Estimating Door Replacement Costs

  • Estimating door replacement costs
  • Saving time with templates
  • Estimating with accuracy
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Description

In this quick walkthrough we discuss how to estimate door replacement costs in Clear Estimates. We also get a sneak peak at what kinds of templates are available for handyman contractors!

Plus, we share some resources for getting started with Clear Estimates, so you can get the most out of the software!

Transcript

Looks like a few folks have already joined in, so we're gonna go ahead and get started. My name is Michael. I'm with the customer success team here at Clear Estimates. And today, we're gonna talk about saving time when estimating.

Now while we're getting set up here, just curious if you're a handyman, what's your biggest challenge when it comes to estimating? Is it pricing the job accurately, finding the right software, invoicing, something else? One of the questions I get all the time is, I know it's great for remodelers, but how does Clear Estimates work for a handyman? So that's just what we're gonna talk about today.

We're gonna jump into Clear Estimates. We're gonna show you how Clear Estimates does two things really well. It's gonna help you price out your job accurately and create a really nice proposal that you can share with a client or homeowner. Now at Clear Estimates, our focus is really the cost data.

An amazing amount of work goes in behind the scenes every quarter surveying regional suppliers to provide you with accurate material pricing. And the result is you're gonna have this amazing database of up to date remodeling costs updated for you automatically every quarter. This includes plenty of pricing for common handyman tasks, repair and replacement, painting, appliance install, and there's even prebuilt templates that save you tons of time assembling an estimate. So today, we're gonna take a look at how easy this all is.

We're gonna put together a quick flush door replacement estimate in Clear Estimates, and we're gonna get that ready to send over to our clients. So let's go ahead and jump in.

When you first log in to Clear Estimates, you'll be seeing something that looks just like this. And I'm gonna go ahead and stop my camera here for a minute.

And when we're getting started, we just wanna go ahead and click new project. There's a few administrative tasks you may wanna do as a brand new customer signing up. All of that's covered for you in this quick tutorial. But we're gonna go ahead and start our project just by clicking new project and then we're going to fill in our customer's information.

And then after we fill in all of that information, it's going to take us into the projects page in Clear Estimates. You'll see this is right up here. Kind of looks like a briefcase. This is where all of the estimating is going to take place.

So this is where estimating is going to take place. So this is where we're going to build our estimate. Now we can search for line items by name using the search bar. We can also click browse par library to open up the full catalog of pricing.

And in a little bit, we're going to take a look at some prebuilt templates. And this is how you're going to add in all of your costs into your project. You're gonna be able to see these right here. So for this particular estimate, it's a door replacement.

It's gonna be in the living area, an interior flush door. We're also gonna be removing the old door and painting the new door with a sprayer, and we are also going to be installing a new exterior door lock set separately. So just a handful of things we need to price out for this project. So let's go ahead and jump in here.

So the first thing I'm gonna do is I'm gonna go ahead and click browse part library, and this is how you can really look through the full catalog of costs that are offered to you by Clear Estimates. And you're gonna find a lot included here. So some items for project preparation, a lot of different types of demolition.

Further down, we're gonna get into things like framing and doors and windows, skylights, trim work, plumbing, HVAC, electrical, insulation, wall coverings, ceiling coverings, doors, windows, skylights, and what have you. So let's go ahead and grab some preparation items.

In this case, I'm just going to be covering some contents in the living area where we're gonna be replacing the store. It's not gonna be too much, just a little thirty square foot area. But what we can see is we already have all of these different line items to choose from with built in costs for each. So I'm gonna go ahead and grab this one here for cover contents with plastic sheeting.

And right here in this blue bar, I can plug in a quantity. So we'll just say it's about thirty square feet of area I need to cover with this sheeting. We already have the costs built in for us. So then we're gonna go ahead and add that part into our estimate.

I can always kinda use these subcategories to get a little more specific. Obviously, we're seeing parts for plans and permits and building permit fees, surface protection, moving contents. I'm gonna go ahead and grab move contents because we will need to move some living room contents out of this area and then reset it later. So we're just gonna go ahead and grab, move average living room contents out and then reset contents.

And once again, we can see this is already kind of set up for us here. So I'm just going to add in a quantity. It's just quantity one.

We've already got a price all set up for my labor, and we'll go ahead and add that into our project.

So let's get into the actual door replacement itself. Now to save a little time, I'm gonna use one of the pre-built templates that are offered by ClearEstimates, and these are just starter estimates. A tremendous time saver compiling a project rather than searching for items one by one. We can use these pre-built estimates as a starting point.

So we're gonna go ahead and click this button here, add template, and then we're going to use this drop down here to select a category. Now there's a lot of different templates included for you. We're gonna see templates for additions and bathrooms and demolition, kitchen floor systems, and plenty available here for a handyman. So if I go into bathrooms, we're gonna see a lot of different replacement templates for things like bathtub door, bathtub replacement, shower surrounds, sink replacement, and what have you.

Similarly, in kitchens, we're going to find templates for base cabinet replacement, backsplash replacement, cooktop replacement, and so on. So a lot of different replacement templates are included for you.

