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Job Costing Interface Tips

 

 

 

If you are having difficulty getting to Job Costing Interface to work, or would just like to be sure it does, here are some usage and troubleshooting tips.

 

Be sure to assign your Items to an appropriate Budget, and assign an Accounting Code to each Budget so it can be sent over to your job costing system. Only those Item costs assigned to Budgets with Accounting Codes are sent over to job costing. (If some costs are not being exported, you will be warned when you ask to export.)

 

If your job costing system cannot find the interface files, check that:

 

(1) Your job costing program knows what directory/folder they are located in. You job costing system may require they be a specific directory, or may just need to know where you put them.

 

(2) You have run the export in EasyEst Estimating.

 

(3) You use the same Bid # for export and import. In the New Interface Format, the Bid # is included in the filename, so if the Bid # is not entered correctly, the files will not be there.

 

(4) You are using the correct format (Old Interface Format or New Interface Format) and that you are exporting Item Details if needed. Check you job costing documentation for specifics, or try the other format.

 

If you job costing system rejects some of the data, or aborts when trying to read it, it may be that you are using features of EasyEst Estimating that did not exist at the time the job costing import program was written, and it cannot handle properly. (The format was created back in 1984.) EasyEst Estimating has been enhanced to allow longer Codes and Descriptions, and much more flexibility. In most cases, using the new features will not present any problems. If your job costing system does not support the latest features, please contact your job costing vendor. The following limits applied at the time the CMS Estimating-Job-Costing Interface Format was originally created, and may apply to some older job costing systems:

 

 

Limit applies to

Old J.C. Interface

New J.C.

Interface

Current Estimating Version Allows

Budget Code

1-200

1-200

8-character alphanumeric

Item Descriptions

24 characters

24 characters

75 characters

Item Code

1.000-16.999

No blanks

1.000-30.999

No blanks

1.000-99.999.

Can be blank.

Some Price Books use: 1.00000-99.99999.

Cost Type Codes

1-9

1-25

8-character alphanumeric

Units of measure

2 characters

2 characters

8 characters

Location Code

0-99

0-250

8 character alphanumeric

Super Assembly Code

0-250

0-250

8 character alphanumeric

 

If may need to work within these older limits in order work with some job costing systems. Be sure to contact your job costing vendor and see if they have a newer update available.

 

Also, be careful about including commas in Item Descriptions, Units, or Budget Accounting Codes. Some job costing systems do not read extra commas in the data correctly, and will cut off the remainder of the data in the field, and misinterpret other data for that record. For the same reason, any quote marks (") found in the data are exported as two single quotes (‘ then another ‘) to avoid possible problems.


 

 

 

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