Leveraging Templates in Sigma

Templates are an incredibly useful way to save time when making estimates with Sigma. In fact, we’ve regularly seen companies use them internally as a way to share knowledge. Templates include several aspects of the project, including a breakdown structure that you can use as a starting point. If you regularly do the same type of projects, the template can include profit, overhead, and margins. It might just be a matter of adjusting quantities and deleting items that aren’t relevant for the current project. You can also set up slice-and-dice views to see the project in different ways. All of these items can be saved in the template for use in the future.

With the initial Sigma installation, some standard templates are included. It’s possible to adapt them to suit your needs and/or make your own templates to share with others. They range from very barebones templates that only contain some project information to very comprehensive templates with structure, status, descriptions, and prerequisites for the project. As a rule of thumb, it’s probably best for a template to be at least two levels deep, with headings and subheadings.

Most users would think of the templates in Sigma as extremely easy to use, similar to the templates you’d find in software like Microsoft Word. If you figure that you’re frequently writing more or less the same Word letter, you can just save it as a template to start from later on. The same thing applies to Sigma—when you build something that might be useful later, you can simply save it as a template. The same exact parts and configuration you’re doing in a normal estimate is just saved for use in the future.

Why don’t you see for yourself how easy it is to create and use templates in Sigma? Download the free trial and get started right now. In ten minutes, you’ll already have the basic knowledge of making an estimate.