Metalwork (Metallbau)
You build the railing in the workshop, and it has to fit a building that is not finished on the day you measure. Between the two stands the galvaniser, whose schedule is not yours.
How it is billed
Railings and handrails go by the running metre, gates, wickets and doors by the piece, steel structures by the kilogram or the tonne, canopies and grilles by the square metre, stairs by the tread or by the piece. Prefabrication in the workshop and fitting on site are two different items at two different rates. Corrosion protection — hot-dip galvanising or powder coating — is a bought-in service: its own price, its own transport, its own date over which you have no say. Areas and volumes are worked out in the program itself: you enter the dimensions member by member, name every measurement your own way, and the total goes into the quote as a finished item with the breakdown — you can see where the figure came from.
What disappears on paper
What disappears is measuring on site. The structure has to fit to the millimetre, so you measure only once the shell stands — a separate journey, a separate day and a separate risk, because if the bricklayer makes the wall good after your measurements, the element will not go in. The wait for the galvaniser disappears: the parts go out, lie there and come back, and you cannot close the job in the meantime. Transport and unloading disappear, chemical anchors, cutting and welding on site. And the making good behind others disappears — the opening chased five centimetres off.
Work it out yourself
Take the last larger structure. Split the hours into two piles: workshop and site. Check whether the quote holds them separately or merged into one item „manufacture and fitting". Add the days the part lay at the galvaniser, and the second trip to measure up if there was one. Multiply by the number of such jobs in a year — that is not a loss on steel but on the time between workshop and site.
Five minutes a day
Site measurements entered right there at the wall, together with a photo of the fixing position. A photo of the anchorage before plaster or screed covers it — with a railing that is the only proof of how it is fixed, and the question comes after the first accident. Workshop hours kept apart from hours on site. In the evening: steel deliveries, consignments to the galvaniser, anchors used.
What the program watches for you
In metalwork you almost always work for a construction company, so the reverse charge under §13b is the rule — the program sets it itself and watches the §48b certificate, without which your client must withhold fifteen per cent. It watches the instalment invoices, because you buy the steel up front and pay the galvaniser before the customer pays you. Material and bought-in services issued to a job sit on that job, so you see the real cost of the structure and not just the steel. It watches the warranty periods — under a VOB/B contract it will not accept less than four years, under a works contract governed by the German civil code less than five. Additional work is kept as a variation with the date it was announced.
At the end of the year
Steel, bought-in services, workshop and fitting hours, transport — all recorded against the jobs. The annual accounts and the VAT returns read finished figures, and invoices under the reverse charge land in the right boxes by themselves.
What matters is entering things regularly — workshop hours kept apart from fitting show where you actually earn.
