Curious how Clear Estimates works? You've come to the right place!
Clear Estimates is a powerful estimating platform for any remodeler - built to save you hours on the estimating process.
In this great introduction to Clear Estimates, we jump head first into a bedroom remodel estimate.
We go over the estimating process in general, take a look at the library of locally sourced costs spanning 15,000+ parts, and see how to save time using over 300+ pre-built project templates.
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Thank you so much for joining us for Clear Estimates in Practice! My name is Michael. I'm with the customer success team here at Clear Estimates.
This will be the first of a few of these webinars we'll be hosting, so we're so glad you can join us today.
We do have a really good presentation planned for you today. Should be a really nice walk through for anyone just getting started with the software. We will be estimating a full bedroom remodel example using Clear Estimates. So this should be a good demo for any of those who are just getting started, with Clear Estimates.
Now some quick housekeeping first, we are going to be covering a lot in a very short amount of time today, but we will have some time for Q&A at the end of the presentation. So as we go along, you can add in your questions using the chat feature in the bottom right of your screen.
So if anything does come to mind, please send in your questions. We'll be answering as many of those as we can toward the end. Also this presentation is being recorded, so if you miss anything or if you have to duck out, no worries. All attendees will receive an email with a recording link after the presentation, and this will also be available on our YouTube channel for your reference. So don't worry if you miss anything, there will be a recording of the presentation, but we will move a little fast, while also keeping it very simple today. Now if you're having any issues with the presentation quality, if the screen is blurry or if the connection seems slow, there should be a little gear icon in the bottom right of your screen that you can use to adjust the quality.
If you have any issues with sound or anything like that, just try to refresh your browser. That should bring you back into the presentation and clear up any issues. And lastly, as I mentioned, we're going to be doing a few more of these. So if you have any suggestions on topics you'd like to see covered, please go ahead and add those in the chat.
Now since a lot of you are just getting started, we do want to start off with just a little bit of quick background today, and then we'll get into some of the basics. So setting up your account and getting ready for your first estimate. And from there, we're going to estimate our bedroom. We're going to go through each step of the process, adding parts, using templates, customizing the contract, and sending it out to your client. And then we'll have some time for q and a at the end. So once again, if you do have questions that come up, just add those in the chat on the right, and we'll get to the, we'll get to as many of those as we can at the end.
So let's go ahead and jump into a little bit of background here. So what is Clear Estimates? Well, if you've estimated remodeling work, you know how time consuming that process can be. Maybe you're looking up costs on Home Depot or Lowe's websites.
Maybe you're searching for pricing on Menards. You're writing up each line item into, let's say, an Excel spreadsheet or MS Word. You know that can take up a lot of your time. So Clear Estimates is a software that makes all makes a big difference with all of that, makes that process much easier and much faster by offering you an exhaustive library of remodeling cost data.
So that's going to cover everything from kitchens and baths to additions, all the way to specialty trades. So things like roofing and concrete and decks and porches and so on. And what's so great about these costs is that you're not looking at a national average. You're actually looking at pricing from your specific area of the country.
So when you log in, you'll set up material costs for your area and you can instantly use those to build your estimate. Now these costs are updated automatically, so it's really going to make a difference and make it a lot easier to put together an estimate using the most accurate numbers. Those accurate numbers are already at your fingertips.
So ultimately it's going to make your estimating process much smoother and much more streamlined. So let's go ahead and dive in.
So if you've not logged into your account, now is a great time to do so. You can do that right from our, homepage here just by clicking sign in. If you haven't started an account yet, you can do that by clicking pricing here on the main page.
And then what you're going to be doing is you're just going to go ahead and fill in information about your account.
After you click start free trial here, you're just going to fill in a little bit of detail about your account. And then at the very bottom once you've filled in that info, you're going to be able to click submit and start estimating. So from there you're going to get a email with a link to set up your password.
