Estimates overview [in-depth guide]
Guide contents: Workflow | Resources
This guide takes you through the process of creating a new estimate, adding up costs, sending for approval, and finally creating the project budget.
Workflow
Add new project estimate
- The initial steps in which to create a brand new estimate for a project.
Add new change order estimate
- Similar to a regular estimate, this can track what has changed from the original estimate now.
- It's tracked as a different type of estimate for reporting.
- It pulls from the schedule, and only grabs labor hours that differ from the current total budget.
Labor > Pull from schedule
- A quick way to gather the value of labor pre-built in the schedule.
Expenses > RFQ
- Prior to submitting for approval, you can submit expense lines to multiple vendors to retrieve quotes.
Printing & emailing estimates
- The client-facing side of the estimate is seen by way of generating a PDF for printing.
- You can also email the contact directly with the attached PDF.
Approving estimates
- In submitting for approval, the system can route approvals to an internal user and client contact.
- Additionally, you can send notifications to other users to be kept in the loop.
Expenses > PO
- With the estimate approved, you can then create POs from the expense lines to the selected vendors.
Labor > Auto-assign
- All approved estimates will then count towards the auto-assign feature.
- This allows you to push the estimated hours back into the schedule.
Budget & notifications
- Once the estimate is complete, you can view the estimated labor & expenses by task & item as the actual transactions get entered against the project & budget.
- There are also notifications that can be enabled to alert you when a project, item, or task is about to meet their designated budgeted amount.
Resources
Time tracking services [in-depth guide]
Purchase items [in-depth guide]
Project budget [in-depth guide]