to put the various materials into totals.
 I work with 5 different yards and preface the name of each new job with
a 2 letter descriptor and a 3 or 4 digit sequential number. I keep a master
list for each client using information stored in a1.b2, which includes
date, their client name and designer. I load this info into the master and
use that for billing and searching ( in case there are questions ). To keep
order I have a separate subdir for each yard and take older ones off to
floppy when there get to be too many.
 I also keep a separate template with the stats as to the amount of jobs
done. This part and the billing are done almost manually, which works
alright most of the time.
 About 30 % of the plans I look at are drawn by one designer and I keep
track of them, if a number repeats it's a bonus for me. Searching for
those numbers, though, is a manual process having to open the individual
master lists for each client. It would be nice to search across them all.
 My little system was developed using SuperCalc5, and I recently moved
to QuattroPro. I'm also pretty familiar with dBase and often thought
a combination would be helpful. I came up with all this stuff myself
because I don't know anyone else who makes their living in quite this
way.
Hope this sheds some light on a real-life situation

.. John Wilkinson