Once you've set up your password, you're going to go through just a few brief onboarding steps and then you'll be all set to log in. Now if you've already done all of that, no worries at all. Just go ahead and click sign in right here, and that's going to take you into ClearEstimates.
And so this is what it's going to look like when you log in to Clear Estimates. Especially as a first time customer, you should be seeing something that looks just like this. So this is the home page. This is kind of your dashboard, for recent projects you've worked on.
It's also where you can start a new project, anytime you need to. You can do that right here from home. Over on the right, you'll see a quick video that'll help you get started. And as a new customer, you should see a number of sample projects here in the account.
So remember you can click these and open them up and take a look. Make sure that, kind of have an understanding of what a completed project looks like there.
You'll also be able to search for recent projects or customers right here in this search bar.
And then anything else related to, recent projects you've done, let's say you've started a couple of projects recently, you'd see kind of shortcuts to those here. Now if you want to look at all of the projects in your account, those are going to be stored in your customers tool. So that's this right here. And, from the customers tool you're going to see all of the customers in your account. As a new customer you should just be seeing probably the sample customer, but you'll see that their projects are stored within a profile here that you can click on the left. You can also search for customers right here using the search bar.
Now the projects page is next. You'll see this looks like a little briefcase. We're going to be spending a lot of time there today.
This is where you're actually going to build the estimate and make any changes to the estimate after it started.
And there's also this reports tool. This is where you can export different types of reports. You can create invoices, and set up your contract language. So we'll show you that in a little bit as well.
Now up in the top right, you're going to see four blue buttons. Parts, templates, options and update. And these can be thought of as account settings.
So parts is where you're going to manage the library of parts that are provided to you by Clear Estimates. We'll talk about that in a moment.
Templates is where you're going to manage the default settings for templates, which are essentially just pre built estimates, that you can use as a starting point for an estimate.
Options is where you're going to manage account options.
Manage integrations, this is where you can see information about your subscription.
And update is where you can, change your location to a different, different market. So if you want to use pricing from a different location, you can do that from update.
So you do want to think of these four buttons as they relate to the account overall. And these four buttons when you're managing a particular project, so you can always see which project you have open. It's going to be up here in bold in the top left.
Now, if you're just logging in, it might be really tempting to go ahead and click this new project button and start on your new project right away, but there is a few administrative matters we want to make sure we handle. First, we're going to want to check on our company info as well as our labor rates. So to do that, we're going to come up to the options tool up here in the top right.
And again, this is where we're managing anything account related, as well as managing a lot of the default settings here. You're going to see that's going to pull up this menu on the left. The first place it's taken us is my company info, And this is where we can set up all of the company information that's later going to be shown to our customer on a proposal.
So here a lot of this information should have been filled in when you when you, were first signing up. So here my company name's already been added. My address, for my office is here, and then also my contact information is included. But if anything is missing, now's a really good time to fill this information out. So we're going to go ahead and for example, put in a license number here.
That way that appears at the top of my proposal. And the same with any additional contact info if you have a personal email or any kind of, let's say social media handle that you want to include on the document, you can add that all right here. Once everything looks good, you just want to make sure you click save down in the bottom right.
This is also where we can set up a logo. So it's important to add our branding into our documents here. So right here, we're going to see an option to set our company logo. I'm going to go ahead and click that.
And then right here I do have a, logo I want to use on my document. I'm going to go ahead and choose that.
And then we're going to see it's going to stage the logo right here. So we see this little document button. From here we're going to scroll down to the bottom right and click save, and that's going to finish the import and bring our logo in and there it is. Now you do have some options with the logo.
So we can choose how it's oriented, left, center, or right. I'm going to keep mine in center. We can also adjust the size. I'm going to make mine small.
After you change any of those settings, you just want to come back down and click save again.
And everything looks great now. So why don't we check on our labor rates? So to do that, we're going to come over to this menu here on the left and we're going to find this labor rate editor. So if we click labor rate editor, that's going to show us all of the labor rates that are preloaded in our account.
