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At the risk of appearing a bit of a dunce, I wanted to ask for guidance on a 'simple' maths quandary I'm having. I was off school the day they covered this with a sore throat you see, else I'd know it obvs 😉
For some reason, despite knowing what I need to do to work this out and pretty much being able to picture what needs to happen with my numbers, I can't seem to formulate it into a logical sum to get it done.
It's like this see...
Jill bought some timber off Jack. The timber she bought was made up of many boards of varying sizes. She didn't pay Jack based on individually priced boards, she paid Jack a lump sum for all of the timber together. Jack bases his prices on a 'price per cubic foot' price, but he doesn't tell Jill what this is.
Now, Jill want's to sell these boards of timber on, attaching them to separate projects and charging the customer an accurate proportion of the total so that she does not lose any money on it.
She could of course just split the total cost between the number of boards she bought, but that wouldn't be right, as some boards are much bigger than other boards.
She has the measurements of each board, the number of boards, and the total cost of all of the boards. How does Jill accurately work out what each board costs as a percentage of the total?
So in my head, this is where I can see what 'Jill' needs to do. She needs to add up all the measurements of all of the boards and then divide it by 100 to know what 1% looks like. She then needs to divide the total price by 100 to also know what 1% of that total is. She then needs to do something else....and....yeah....
Timber boards that Jill bought - Total cost £57.16
(All boards x1 Qty)
3000 x 120 x 26mm
2400 x 110 x 26mm
2400 x 120 x 26mm
What does each board cost?
Cheers folks. I'm pretty sure I've done this before even but for some reason today, my head isn't clicking into how I need to construct the maths. 😁
She needs to add up all the measurements of all of the boards
She needs to multiply them then add the volumes
and then divide it by 100 to know what 1% looks like. She then needs to divide the t
Don't think this it is necessary
The more I read this the more I think it's a pisstake, but anyway
For each board, multiply the height by the length by the width to get the volume of that board.
Add up all those volumes to get total volume.
For each bit she sells, divide the volume of that bit(s) by the total volume she has. Then multiply that fraction times the total cost of all the wood.
Well yeah, see I knew it would be a piece of piss for someone on here in about 5 seconds...
Thanks for that. I could see what needed to happen, but my brain wasn't working today 😂👍
Work out total area of wood, (ignore the thickness as it's the came. Divide price by area. That gives you £ per square meter.
Use multiply that price by the area of each individual board.
All the same thickness, 26mm so this can be discounted.
Sell by proportion of area.
Total area is (3000x120) + (2400x110 ) + (2400x120)
Area of one board / Area of all boards * total cost is the price on specific board.
ALthough I'd adopt a value based rather than cost based price structure.
Jill need to work out the area of each board and add them all up to get a total square metreage.
She then divides this square metreage into her total cost to give her a rate per square metre for the all the boards.
Then she can price each board based on it's area.
in this case it's ...
0.36m2 @ £62.67/m2 = £22.56
0.264m2 @ £62.67/m2 = £16.55
0.288m2 @£62.67/m2 = £18.05
Home schooling is a bitch, ain't it?
Maths
<sigh>
Work out the total area of board (3000x120)+(2400x110)+(2400x120) in mm squared. You can obviously disregard the depth as it is uniform. You can then use this total to work out the percentage split between each board, or divide the total cost by total mm squared to come up with a unit price per mm2.
Bloody quantity surveyors getting in before the English graduates again 🙂
Work out total area of wood, (ignore the thickness as it’s the same
It's useful to keep it in volumes, because timber is sold by volume.
It's further complicated though by timber being sold in cubic feet, so once you have your cubic millimetres or metres of volume, you then have to convert that to cubic feet to get the price.
