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Thinking Ahead to Get Ahead: How to Create a Project Estimate

The ability to work on the Prius Project for ReachNash was a great opportunity, and it’s been a pleasure to share the journey with all of you. As part of the rounding-out, I wanted to share how to consider and create some of the pre-game planning we did that helped us land this project and get it started.

When it comes to production-based works, the motto “Think Twice, Do Once” is some of the best advice I’d ever heard: whether you’re working on your own projects under your own funding, or finessing every nickel out of a materials budget for a client or a grant, the ability to plan ahead is almost as important as the work itself. Following this motto, knowing how to create a forward-thinking project estimate is an invaluable skill.

I’ll present this information through the eyes of a client-based project, but you can apply this to a client, a grant, or simply a production; whether you’re on an emergency deadline or just trying to plan for a team, these tips to create an Estimate Invoice will help you present and direct where you need to go.

Your Estimate Invoice: The Basics

Your Estimate Invoice is a document for your and your client’s records that presents the project, its goals, and its limitations. Though you can format and present this in many ways, your Estimate Invoice should, regardless of the project, contain several key, basic sections:

1. Your primary contact information (if you’re in a team, designate one person with reliable communication skills to field questions and calls)
2. Your client’s contact information (for your records, as well as any tax or legal paperwork you may need to deal with at a future date)
3. Your project description (to outline clearly for all parties as to what the goals of the project are, and any specifics as to how those goals should or could be met. This is sometimes given by the client, but can also be proposed by the artist or production team)

These sections will generally stay consistent during the course of the project.

Your Estimate Invoice: Defining A Project

Your Estimate Invoice should also contain special areas specific to the project: a timeline, your materials budget estimate and labor hours estimate, an expenses summary, and a list of expected/made payments. These sections may update (either by your or the client’s request) as the project continues, but you should always save the document anew whenever changes are made. (I personally like to date each new updated document – “Mr. Sample Art-thing Invoice 8-5-2011″ – to keep track of when and where the project alters.) We’ll explain in more depth how each of these areas are created:

1. The expected timeline of the project:

At the minimum, the timeline serves to outline clearly for all parties the due-date that the client expects the project to be ready. Depending on the project or client, a more detailed schedule may be helpful to both the client and production team for identifying expectations.

So how do you create a timeline?

The easiest way to create a timeline is to break down your goals into specific steps, taking into account:

• Any pick-up of materials: either purchasing items, or getting them from the client;
• Research/experimentation: to test out concepts, ideas, or schedules; this may actually fall before the materials pick-up, depending on what you’re doing, why, and how;
• A realistic idea of how long each step will take: this can be the hardest part! Try to gauge how much time you’ll spend, but be fair: it might seem like a good idea to list as few hours as possible, but most of the time, you’re not buying time, you’re buying trouble. Be honest, and the work will be well.
• Flex time: Having an hour or two of additional “flex time” plugged into your estimation will allow you to handle problems (such as the unexpected dud spray cans we discovered), come up with new ideas, and deal with other issues that lead projects to take longer than you plan. Additionally…
• Adequate rest and break time: again, this sounds superfluous, but it’s more important than you think. Taking adequate rest and breaking for water and meals is more than just keeping hydrated and well-fed. Scheduled breaks help fuel creativity, and it helps keep your team working happy and working safe: if you work tired, you don’t work well.

Structuring your goals into rough timelines and milestones isn’t just useful for defining the project to your client, but it can help your team understand the bigger project picture. Combined with short “stand-up” meetings to check in throughout the day, knowing what each day should accomplish can help everyone keep on track of what they’re expected to do.

2. Budget Outline: Materials Estimate

Though this is especially important if the client is paying for your project materials, even if you’re simply working as a team, it can be helpful to outline where and why specific costs occur. This can help you and/or the client understand what goes into the project, where specific decisions affect cost (and time-frame, in the labor estimate), and what you/they can realistically expect when planning future projects of a similar scale.

Get your production team together and, working from your concept sketches or proposal, brainstorm the range of materials and directions your project will need.

A few key things to remember when creating your materials budget:

