Templating your spreadsheets with Pensolve

Efficient spreadsheet review

Reduce Non-billable Time

Engineering firms bill the creation of a spreadsheet to a project, however, the in-depth review of that same spreadsheet by a senior engineer is often considered unbillable time.

Pensolve provides a structure to your spreadsheets allowing easy navigation for the reviewer as well as converting the entire spreadsheet into hand-written calculations on a PDF, so the reviewer can understand and assess the quality of the calculations in minutes rather than hours.

Reduce Operational Errors

A single design error that results in a court hearing costs an engineering firm approximately $100,000 if you have insurance! Pensolve's workflow is designed to make engineers think and it encourages self-review. The transparency provided by converting calculations into hand-written form allow them to be understood and critiqued in an internal peer-review before the design is finalised.

Function over form

When you prepare a spreadsheet for printing you often restructure your calculations and comments to squeeze them onto a page. This process wastes productive engineering time and makes your spreadsheet harder to understand. Instead, let Pensolve do presentation for printing and you can just structure your spreadsheet for usability.

Spreadsheet Design

Pensolve provides structure to spreadsheets based on industry best practices.

  • Section headers in bold font - breaks up large set of equations, allowing better navigation
  • Calculation flow goes down the page - avoids confusion about design steps
  • Readable layout - All parameters should have names, units, comments and references

These simple steps allow your spreadsheets to be easily modified and understood by others.

Clean Spreadsheet Layouts

Spreadsheet view

A good spreadsheet can be used by multiple people for multiple different designs.

Pensolve output

Pensolve displays the calculations as if you had written them out on calculation pad.

  • Calculation pad is the most transparent way to view engineering calculations
  • By converting to a different format, engineers can avoid a self-serving bias and complete self-review of their calculations
  • The PDF calculations pad is searchable and has clickable links to allow quick navigation to important parts

The professional hand-written output means everyone understands the design decisions

Pensolve hand-written calculations view

Pensolve PDF view

A PDF provides a printable record of the calculations.

Calculate approximate savings for your firm


Hours spent using spreadsheets per week:

Number of engineers:

Hourly cost of an engineer:


Calculation summary


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