Does anyone know of an off the shelf program for tracking the costs of your restoration? I haven’t used a spreadsheet in many decades and don’t want to design my own along with the endless re designs.
I would need one that is password protected.
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For me… I followed a personal rule: after budgeting a given amount, for toys, I tossed the receipts.
For each car I keep a three ring binder for receipts, old registrations, etc. It’s a useful way to keep track of when I bought that battery that just died, or where I bought something. For the Jaguar I refuse to add them up.
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I kept them all, put them into a large envelope and never reviewed them again. I assume it is somewhere in a box that has made the seven moves since, or not.
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I use an Excel spreadsheet. It is pretty simple to set up. The only math involved is addition. I found the most difficult task was to define and track categories of expense like suspension, transmission, engine, etc. It sounds simple, but when you get an invoice covering multiple categories, you have to decide whether to track individual items or make your entries align with the invoices. I chose the later so my entries were supported by invoices I put in a three ring binder. I doubt it will ever be audited except by my wife if she ever gets an inkling of how much I spent. Now I can tell her that if the money was in the stock market instead of the car it would be worth 30 percent less anyway.
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LibreOffice is free and includes a full-function spreadsheet. Highly recommended not just for this but for pretty much any of your document needs.
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I use Excel and a 3-ring binder method as well. But I have only three categories: Parts, Services, and Operations/Maintenance.
I have separate sheets within the workbook for planning, tracking the work performed, and cost estimation. Since it’s my personal hobby, I don’t track labor hours but could easily add that were it for business.
May sound like a lot of effort, but in my day job, when I’m not flying I’m a Program Manager…
In North Carolina, if you build a bitsa car, they need to see the receipts so they can assess the sales tax that would otherwise have been collected, as if you’d bought a titled car.
Plus, you have to satisfy the state trooper who comes to have a look at it that you haven’t scavenged it together from stolen (chop shop) parts.
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When I was a kid I saw a car towed off a show field by the NJ state troopers. Someone spotted an engine that had been stolen from his garage years earlier. Turns out the guy who build his car had no idea it was stolen and showed a receipt and a photo of the thief loading it into his truck. Documentation in this case shifted the blame away from the innocent car owner and got his car out of impound.
That’s unfathomable in California !!
Hi Mitchell,
Interesting but there has to be much more to this story as these type of cases typically take months to settle.
Not much more to it than that. I assume he either bought the engine from the guy it was stolen from, or reimbursed the insurance company if they paid a claim. It’s done all the time. Either way, he got his car back from impound.
Don’t know what platform you use, but spreadsheet programs are really simple to use if you don’t try to go crazy with a lot of power features, and are often free or already on your computer or tablet. It seems it would take only a couple minutes to set up a basic tracking sheet, which would be less time than it would take you to download and learn a specialized cost tracking app. And you’d have something you could modify easily as time goes by and you want to add new categories or ways to look at the data, whereas a specialized app may not be able to change the way you want.
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Depending on how detailed you want to be, you could check out what the experimental aircraft builders use, something like Kitlog. They require good documentation to validate build quality and time spent, might be useful.
With the 51% rule, absolutely.
In the case of something like the Kitfox–a dead dream, now–I would have saved EVERY receipt.
I use the word processor I’ve not tried the spread sheet.
At one time, I was a prolific user of spread sheets. In business and for personal use.
Even in color!!!
Carl
https://staceydavid.com/store/books/gearz-deluxe-project-planning-book
You want easy? Do it old school.
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Professional shops have a way to track this kind of work. There has to be a Jr. edition available by now.