Get ready to revolutionize your business model with:

Dollars $ Sense  

Dollars $ Sense is designed for use with your estimating software to give you control over how your estimates are printed. With Dollars $ Sense you'll be able print your estimates with dollar amounts only. Line-by-line, item-by-item, you'll be breaking your your estimate down into a menu of operations and their cost. 

Dollars $ Sense is an answer to many problems with Pathways estimates. With Dollars $ Sense you can print an estimate using dollars only, and no labor times whatsoever. It turns your estimate into a menu of items and their actual price. By not using labor hours, or labor units, you do not have to worry about the inconsistencies between paid hours and actual hours. 'Nuff said about that.

Yes, Pathways does have a "Dollars only" option, but it does not print dollar amounts on every line, only the totals at the end of the estimate. Dollars $ Sense lists dollar amounts for every line and every labor option. It also eliminates the asterisks and underlined dollar amounts and line descriptions on manual entries. All lines look the same. You can increase a part price on low gross profit foreign car parts without signs warning the customer that you did so. After all, they are only, "suggested manufacturers list prices." You can change a labor operation to a more realistic labor time without broadcasting it to an insurance appraiser. And your estimate now includes parts numbers. No more having to print a separate document to access the part numbers. They are right there on the estimate.

Dollars $ Sense also eliminates the unnecessary pages printed at the end of an estimate. You can print your own comments or easily turn them off and print a one or two page estimate. This is time saved waiting for pages to be printed, and money saved on paper and toner or ink. It also eliminates the quarter page of vehicle options, another unnecessary item printed on every estimate. You can now print many estimates on just one page.

Another thing that drives me crazy is having to attach an "Estimate" or "Estimate of Record" or "Supplement" with my final bill. It is no longer an estimate after the car is repaired. It is actually a  final invoice, or a final blueprint for the repair. With Dollars $ Sense you have the option of printing your estimate with the heading "Collision Repair Estimate" or "Final Invoice." Makes "cents" doesn't it?

If you're thinking that using Dollars $ Sense will just add more time to creating an estimate, think again. It takes little if any more time to print an estimate using Dollars $ Sense as it does printing right from Pathways. Leave Dollars $ Sense running in the background. Instead of clicking the print button in Pathways, click on "File", "Data Access", "EMS Extract." Click on the Dollars $ Sense button in the task bar, (you'll already have it running), click the button with the green plus sign to fill the list of estimates, double click the customers name in the list to view the estimate and then click the print button. It literally takes seconds. Meanwhile, you can still print a standard Pathways estimate for your own use.

Did you ever try to email an estimate to someone. Unless you have special software to convert your estimate into some standard file format, forget it. You can't do it right from Pathways. Now it's very easy to email an estimate. In the "Print Preview" screen click this button to open a file save dialog box. You can choose between Adobe Acrobat .pdf, Microsoft Excel .xls, Microsoft Word .doc or Rich Text Format .rtf file formats to save your estimate. Once saved to a file you can simply attach it to your email. Most people have the ability to open an Adobe Acrobat file, and it's probably the format you'll use the most. With this Estimate Export feature you could even archive all of your estimates and not need Pathways to open them for review or reprinting. Click here to view a Dollars $ Sense printed estimate in .pdf format

Will insurance companies like or accept Dollars $ Sense estimates? Who cares? Moving away from labor times and toward labor dollars will be helpful in taking back our industry. Dollars $ Sense will drive insurers crazy. That's my favorite pastime. Make it yours also.

Download Dollars $ Sense and try it free for 10 days.

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