Quick start - your first 15 minutes

You have just signed up and you want to know whether this will work for you. Fair enough. This page is the short version: three things, about fifteen minutes, and at the end you will have priced a real job.

You do not need to set anything up first. No price list, no suppliers, no import. Those make you faster later; none of them stand between you and a number today.

1. Open the sample job - 3 minutes

Every new account comes with a finished job already in it: SAMPLE - 24 Example Street, Springfield. A double-storey home, fully priced, with real quantities and contract stages on it.

Open Projects List and click it. Then open BOQ from the menu on the left.

This is the fastest way to see the shape of the thing: a bill of quantities grouped into cost codes, each line with a quantity, a rate and a markup, and a total at the bottom that is the number you would quote.

Change anything you like. Delete it when you are ready. Nothing else depends on it.

Three levels, and that is all

Company holds your jobs. A project is the job. An estimate is a priced version of that job - and you can have several on one job, which is how you keep “budget” and “contract” apart without a second spreadsheet. The full explanation is here.

2. Price a job of your own - 10 minutes

Do not import anything yet. Take a small job you already know the price of - a deck, a bathroom, a carport - and put it in. You are checking whether the answer matches what you would have written down yourself.

1. Projects List → New → Project. Name it, add the client and the address, save.
2. Create an estimate on it. The project holds no prices; the estimate does.
3. Open BOQ and add your items. Add item lets you type a description, a quantity, a unit and a rate straight in. That is all you need today.
4. Put a markup on them and look at the total.

If the total is close to what you would have quoted, you have your answer about whether this suits you. If it is not, the gap is usually markup or GST - see Prices, markups and GST.

Doing it properly, later

The real saving comes when the rates are already in a price list, so a job is assembled from things you have priced before instead of typed from scratch. That is worth an hour of your time once, and it is the single biggest difference between a slow estimate and a fast one. Set up your company covers it.

3. Get something out of it - 2 minutes

An estimate you cannot send anywhere is just a spreadsheet with extra steps. Do one of these:

• Send a quote to the client. From the estimate, produce the quote and email it.
• Ask a subbie to price it. Tenders sends selected items to suppliers and brings their prices back in, so you compare like with like.
• Raise a purchase order. Orders turns part of the estimate into a PO you can send - and what you ordered then counts against the job automatically.

That last one is the point of the whole system: the number you estimated, the number you ordered and the number you were invoiced are the same number, followed through, not re-typed three times.

If you only do one thing

Price one small job you already know the answer to, and compare. Everything else in SmarteBuild is built on that bill of quantities - the schedule, the orders, the claims, the variations all read from it. If the estimate suits you, the rest follows.

Where to go next

You want to	Go to
The full tutorial, properly, start to finish (about 40 minutes)	Your first project, end to end
Know what this software is actually for	What SmarteBuild does
Stop getting lost in the menus	Finding your way around
Know what you get on your plan	What is in each plan
Set up your company properly	Set up your company

The whole manual, in one file

Everything on this site is also published as a single PDF - about 520 pages - if you would rather search one document, read it away from a signal, or print it.

Download the SmarteBuild user manual (PDF)

It is a snapshot. This site is the one that is always current, so when the two disagree, believe the site.