So we're providing you, labor rates across a number of different trades. So truck drivers, general laborers, tile setters, concrete, carpenters, painters and more. So these are all locally sourced labor costs from your area. These are all pre markup and pre tax, so it doesn't necessarily reflect what a subcontractor might charge for the same work since these are pre markup.
And of course your subs, price is going to include their markup. But these are the costs to you for labor, sourced directly from your area.
Now if you want to customize these labor rates, you certainly can do that. So you can use the suggested rates or you can add in your own.
To do that, you just want to find the rate you want to update and click into this rate column. So it's really important not to delete the rates, as all of these rates are tied back to the fifteen thousand plus line items that exist in your parts tool here. So don't delete these rates that can cause issues when you're building your estimate.
Instead you can just click into the rate column and make adjustments. So if I pay a truck driver twenty two dollars an hour, for example, I can just type twenty two into my rate column here and then click save changes.
Now if we want to use, labor costs from a different market, those don't automatically update when you're using the update tools. What you want to do is you want to click this link here for recommended labor rates, and then it's going to show you this spreadsheet where you can reference labor costs from other markets here. So you can find the location here on the left. And then here are these eleven different rates up here at the top. So you can kind of find your corresponding location and just copy each labor rate back into your labor rate editor, back in Clear Estimates.
Once everything looks good, just go ahead and click save changes.
And then we'll be all set. So at this point, we're going to head back to the homepage and we're going to go ahead and start on our project today.
Now again, here on the homepage, we can start a new project. So that's what we're going to do right now. We're just going to go ahead and click new project and that's going to pull up this, little dialogue box where it's going to ask for information about our customers. So in this case, I'm just going to make a customer up. We're going to call him John homeowner.
And ask for an email address. We're just going to type in john at homeowner dot org.
Really any kind of, email address that you can reach your client directly, you'll want to add that in there since the document will be sent directly to your client.
Down below we're going to add in a project title. So today we're going to estimate a bedroom remodel. So we're going to type in bedroom remodel.
And then down at the bottom there's a project description. So this usually is a good place to put a little more detail about the project. So we're going to be doing a bedroom remodel.
I believe it's going to be two hundred square feet.
We're going to say oak flooring.
So any kind of additional description you want to include about the project, you can add in down here.
So next we're going to click continue and then what Clear Estimates is going to do is it's going to ask us a question. It's going to say, will this project contain multiple components? Now what that means is, you know, it's not uncommon to let's say have a kitchen and a bathroom in the same estimate. So this allows us to keep organized if we have a multi phase estimate.
And it'll create sections for each group of line items, that relate to each section of the estimate.
So you can always set this up later. So to keep things simple, we're just going to say no, not right now. And we're going to click continue.
But later on in the presentation, if time allows, we'll show you how to set that up as well.
And so that's going to take us to the projects page, which like I mentioned is where you're going to spend the majority of your time in Clear Estimates. This is where we're building the estimate. It's where we're kind of managing the project overall.
So let's just go through the layout here. Up here in the top left is going to be my project title.
Now of course it's up here in bold as well as if you need to reference which project is open, but here we can see the project title and actually customize it if we want. So if you want to click into this, field, we'd be able to adjust the project title. Below that we see the customer name and then there's our description. So we can click into the description and make changes as well if we need.
Over here is all of your different tools related to your project. So in the more drop down you're going to find options like duplicate project, which just kind of makes a copy of an estimate for a new customer.
Archive project, you can create invoices or manage the project status. That all occurs here in the more drop down. Send to customer is how we're going to send the document to our customer once it's completed. So we could do that here.
Before we send that off, it's important to preview it. So we can preview it from view report and then you'll see the option to print the report to PDF or MS word. And then we can also export internal documents including all the project informations. We could do that from export project and then we see, various formats we can export the details to for our own records.
