Estimating
Available onEstimatorBuilder
Estimating is where a set of drawings becomes a priced job. Five modules do the work, and they are meant to be used in this order.
How a quantity travels
Section titled “How a quantity travels”This is the chain that makes the estimating side worth using:
A measurement on a drawing → a take-off field → a BOQ item’s quantity → the item’s cost → the costing total
Change anything on the left and everything to the right of it follows, live. There is no recalculation step.
Projects and costings
Section titled “Projects and costings”The job itself, and the priced versions of it. A project holds the client, the site, the contract stages and the documents; a costing holds one priced version — its own Bill of Quantities, take-off and markups.
- Overview
- Creating a project
- Costings and templates
- Project settings and permissions
- Clients
- Markups
- Contract stages
- Organising your projects
- Archiving and deleting
Documents
Section titled “Documents”The drawing register. Take-Off reads its PDFs from here, and revisions are managed here — so when Rev C arrives it supersedes Rev B rather than sitting beside it as another file.
- The document register
- Uploading and organising
- Versions and revisions
- Auto-attaching to bids and orders
Take-Off
Section titled “Take-Off”Measuring quantities straight off the PDF drawings — counts, lengths and areas — into take-off fields that BOQ items can be priced against.
- What Take-Off is, and your first measurement
- Setting the scale
- The measurement tools
- Take-off fields and the BOQ
- Drawings, revisions and export
- Keyboard reference and troubleshooting
Cost Centers
Section titled “Cost Centers”The trade breakdown you cost against. Most builders use the same structure on every job and reuse it.
Bill of Quantities
Section titled “Bill of Quantities”The priced estimate, and the spine of everything downstream. Orders, claims and variations are all raised against BOQ items, so the BOQ is worth understanding properly even if someone else builds it.
- The Bill of Quantities explained
- Adding items
- Getting a quantity
- Fields, items, formulas and calc sheets
- Formula fields
- Prices, markups and GST
- Suppliers and products
- Organising items
- Bulk operations
- Specification
- Reports
- BOQ settings
Where to start
Section titled “Where to start”If you are pricing your first job in SmarteBuild, work through Your first project, end to end. It builds all five of these in the right order on a real example.