Packs & Bundles
Estimation & Commercial Kit
Estimate the effort, then price it so the project makes money.
The estimation method, the commercial model and the workbooks that connect them.
- Produce an estimate whose basis you can walk a client through
- Price T&M and Fixed Price from the same effort model
- See the margin consequence of every commercial concession before you make it
The problem
The estimate and the price are produced by different people, and neither owns the margin
Delivery estimates the effort. Sales prices the deal. The two meet in a spreadsheet nobody maintains, and the assumptions that connected them are lost somewhere between the two. The result is a price that looks profitable and a project that is not, and by the time the gap is visible the contract is signed and the only remaining lever is scope.
- A margin that was right at bid and wrong by month three
- Estimates padded by each layer because nobody trusts the one beneath it
- A price derived from what the client will pay rather than what delivery costs
- Contingency spent before the risk it was held against has occurred
Why the usual approach does not settle it
What people reach for first, and where it stops
A cost spreadsheet per bid
Each one embeds its author's assumptions about rates, utilisation and contingency, none of which are visible to the person reviewing the price. Two bids from the same organisation cannot be compared.
Estimating in story points and pricing in money
There is no constant that converts a point into a day, let alone into a cost. Wherever that conversion happens, the margin is being decided by a number nobody validated.
Applying a standard markup
A markup protects margin only if the cost beneath it is right and the risk profile matches the one the markup was set for. It is a habit standing in for an analysis.
What changes
What Estimation & Commercial Kit changes about the decision
One method from scope to price
The estimation method and the commercial model are designed together, so the cost that reaches the price is the cost the estimate actually produced, with the assumptions carried across rather than re-entered.
Margin becomes a decision with a stated basis
The target margin, the contingency and the rate assumptions are set explicitly and visibly, so a commercial review can challenge the assumption rather than the total.
Estimates that can be defended line by line
Three-point estimation, stated productivity assumptions and an explicit treatment of non-delivery effort, so the question 'why is it that much' has an answer other than experience.
A repeatable position across bids
Two people using the kit produce comparable numbers. That is what makes a portfolio of bids reviewable rather than a set of individual opinions.
How it works
The sequence
Estimation and pricing are usually done by different people in different spreadsheets, which is why the effort estimate and the commercial position drift apart. This kit models both in one place: effort, team, duration, delivery location mix, cost rates, bill rates, contingency, markup and margin, ending at a client price you can explain line by line.
- 1
Size the work
Break the scope into estimable units and apply three-point estimation with the productivity assumptions written down rather than held in somebody's head.
- 2
Convert effort into cost
Apply the rate model, the utilisation assumption and the non-delivery overhead the work actually carries, so the cost is the delivery cost rather than the billable hours.
- 3
Set the commercial position
Choose the target margin, size contingency against the risks that justify it, and see the price that position implies before negotiating away from it.
- 4
Test it before you commit
Move the inputs that are genuinely uncertain and see which ones the margin is actually sensitive to. That is what tells you where to hold firm.
What you get
What is in your hands afterwards
Project Effort & Timeline Estimator
Get from a scope description to effort and a timeline.
Commercial Pricing & Margin Optimizer
Price the engagement on evidence, and know exactly what you can concede.
Inside it
- Effort estimation workbook
- Team and resource planning model
- Project duration modelling
- Onshore and offshore scenarios
- Cost-rate management
- Bill-rate management
- T&M modelling
- Fixed Price modelling
- Contingency, markup and margin
- Target client price
- Worked example
- Guide
Why it holds up
What makes the result defensible
Each of these is something you can check before you buy, and hold KnownShift to afterwards. None of them asks you to take a result on trust.
Deterministic arithmetic, published in full
Every calculation in the workbooks is visible and unlocked. Nothing is computed behind a wall, so a commercial director can reconstruct the price without the kit in front of them.
Assumptions are inputs, not folklore
Rates, utilisation, overhead and contingency are named fields with stated meanings. Changing one shows what it changes, which is how an assumption becomes arguable.
The method is written down, not implied by a spreadsheet
The guides explain why each step exists and where it breaks, so the kit teaches the method rather than merely automating one person's version of it.
Capabilities
- Effort estimation
- Team and resource planning
- Project duration modelling
- Onshore and offshore scenarios
- Cost-rate and bill-rate management
- T&M and Fixed Price modelling
- Contingency, markup and margin
What it does not do
- A modelling system you drive. Requirements-to-commercials as one governed workflow is what Project OS does.
Questions
Questions about Estimation & Commercial Kit
- What does the kit include beyond the two tools it opens?
- The method, and the workbooks that apply it by hand: effort estimation, resource and duration modelling, onshore and offshore scenarios, cost and bill rate management, T&M and fixed-price models, contingency and margin, a worked example and the guide that explains why each step exists. Buying the kit opens the Project Effort & Timeline Estimator and the Commercial Pricing & Margin Optimizer as well, which is what makes it a kit rather than a tool licence.
- Does it handle both T&M and Fixed Price?
- Yes, from the same effort model, so the two commercial positions cannot drift apart the way they do when each is built in its own spreadsheet.
The method, and then the engine that runs it.
The kit teaches the estimation and pricing method and gives you the workbooks to apply it by hand. The Commercial Pricing & Margin Optimizer runs the same commercial logic as software: twenty contract structures scored, a risk-adjusted cost distribution and a negotiation corridor you can defend line by line.
Evaluating this for a team? Discuss team or enterprise use with the KnownShift team.