• If you are doing a lot of shopping, pick-up, or delivery, consider whether or not it is appropriate to include gas costs. For example, since our project included collecting specific recyclable materials to work with, this is something we considered when factoring a fair price.
• Don’t forget to factor sales tax into your estimate! Some projects may have a tax-extemp number through your client that may apply to your costs; contact them for more information if you think this is relevant, such as in the cases of non-profits or government contracts.
• Unless specified by your contract agreement or project proposal, you should not plan to use your own materials to complete a project! For example, we – obviously – did not factor purchasing costs for the recycled material for the sculpture, but we did plan for the costs of production materials, such as wire, thread, and the hanging chain.
• Which brings us to: don’t just plan for the largest materials. Think about the smallest details. If you’re sewing, consider the price of thread and needles. If you’re painting, factor in brushes and sealant. These small costs will add up by the end of a project, and can cause you to go overbudget, or worse, into your own pocket to pay for costs.
• If the project has several milestones or production elements to it, consider setting a separate budget for each section. When we planned, we set aside specific amounts for the sculpture, the delivery crate, and the recycling bins. When we received our materials budget as part of the initial deposit, we separated out the money into different portions as specified by our planning. This helps keep your spending on track, especially if you aren’t buying certain materials until later. It’s more than just restraining from buying an extra brush or can of paint that you may or may not need; it’s about defining limits so that you’ll have extra money if that piece of wood breaks or a bin takes an extra can of spray paint to complete.
• Lastly, save your receipts! You never know when you may have to return a dud, take back material you didn’t need, or have to justify expenses to your client or teammates. We like to keep our receipts in the same envelope as our budget separations, and when we purchased material for different budgets from the same store, we paid for them separately whenever possible.

Not only will creating a budget help you identify costs beforehand, but it can also help you solidify your direction and tackle hard decisions earlier in the process. When you have to define specific numbers as part of the pre-game process, you plan better about what and why you’re doing.

3. Budget Outline: Labor Estimate

Creating a Labor Estimate is useful regardless of how you incorporate it into an Estimate Invoice. Depending on why and how you put your team together, you may choose to list out your estimated labor hours either by individuals on the team who have specific jobs to complete, or by the number of expected hours to complete specific portions of the project.

When it comes to expressing this in terms of expected expenses, your labor estimate may be a flat fee that encompasses the entire project, or it may be an hourly rate depending on the individual rates-per-job within your team. For example, you might not charge the same amount for web development that you would for sewing; someone who is only delivering an item or collecting material might not make the same as someone who is structurally engineering a piece. Lastly, someone with more experience in a particular area might have a higher rate than someone who is less experienced.

Whether you choose to be detailed or concise in your presentation, the labor estimate ultimately can also help your team and the client understand the reality of your time-frame, and the reality of what a similar project might cost in the future.

4. Budget Outline: Total Project Expenses Estimate

This section simplifies the expenses by summarizing the materials budget, labor estimates, and any additional costs, and adds them together in a final tally. Having this section, while not completely necessary, is a nice, easy, and quick way for the client to track and get an overview idea of expenses, and makes it easier for the client to pass along information to an accounting department.

5. Invoice Payments by date

It seems silly, but don’t forget to include the amounts and expected due-dates for any deposits or final payments! Having these amounts and dates clearly stated to both parties in the invoice creates expectations of the project milestones what and when payments are due.

Additionally, whenever a payment is made, the invoice should be updated with a record of the payment amount, the check and/or reference number, and any additional notes, as well as updating the final amount due to reflect the new payment. You can send this updated version as a receipt, or wait until the next expected payment date to send any updated information; check with your client to determine which they’d prefer.

Final tips

The above provides a basic approach to planning a project, but nothing ever goes according to plan.

• From the beginning: If you think you may do future projects, consider logging your hours spent on the project. You can do this casually or by taking advantage of time/work-logging programs, such as On The Job (for Mac), whichever suits your needs and ability. Take notice of when you get started, how long you spend in meetings, and when you need breaks. More than likely, this information stays with you and your team and won’t be released to your client, but it’ll let you plan for future proposals more realistically, as well as understand your own personal and physical limits to being able to work well, safe, and smart.
• In the middle: The blessing and curse of creativity is that no matter how much you consider theory, ideas happen as a result of practice. At some point in your project, you’ll find yourself thinking of a new, better direction, or changing gears, or even finding new team-members or goals. To take advantage of these opportunities, be adaptable, think flexible, and talk often as a group. Taking some time to meet at the start, middle, or end of each work session can let you discuss where you’ve been, where you’re going, and how best to get there.
• After you’re “finished:” After you’ve completed the project, it’s mighty appealing to just sit back, “veg out,” and sleep for a day. If you want to make the project work for you, however, the best thing to do is to schedule a “post-mortem” meeting with your team-members (and, depending, with your client) for the day or two after the end of the project. Give everyone a little time to relax and unwind, but while the project is still fresh, you want to take advantage of the clear memories to discuss what worked, what could have gone better, and what you would do differently next time. When talking, be assertive, not aggressive, and take notes.
• Always, Always, Always: We’ve said this before when discussing budgeting, but get and save receipts. Save your materials receipts until you’re absolutely sure you don’t need to return anything. Have payment receipts and clear documentation of when and what you got paid, and document clearly when and what you pay your team-mates. That reliable person you outlined as your primary contact? They’re probably perfect to handle this job, too, but send each team-member a copy of their personal receipt as part of the final process.

Creating your Estimate Invoice helps you plan your project, present it thoroughly to your client, and review your success after the project is completed. Try this format next time you’re planning, and drop us a line and let us know what you’re working on!