Tom

I did almost the exact thing for a current whole house renovation as you 
are considering. The only difference is that I used one spreadsheet with 
subtotals for each room and then a project total at the end. It made it 
a lot easier to add up the total project quantity of each item I needed. 
I use Open Office and it is very similar to Excel.

I remember from my Excel days that you could "link" a cell in one 
spreadsheet to a cell in another spreadsheet which would satisfy your 
last question. However, I do not remember the proper cell entry.

The rest of your spreadsheet(s) structure is easy.

Column A could be titled "Description", column B could be titled 
"Quantity", column C could be titled "Unit Cost", column D could be 
titled "Cost", column E could be titled "Tax/Shipping", column F could 
be titled "Total Cost". The formula for cells in column D would be a 
cell in column B times a corresponding cell in column C and the formula 
for cells in column F would be a cell in column D plus the corresponding 
cell in column E. At the bottom of column F skip a row and the formula 
would sum all the cells with entries in column F.

On a master project spreadsheet column A could be the room name and 
column B could be "Total Cost". You would then link the cells in column 
B to the appropriate total cost cell on the spreadsheet for each room.  
At the bottom of column B skip a row and enter a formula to add all the 
entries in column B to have a total project cost.

*OR *On the initial spreadsheet, you could add a room name in column A 
just before listing items, then list the items for that room, and the 
total of column F would be the room total. Skip a row and enter the next 
room name followed by the items for that room. After you get all the 
rooms done, skip a couple of rows and enter a formula to add each room 
total to then have a project total.

On my spreadsheet I also have a column for the "supplier", a column 
listing the status of each item(s) such as "on hand" or "ordered" or 
"looking" and, if "looking", I used another column to indicate that the 
cost was estimated. Since I have subcontractors installing some of the 
items, I also have a column indicating who is the "installer" for each item.

On a second spreadsheet, I list each distinct item and the quantity 
needed for shopping purposes. In essence, it is a material take off list.

I have assumed that you have some working knowledge of Excel and have 
skipped/glossed over a lot of simple information. I hope this helps. 
Have fun!

Tom Mayer



Tom Waddell wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I need to know how to create a simple product formula in Excel. The HELP
> link in Excel didn't help.
>
> We are doing some house renovation and need a spread sheet to track our
> costs. Each row will have an item listed in the left hand column with the
> price per item and quantity needed in following columns. I want the last 3
> columns of each row to be (1) the price of one item, multilpied by (2) the
> quantity needed for that item, followed by (3) the product in the last
> column. I also need the bottom row of the last column to calculate the total
> project cost.
>
> We are setting up a spread sheet for each room. Is there a way to link the
> total cost from each room's spread sheet into another spread sheet so we can
> keep track of the total cost of all the house renovations we are doing?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Tom
>
>              
>
>
>   

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