So pdf, MS word or an excel spreadsheet can do that all here. If you're a pro user, this is also where you'll integrate with builder trend and really any user can, integrate with QuickBooks online or desktop.
Just below that, you're going to see what I like to call the part search interface. So this is where we can search for parts to add into our project.
So there's a few different ways to do that. We can search using a search term with the search bar.
There's this browse part library option which opens up the catalog of the fifteen thousand plus parts we offer, when you're building your estimate. If you'd like to create your own part, you can do that using create custom part. So that's great if you would just want to add in your own line item very quickly.
And then there's also add template which is essentially just a group of parts. Now let me take a step back here and we'll talk about what a part is. A part is any individual scope of work related to residential remodeling. So hanging up some drywall, maybe you're installing some wall framing, swapping out a fixture. Any specific scope of work related to remodeling can be thought of as a part.
So we offer a catalog of over fifteen thousand of these parts. And what's so great as I mentioned in the beginning is that all of those parts include, up to date material costs from your area. And so those are updated automatically and it makes it really easy to stay on top of pricing.
Now a template is just a pre built list of parts, essentially a pre built estimate that's designed to give you a starting point. So it's a major time saver when you're building an estimate. Now we're going to be going through all of these different methods of filling out your estimate today.
Before we do that, let's just go through the rest of the layout here. So here's my project parts list. This is where we're going to see the items in our project once we get started, adding parts in. So we'll be able to see all of the contents of our estimate down here in project parts.
Just below that, you'll see the markup tool. So the markup is used to account for your overhead and profit. So again, all of the costs that we include are pre markup and pre tax. So you can use the markup tool to account for your own profit and overhead down here.
Just above that, you'll be able to see your project totals. The actual project total before markup here in white. In blue, you'll see the dollar amount of markup. And just below that, you're going to see the base bid, which is the total for your customer after markup. So Clear Estimates isn't going to break out your markup for your customer so they can see it. It's just going to roll it into the total cost of the estimate.
Down below that, we have, alternates and components which are just technically subsections of your estimate. Alternates are great for change orders where components like we discussed in the beginning are just a way to section your estimate by room or by phase.
And then down at the bottom is miscellaneous items. This is great for things like tax or discounts, any extra percentage you want to add in to your estimate.
You could do that using miscellaneous items.
So we'll cover that here in a little bit.
So with that all being said, let's go ahead and dive into this bedroom estimate. So to do this, I've created a, bedroom remodel takeoff. So in other words, I've gone through a homeowner's home. I've measured the room that we're going to be remodeling.
I've gotten all my quantities, all squared away. So I know how much of everything I need. All my measurements are done. So it's really helpful to have your measurements all ready when you're getting started.
It's going to make it a lot easier to price out the work in the actual project.
So as we can see this is a two hundred square foot bedroom. We're going to be installing some pre finished oak wood flooring.
And then we're going to be doing quite a bit of work here today. So we have a little bit of prep work to do. So things like surface protection, we need to pull a set of plans. We're going to be charging our customer for some travel.
And then we're going to be doing a good amount of demolition. So a lot of stuff coming out in this room. So baseboards, quarter round, drywall, door, is coming out. We're going to be removing some flooring.
So a lot of, a lot of demolition work to be done here. We're going to be doing a little bit of electrical, so we're going to be installing, a ceiling light as well as a switch.
And then we're going to be doing a little bit of drywall work for both ceilings and walls. We're going to be installing a door and a lock set, a little bit of trim, some floor install, and then a good amount of painting work here.
And then of course we're also going to be accounting for things like, debris removal and clean up. So we have quite a bit to estimate here today. So why don't we start off right at the top here in our preparation section. So we have a little bit of prep work to estimate here.
So the first item is for surface protection. Ten square feet. Now what this is for, this is for the area outside of the bedroom. So we're going to be doing a lot of work in the bedroom.
We just don't want any debris falling into the homeowner's hallway there. So we're just going to be covering a little bit of that space with some plastic sheeting. So we just want to cover the contents of that hallway. So this is the first thing we're going to add to our estimate here, surface protection.