As said, you could divide the price by volume
3000 x 120 x 26mm = 9,360,000mm2
2400 x 110 x 26mm = 6,864,000mm2
2400 x 120 x 26mm = 7,488,000mm2
Giving a total volume of 9,360,000+6,864,000+7,488,000 = 23,712,000mm2
Board 1 price = 9,360,000/23,712,000 * £57.16 = £22.56
Board 2 price = 6,864,000/23,712,000 * £57.16 = £16.55
Board 3 price = 7,488,000/23,712,000 * £57.16 = £18.05
Edit: too damn slow🙁
Area of the boards (converted to cm to get the number size down)
1) 300*12=3600
2) 240*11=2640
3) 240*12=2880
Total area = 9120
1) has percentage of 3600/9120 = 39%
2) has percentage of 2640/9120 = 29%
1) has percentage of 2880/9120 = 32%
All rounded, but close enough
Costs:
1) 57.16*0.39= £22.30
2) 57.16*0.29= £16.58
3)57.16*0.32= £18.29
Total = £57.17 - rounding error, but hey close enough!?
Maths
<sigh>
Jokes
Woosh
Home schooling is a bitch, ain’t it?
Yup 😂
As I say though, in this case the boards are the same but usually, boards will be different thicknesses so It's useful for Jill to work in volume, not area.
Anyway, thanks to theGeneralist and his insinuation that I was a bit dim (I can be), I've got it now. 😁🙏
Oh yeah, and don't forget to multiply each final price by 1.2 to give Jill a 20% profit. She's not a bloody charity!
Jill needs to charge 57.16 per msq, job jobbed.
No "how much did this one cost" crap. Only on STW where IT consultants sell nothing tangible bar the single sheet of a4 their invoice is printed on do people actually price things based on cost of materials.
ALthough I’d adopt a value based rather than cost based price structure.
For sure. Jill also had to collect it using her time and Diesel etc.
Jill needs to charge 57.16 per msq, job jobbed.
Except Jill will be losing her arse as she bought it for £62.67/m2
No “how much did this one cost” crap. Only on STW where IT consultants sell nothing tangible bar the single sheet of a4 their invoice is printed on do people actually price things based on cost of materials.
I do it every day. Every quote I submit is required to be backed up with materials quotes. It's in the contract.
If it’s from Homebase then multiply the answer by 3.
Jill really should consider whether she should stay in the timber trade as she really does not know her stuff.
Except Jill will be losing her arse as she bought it for £62.67/m2
Very true but she's not likely to stay in business very long anyhow if she's relying on some random folk on the Internet to do her pricing before they've even had a coffee, I'm just hastening the inevitable for her and saving her additional pain.
I do it every day.
Genuine question, as a Qs you don't actually sell the kit though do you, but rather a service based on the value of the goods eg 2.5% of total value
Genuine question, as a Qs you don’t actually sell the kit though do you, but rather a service based on the value of the goods eg 2.5% of total value
Yes, I actually sell the kit.
I'm a contractors QS. We buy the materials, hire the plant and supply the labour to install it.
You're thinking of a private practice QS who, these days agree a fixed fee up front to the end client for their services. These services usually entail trying to catch out swindling chancers such as myself.
The days of a % of the value for the QS are long, long gone.
I’m a contractors QS.
I thought the days of those were long gone. Seems almost everything these days is "here's an nbs and 400 pages of drawings, please quote, what do you mean you want a boq?"
Just ask whoever’s working on the trade counter FFS.
Is Jill making a trebuchet to make 'going up the hill' quicker?
Anyway, thanks to theGeneralist and his insinuation that I was a bit dim (I can be),
That's because thegeneralist is in a sulk because he listed his Ibis on Gumtree at too low a price and is now committed to selling it for a stupidly low amount.
Cos he really is a bit dim 🙄
That’s because thegeneralist is in a sulk because he listed his Ibis on Gumtree at too low a price and is now committed to selling it for a stupidly low amount.
Isn't that frame cracked?
Not that I'd noticed. It's old and worn, but definitely not cracked.
Now you're getting me worried.
/Goes off to check his frame....
yetidave snided - Jill really should consider whether she should stay in the timber trade as she really does not know her stuff.
Jill isn't in the timber trade. Timber is just one of the materials she buys and today Jill has mislaid her maths book. This isn't about timber. Jill could just as easily have bought a pallet full of paper for a sum and wants to know what she paid for A4, and A6 and A1 etc...