Scroll down a little bit further. We're gonna find templates for painting and roofing and gutters and even room remodels and wall systems. Now down here, we're gonna find a section for windows, doors and skylights. Here, I can find lots of replacement templates for things like windows and doors.

Now in this particular estimate, we're gonna be doing an interior flush door, and we're also going to be painting it with a sprayer. So let's see what we've got available for that. We've got door replacement, a couple of different types of doors. Scroll down a little bit here.

I'm seeing interior flush door painted. So this is just exactly what I need. And what you'll see is that it's just a list of commonly seen items in a door replacement. So it's all set to go.

What's nice about these templates is all of these line items in our templates have a formula attached to them that comes back to this template quantity. What this allows us to do is just quickly enter the number of doors we're gonna be replacing. So let's say it was three doors. We could just plug in three as our quantity and calculate, and it's gonna price out each of these items, for three doors to be replaced.

Now in this particular estimate, I just need one. So I'm going to switch that back over to one and calculate. We can see it's all set to go for us. Now remember, a template is just a starting point for your estimate.

So for example, I have a part in this particular template for painting the panel door, which I do need, but it's specifying a brush and I'm actually gonna be using a sprayer. So I'm not gonna include this. I'm just gonna go ahead and uncheck that part and just add these two line items for removing the door and replacing it with the new flush door. So let's go ahead and add template.

So now we've got those couple of items added in. And then I'm gonna go back into my library here. And then we're just gonna very quickly search for paint flush door.

And let's see if we can find one that includes costs for a sprayer. Here's paint interior flush door with a sprayer, one coat, and that's going to be per side. So I'm going to click that part. I'm going to go ahead and grab two because I need quantity one per side here. And so then we're going to add that part into our estimate.

We also needed to do an exterior door lock set. So we're going to go ahead and reset browse parts.

And then let's go ahead and surf down to exterior doors. And then within exterior doors, I'm just going to search for a lock set.

And here we have install exterior handle locks at premium quality. This is actually gonna be average grade materials. And I just need one of those. So we're gonna add that in.

And then all I need to do beyond that is just a little bit of worksite cleanup. So that's probably going to be in my finalization category.

It's nice that you can kind of type into these bars and kind of filter your categories here. So we're gonna grab project finalization.

And here, we're gonna find items for cleaning and dumpster rental and loading and hauling and dump debris. We're just gonna do some general cleaning. This is a first floor, cleanup up to a hundred square feet. We'll grab that, and then we'll just quickly add that part into our estimate.

And we're done. We found everything we needed to add for this particular estimate and you can see how quickly we're able to put this together. All we did was search for the items we needed. We used a template to save a little bit of time and now we're all set to go.

Now from here, keep in mind that these part costs do not include markups. So these are all pre markup costs. So we could see our total project cost and then we're seeing the dollar amount of markup to be applied. Now we can adjust that right down here in our markup tools.

you can see I'm using a fifty percent markup. You can really set this accordingly, however you need. And I'm gonna share a resource here at the end as far as best practices when determining your markup percentage.

But that being said, we now have a project total after markup, so it's a total cost for this job for my client.

If I need to add anything like sales tax or discounts, I can do that using this miscellaneous items option down here at the bottom. And let's go ahead and take a look at the fruits of our labor here. Let's take take a look at the proposal we're gonna send to our clients. So we can do that by clicking view report and then print to PDF, and that's gonna pull up the proposal that we're gonna be sharing with our client here.

And here it is. You can see I personalized this with my company logo. I did that when I signed up. I've also, input some contract language, that appears at the top of all of my documents here.

And then if I scroll down, we can see the actual contents of this estimate. Now we didn't type any of this out. We didn't look up any of these costs. Clear Estimates is just automatically printed out professional sentences of text that explain the work to be done to the homeowner in language they can understand here.

We can see it's even kind of organized by scope of work. So then we have a total project cost and a convenient place my customer can sign. So you can see how easily we were able to put this together and how much time this really saved us searching for these costs, typing everything out. It's all set to go for us.

Now keep in mind back in the software here, if we wanted to email this to our client, we can do that from send to customer and send report to customer, and then we can immediately send that out. And then beyond that, we can even start invoicing on the job. We have an option to create electronic invoices, also shareable right from the software.

And that's really all there is to it. So beyond that, I just wanted to share a couple of quick resources for you as you get started here in Clear Estimates.

This first, QR code here, you can scan this with your phone. This is a webinar on calculating your markup. So this is with markup and profit dot com's Michael Stone, walks through best practices for contractors when determining a markup percentage. Great resource.

Definitely recommend taking a look at this. And if you do sign up for a free trial, feel free to schedule a walk through call with our team. You can use this QR code, scan it with your phone, that'll take you right to our calendar where you can schedule some time with a rep, and we can walk you through your free trial right on your side there. And lastly, if you would like to get in touch, if you do have any questions about the presentation today, feel free to reach out.

We are available 9 - 5 Eastern, Monday through Friday. If you need any help getting started or if you just have questions, feel free to get in touch. I should also mention that when you're working in Clear Estimates, there'll even be kind of a blue chat button in the bottom right you can use to send us a message and get live help, nine to five Eastern while you're working in the software. So I do want to thank everyone so much for joining in with us for this quick estimate webinar and we look forward to catching up with you at the next one.