ScaFix vs Excel for scaffold take-offs

ScaFix and an Excel take-off side by side

The example house, wall by wall

What the engine counts for the same house

What a spreadsheet has to get right on this house

Start with the walls table. The house has 4 walls, and each one gets whole bays whose lengths add up to at least the wall itself, so the scaffold reaches to the wall’s end or past it. A sheet that divides the wall length by the bay length must round in the same direction every time, and must know which bay lengths the system actually has. Round down once and a bay of decks, guardrails and toeboards is missing from the lorry.

Then the gables. 2 of the walls end in a gable that rises to 6 m, while the eaves walls stop at 4.5 m. A take-off sheet with one height per wall either scaffolds the whole gable wall to the ridge, which over-orders, or to the eaves, which leaves the top of the gable without a working level. The engine keeps each wall's own height and builds the gable wall up to the ridge.

Then the levels. The engine puts decks on 2 levels of this house. Each deck level adds decks, guardrails and toeboards on every bay, and a sheet that keys them to the number of lifts must also know which lifts carry a deck and which only carry the frame.

Where the pieces come from

The second table is the point of the comparison. For this one house the engine writes 17 part lines in 9 groups, 515 pieces in all: frames or standards, ledgers, decks, guardrails, toeboards, bracing, end guardrails, ties and base jacks, each by length. A spreadsheet can hold that list, and many firms keep exactly such a list. What it cannot do on its own is derive it from the walls: every line is a rule written by someone, and every rule has to be right for every wall shape the sheet will ever see.

That is where spreadsheets are known to fail. In Ray Panko's summary of spreadsheet audits, the five audits with the strongest methods examined 55 operational spreadsheets and found important errors in 91 % of them. The studies are not about scaffolding, but a take-off sheet is the same kind of file: formulas copied down rows, edited by several people, and trusted because the totals look plausible.

What Excel still does better

Excel is transparent: every number sits in a cell you can click, and nothing is hidden behind a vendor's rules. It holds your own labour rates, hire per week, transport per load and margin, and you can change them in seconds. Everyone in the office already knows it. And it is the format almost every tool ends in: ScaFix itself exports its parts list as CSV or Excel in Pro, precisely so that the list can go into the firm's own pricing sheet.

So the honest choice is rarely Excel or software. It is where the counting happens: in formulas that guess the bays and the levels, or in a model of the walls that the spreadsheet then prices.

Commas, copies and versions

Two practical traps are worth naming. Microsoft Support says Excel uses the separators of the computer's regional settings by default, so a sheet built on a Norwegian or German PC with decimal commas can read differently on an English one. And Excel keeps a version history only for files stored in OneDrive or SharePoint; a take-off saved to a desktop or sent as an attachment has none, and three copies of the same job soon disagree.

ScaFix accepts both a comma and a dot in measurements, and keeps one project per job in the account, with the parts list computed again from the model each time it is opened.

Keep the Excel sheet if…

• your jobs are straight walls in one system, and the sheet's rules have proven themselves on them;
• you already have a trusted parts list and only need rates, margins and your own quote layout;
• you scaffold with tube and fittings, which ScaFix does not model;
• nobody else needs to open the take-off, and you keep one copy of it.

Use ScaFix if…

• the houses have gables, corners and walls of different heights;
• you want the parts list counted from the walls, not from rules in cells;
• you plan in several systems and want each one's own bay lengths and parts;
• you want to send the list on to your pricing sheet as CSV or Excel (Pro).

What ScaFix does not do

• No structural calculation or approval: ScaFix is a planning aid, not structural approval.
• No pricing model of your own: labour, hire and margin stay in your sheet or quote.
• No tube-and-fitting scaffolds.
• No free plan.

What ScaFix costs

From ScaFix's own price list: the first week of Pro costs €0.98, then €9.98 a week until you cancel (cancel in the first week and access ends at once). The yearly plans cost €39.90 (Basic Light), €79.90 (Basic) and €149.90 (Pro) a year. Rounded corners, silos, hanging scaffolds, hoists and mobile and stair towers are Pro only.

Questions and answers

Sources

Microsoft Support on version history and on decimal and thousands separators, and Ray Panko's summary of spreadsheet audits, read on 25 October 2026. The house's numbers are computed by the ScaFix engine when the page is built.

1. support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/view-previous-versions-of-office-…
2. support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/change-the-character-used-to-sepa…
3. panko.com/ssr/Audits.html