Usually she just buys what she needs for a job and what it costs is what it costs, but in this case, Jill has decided to buy a load of timber for stock for a few jobs coming up and wants to sell those boards to each job separately.
It's an unusual thing for Jill to have to work out whether you believe that or not.
Jill is more than capable of the maths involved in her day to day working, but in this case, she simply needed a little help in constructing what she already knew the basics of.
Jill told me she knew she ran the risk of the lesser spotted snarky cockwomble on here if she dared ask the question so she told me to pass this on. 🖕 😂 🖕
Question is, does Jill know Jack?
Oh yeah, and don’t forget to multiply each final price by 1.2 to give Jill a 20% profit.
That would only give her 16.66% profit.
Now, Jill want’s to sell these boards of timber on, attaching them to separate projects and charging the customer
The customer doesn't need to know what Jill paid Jack. Jill should also be pricing based on the whole of the piece of wood cut to make the product the customer buys not just the volume cut from it to make the product - unless Jill has a profitable sideline selling individual artisan Jenga pieces, wood-scented potpourri and personalised sachets of sawdust. 🙂
Jill might forget to measure twice or have the bearing sheer off their router bit, or unearth something living inside a plank or find that since buying all that Purple Heart its become deeply unfashionable - or any other bit of fun that might render a bit of stock unusable for its intended purpose. So make sure your, sorry - her, allowance for selling on material covers loses, mistakes and mishaps. You're also taking a risk buying stock speculatively - ie expecting that several customers might commission work that would use that material in those sizes - rather than buying to suit one specific order. You don't know how long your money is going to be tied up in that stock and whether you'll ever get all of it back so you need a return on that risk. (by 'you' I mean 'she')
Very true all that. Jill wouldn't normally buy for stock, but having a small amount handy is...handy for smaller jobs that require it but that she'd struggle to secure the job if she had to buy a whole board from 50 miles up the road and the associated delivery costs to Mrs Smith who only wanted a small door wedge and matching spice rack.
Jill wouldn’t normally buy for stock, but having a small amount handy is…handy
I'm not discouraging Jill - just adding a costing factor - that theres a risk and a loss and she has to spread that across everything so she doesn't get mullered when one thing goes wrong. So she factors it into the material she supplies to Mrs Smith along with a portion of a 50 mile trip.
Jill sounds nice by the way. Are her and Jack an item or.... ?
Is Jill fit?
Well, all that lifting of timber she's pretty ripped yes.
Shit at maths mind...
To help with future pricing brain rattling Google is pretty good at unit conversions eg cubic feet to cubic metres for future price adjustments.
Enter '2.5 cubic feet into cubic metres' into Google and you get the answer 'Unit converter
2.5 cubic feet =
0.0708 cubic metre'
I use it all the time at work as I'm too lazy to use a calculator or spreadsheet. Hope this helps.
I think Jill should make the customers aware that some boards are bigger than others, some boards' numbers are bigger than other boards' numbers.
To help with future pricing brain rattling Google is pretty good at unit conversions eg cubic feet to cubic metres for future price adjustments.
For sure. Use it all the time. There's lots of timber conversion templates too. Wasn't sure how to phrase this particular specific thing though.
some boards are bigger than others, some boards’ numbers are bigger than other boards’ numbers.
👏
Submarined, there’s no need to give us the whole headmasters ritual on this one.
However, along with the nice remark about a value based pricing model, do bear in mind that only some trees are bigger than others, and therefore wider boards should usually command a premium over and above their volume price.
However, along with the nice remark about a value based pricing model, do bear in mind that only some trees are bigger than others, and therefore wider boards should usually command a premium over and above their volume price.
True. Wider boards are generally going to be worth more by volume than narrower boards. Timber pricing is something of a minefield and I actually dread buying timber most of the time. It's a natural product and prices fluctuate, but I've always felt that pricing is largely not transparent and based on what mood the person selling it is in at the time.
A bit like trade counters. Now there's a mystery! 😂