Job Numbers

When I took over an existing business (30+ years) I needed to find a way to number the old jobs for filing. I came up with a 6 digit numbering system. YYMMJJ or 121205 would be the fifth job of December 2012. This worked well for how he numbered jobs in the past and I have continued the system. All the folders are filed in order in the cabinent and on the computer by year. It hs worked for me so far.

2012-420.001

Year - Job Number - Contract Task Item

I started with a 4 digit system back in the days of the 8 digit filename limit.
That was 12+ years ago. I'm up in the 4000's now and expect to have enough numbers to finish out. If not, I'll replace the first digit with a letter.
I add a date to the job number for field collected data.
A job done today would be:
4098 for cad, outgoing coordinate files, reports, billing, etc.
40981231 for any raw or coordinate files from the field today.
I keep track of the specific tasks I performed and hours on the front of the job folder.
Pretty simple to find anything related to a particular job and it hasn't tripped me up yet.

2013001

Will be the first job in 2013.

Almost the same here.

My computer guy has added a dash

2013-001

It seems that it's really important to him.

First two digits are the year the contact was signed.

Next three digits represent the overall chronological order the contract falls in; 001 the first one of the year, 002, 003, etc.

Then a decimal point.

Then a two digit extension to represent the task assigned by the contact, i.e. 1A for the first. If multiple tasks are assigned under a single contract the two digit counter goes up; 1B, 1C, 1D, etc. If we happen to use all of the letters in the alphabet we switch to numbers.

So we would have something like 13001.1A.

Mine is quite simple - just like me 🙂

For the coming new year the numbers will be 13001, 13002, 13003.......

My Dad worked for an Engineering firm in Bakersfield (until 1980) that numbered every job from 1 starting in the late 1940s when the firm was founded. As far as I know they still do it that way.

> For the coming new year the numbers will be 13001, 13002, 13003.......
I've worked for companies with a number of different schemes and the one Brian uses works best. That is what I'd do, if I had my druthers.

I use that too with a dash, 13-001, 13-002, 13-003. In the point ID post a few days ago, I mentioned this too. I then add point numbers starting at 001, so the first point in 2013 will be 13-001-001.

When I set this up I was a bit optimistic, I usually only run around 30 jobs a year, so don't really need the three digit project number, room for growth I guess!

I have worked places that let the project number run consecutively, so last project in 2012 might be 12-100 and the first one in 2013 would then be 13-101, that keeps track of your total projects AND is keyed to the year and you can easily figure out how many projects you had in a year.

SHG

I switched a couple years ago to 13001 easier to keep up with. I used to have a client number like say client x is 100 and a new job would be 13100-1 ,but got o hard to keep up with and had to have. Master list around . Now the next job is the next number so if second job comes in it will be 13002=client x , easy to keep up with and can search by client name....

When I was in business, I used the following format:

378C-3685: 778J-3872: 1282C-4950:

The first one or two numbers were the month, the next two numbers were the year. The numbers following the hyphen was the job number, which were in a continuing sequence, i.e., 1 thru 5222. The letter after the year designated whether it was for the Casper office or the Jackson office, when I had an office in both cities or towns.

I assign job numbers to the client then each job for that client is assigned a number. the next client number up is 1177 so it will look like this in the computer:

1177-SMITH

13-1177-001ROS

• CONTRACT
• SURVEYS
• PICTURES
• FROM CLIENT
• GPS
• DRAWINGS

I have clients that I've done several jobs for and it's nice to have them all in the same, main, folder.

I'm curious to see how others, that assign numbers, based on when a job comes in, handle clients that keep coming back to them with new work.

Thanks,
Radar

Southern California is lucky to be mapped by the Thomas Brothers Guide which divides everything into 1/2 mile squares with an identifier for each.

For instance, I live in square LA-566-C-2, the LA being the Los Angeles county edition, 566 the page number, and C2 the grid on the page (A through J left to right and 1 to 7 top to bottom). There is a pattern to the page numbering also. Our County Surveyor even requires a Thomas Guide reference for Corner Records as well as an assessor's parcel number.

It's a GIS unto itself. All jobs in the same vicinity are filed together or in adjacent folders.

YYBBPP

YY = Last two digits of year "13"
BB = Field Book (00-99) -assuming you use a field book.
PP = Starting Page in Field Book (01-80)

This number is indexed on tax maps and sub plats.

WHat was wrong about using Project names?

From my days on the Board of Assessors I have all the Towns listed alphabetically (provided by the Department of Revenue) and my job numbers are unique to each town.

On my server, under Projects subdirectory, all the towns are listed.
So the current project in Chester, MA is C059-12-053

C059 is Chester
12 is the contract year
053 is the number of jobs we’ve done in Chester.

1 2 3 etc. Placing the year in the job no. is redundant, you will know when the project orginated from your job log and cross reference which is way more important than your numbering system.

> I would like to start using job numbers. In the past I have just worked on a project name basis. How do you guys generate yur job numbers? Thanks for the input and have a great day! Charlie

I am surprised that after going through Y2K that people are still using 2 digit year codes. What are your great grand children who have taken over your businesses going to do then the 22nd Century arrives?

The Bow Tie Surveyor