The Fence Installation Estimate Calculator Pack: Seven linked calculators, every formula checked by recalculation

Seven calculators for estimating and bidding fence jobs from your own prices and your own crew's speed: posts, rails, pickets and concrete from linear feet, the same fence in pre-built panels, crew days and labor hours from production rates, tearing out and hauling away an old fence, a bid from a target margin with markup and margin side by side, the price per linear foot that bid implies, and a check of estimated against actual hours once the job is done. Start with sheet 1. In the worked example 200 feet of fence takes 30 posts and 60 bags of concrete. Every figure is an example for you to overwrite; none of it is a claim about what fencing sells for or how fast anyone builds it. These are estimates, not financial advice. Every formula was recalculated and checked against an independent implementation before this shipped.

What is in it

7 calculators, one per sheet. Overwrite the blue cells with your own numbers and everything else follows. Nothing is locked, there are no macros, and it opens in Excel, Numbers, LibreOffice and Google Sheets.

• Picket fence materials: What posts, rails, pickets and concrete does this fence take, and what do they cost?
• Panel fence materials: What does the same fence cost in pre-built panels?
• Crew labor hours: What crew days and labor hours will this fence take at your crew's speed?
• Old fence removal: What does tearing out and hauling away the old fence cost?
• Bid from target margin: What bid gives the margin you want, and how is that different from a markup?
• Price per linear foot: What price per foot does this bid imply, and does it work on a shorter fence?
• Job profitability check: Did the fence make what the bid said it would?

Every formula was checked

This pack contains 72 formulas. Before it was published, every one of them was recalculated by a spreadsheet engine and compared against an independent implementation of the same arithmetic written in Python. All 72 agreed to within a cent, and the workbook carries a Verification sheet saying so.

That is an unusual thing to be able to claim about a spreadsheet, and it is the main reason to buy this one rather than download a free template. A formula that looks right and is wrong is worse than no formula at all, because you will act on it.

What each calculator assumes

There is a sheet listing this, because a calculator that hides its assumptions is just a number generator:

• Rails are one per section per rail row, each as long as the post spacing. Corners and ends are covered by the extra post per run. Every post takes the same concrete. Prices are what you pay your supplier, delivered.
• Panels are installed whole, with no cut panel at the end of a run; a cut panel is counted as a full one by the ROUNDUP. Panels on a slope that must be stepped or racked are not modeled.
• Production rates are crew rates: the whole crew working together. A day the crew loses waiting for concrete to set before hanging rails is not costed; add it to the setup hours or as an extra day if your method needs it.
• One driver makes the dump trips while the rest of the crew keeps working. Old concrete footings broken out and hauled add weight and loads; raise the pull time and lower the feet per load if they come out with the posts.
• Overhead is spread evenly across jobs. If your jobs vary a lot in size, spread it by labor hours instead: overhead a year divided by labor hours a year, times this job's hours.
• Everything except the overhead share, permit and rental scales with length, including the gate. A shorter fence with the same gate count costs more per foot than this shows.
• Every hour is costed at the same labor rate. Change orders the customer paid for (an extra gate, a longer run) should be added to the bid before comparing, or they show up as an overrun.

What this is not

Not financial, tax or legal advice, and not a recommendation to buy, sell, borrow or sign anything. These are calculators: they show what a choice costs, not which choice is right for you. Where a published rate or threshold is used it is the one current when the pack was built; those change, the arithmetic does not.

Honest about the format

One .xlsx workbook, 7 calculator sheets plus Start Here, Assumptions and Verification. Not a PDF, not a physical product, not a Notion template. Available immediately after purchase; nothing ships.

Refunds

If this isn't what you expected, email me within 30 days and I'll refund you in full. No need to explain. Because it's an instant download I can't take the file back, so I'd rather you just had your money back.