Create job cost sheet

**SF Sharon** · 01-15-2010, 12:08 AM

I'm not sure I can do this in excel. I want to create a job costing template with pull down menus. Functions I would like:

Different budget templates for different job types. I'd like to create a menu of job types and when you select a type, a specific budget template appears that applies to that job.

Within that job budget template, I would like additional menus that allow you to select specific services, and the cost pulls up automatically for each service. (maybe pull down menus?)

Also, I'd like to lock the formulas so that people can't change them, but I want to allow people to add rows if they need to add additional items to their budget.

Is this functionality possible in excel? If not, any other software suggestions?

**Paul** · 01-15-2010, 12:15 AM

Hi Sharon, and welcome to the forum.

It is certainly possible to do most, if not all of what you're asking, but keep in mind that those who help here are volunteers that want to help you and not necessarily create a budgeting program from scratch.

If you'd like to make use of the volunteers in the forum, I'd recommend trying to setup some of this yourself and ask specific questions on how to do things (no more than 1 or 2 questions per thread so it doesn't drag on and confuse everyone). There is a commercial exchange section of the forum as well if you're interested in having someone work with you on a paid basis.

Thanks, and best of luck in creating your budgeting tool.

**darkyam** · 01-15-2010, 12:22 AM

This is one of those questions that it would help to break up into component parts. For the first, that's a really big ask, if you're asking us to do it for you. What I'd recommend, though, is having your various templates on different tabs, then formulas on the main tab reading =IF(Indirect("'"&A1&"'!"&CHAR(COLUMN()+64)&ROW())="","",Indirect("'"&A1&"'!"&CHAR(COLUMN()+64)&ROW())), where A1 is where you put the dropdown for format and each item in the dropdown is the name of one of the tabs. Conditional formats could be used for the various templates, but if you're in 2003, you'll be limited to four templates (three rules and a default). Anything else would require VBA, which I unfortunately don't know how to do.

For the second, it sounds like VLOOKUP is what you need. Without a basic workbook to go after, including expected results, I can't be sure, though.

For the third, you can protect either a worksheet or a workbook and choose what you want to allow users to do.