Share calculations with others from OS X

Question

If there an easy way to share calculations from OS X with others? For example, I have some calculations and want to share them with my customer (total price for service) so they understand why they will pay such price.

Thank you!

UPDATED

My job to perform different calculations and then send them to my clients, so they can see why the total so much. Because order fulfillment may change often, sometimes I send almost same calculations to the same person, but with some differences: some options on, some - off, until client happy with price and options.

Sometimes I need to "template" calculations for repeatable orders.

Hope it is now more clearer what I'm looking for.

Thanks.

Answer 1

Given that the calculation that you wish to share is intended to be merely read an understood by the recipient, there is no requirement for them to have access to the actual logic that performs the calculation.

Is there any specific reason that you cannot simply include the calculation in prose? You mention Price in your question, which suggests that the calculations you are talking about are invoices/quotations/estimates etc, which most people are quite happy to read in a simple table, without any requirement to want to alter the numbers to recalculate different results:

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The above is prefectly readable, and give a little justification help for the numbers (which Markdown formatting isn't much help with on this site) would suit most people if mere understanding is your aim.

Depending on what medium you are providing the price in (email, Pages document, simple TextEdit file) there may even be tools that will perform the calculations for you at your end (for example inserting a spreadsheet into a pages document instead of a table) but may just be plain text when it reaches your recipient.

If your calculation is so complex that it cannot be layed out in such a simple form then you can still provide a seperate page of information that is the output from a spreadsheet, or you can use an itemised billing schedule that prices items and allows then to work it out for themselves.

Now, about these overdue Reputation points... ;)

Answer 2

Most applications provide an option to export a document as a PDF (e.g. Excel, Numbers…). You can choose to save the document as PDF in the print dialogue.

This allows you to…

• Share the document across multiple platforms and devices, as it’s a wildly supported format.
• This document is not editable by your customer. (Except for annotations, comments…)

Answer 3

How about Calculator's "Paper Tape" option? Open Calculator (in Applications). Click the Window menu option (or press command-T) to "Show Paper Tape". You can then do your calculations and cut and paste the results into whatever document you want to send them. I did a couple of simple calculations and pasted them below to show you what it looks like.

24 + 6
= 30

200 * 3 + 4 * 5 / 6
= 603.333333333333

Answer 4

As in all businesses, you might spend some time understanding how your customer expects and is in the habit of receiving these numbers. You can then take the computer equivalent of a blank sheet of paper and draw them a picture they find pleasing. Invoicing software is quite common for this task, but TextEdit or an inexpensive $20 for any one of the iWork programs might be all you need. Both pages and numbers have invoicing templates to make it easy to get started with a professionally designed look.