So what we're going to do is we're going to come back into the project. So here we are on the projects page. And up at the top, you're going to see this search bar that's going to let us search for parts to add to our estimate. So this is the first way of finding and adding parts into a project.
So we're going to go ahead and click into this search bar and what that's going to do, it's going to pull up this modal where you'll see the search bar at the top, and then down below there's going to be some suggested searches. So these are things that are commonly searched for by our customers.
Just common search terms we see, so it's going to recommend those if you'd like to just quickly search for those different terms. Below that you'll see different categories of parts that you can open. So in a moment we're talk we're going to talk about how all of the parts in Clear Estimates are categorized, and that makes it a lot easier to kind of stay organized. So if you want to look at parts for wall framing or, some sheet rock or flooring demo, you can just click these options here and it will open up those sections of the catalog.
We also have the pre made templates down here. As we discussed before, these are pre built estimates. Really good starting point for a project. So you can see those by clicking down here.
And then there's some getting started guides below. But really we just want to focus on this search bar up here at the top. And this is where we're once again going to be searching for parts. So again we're going to be covering, some of the contents of that hallway.
So I'm just going to type in, cover contents.
And when I, when I search for that term, what it's going to do is it's going to show me all of the different parts in Clear Estimates related to that term I searched. So you're going to see there's no shortage of options in here. And what we're seeing down below is the results. So the description of each item.
We're seeing the category where the part is sorted. So you can kind of hover over these category titles and find exactly where the part exists in the library. So we'll talk about that more in a minute. But everything is kind of categorized, under different part sections here.
Over on the right, we're going to see the cost per unit. So this is the cost per unit for material. So these are those locally sourced costs that are already included for you when you get started in source from your area. So these are some up to date costs from my area, specifically Ann Arbor, Michigan in my case.
And we can always kind of reference these here for the material cost. Over on the far right you're going to see the hours per unit number, which is the install time, for your labor cost. So what's great about this is that it allows us to kind of calculate the estimated hours as well as the labor cost itself all at once. So it's going to have this hours per unit number, which is going to relate to your labor cost.
So with that all being said, I'm going to go ahead and click this first item for cover contents with plastic sheeting right here. When I click this, it's going to pull up this little part preview where it's going to ask us for a little bit of information about the part. Now really in the most basic sense, what you want to focus on here is this blue bar where it's asking us for the part quantity, and this is where we're going to be entering our measurements. So if we go back to our takeoff list, we see this is ten square feet of sheeting we need to put down.
So we're just going to come into this blue bar right here and we're going to type in ten square feet. And what that's going to do is it's going to price out the part using those costs from my area. So again, these are pre markup pre tax. These are just the costs to me.
So over here we're seeing sixty cents for materials. So it's just a very small amount of sheeting we're putting down and just, just a very small amount of labor cost here, two sixteen, just for someone throwing that sheet down into the hallway here.
So after we've entered in our quantity, it's going to price out the part like I said, and then we're just going to click add part to add that to the estimate.
So let's close out of here and take a look at what that looks like. So here is the part that I've just added in. It's down here in project parts.
Now what we can see here is our part description, the category. It's going to show us the quantity of units here, as well as the hours, material, labor and total. Now keep in mind, anything is customizable and Clear Estimates. So if we wanted to edit that description, we can just click the description column here.
It's going to pop up this little part text box where we can adjust things like the description. This description at the top is just your description in the software. What our customer sees is always going to be in report text. So there's three different types of proposals you can export from Clear Estimates, preliminary, formal, and subcontractor.
Now the default report that you use is going to be the formal proposal and that's what we're going to be focusing on today. So if we wanted to adjust anything about what this part says for our client, we can do that here in this formal text box and just make sure we click save here, after any changes we make.
But similarly for the rest of these columns, they're clickable. So we can kind of click the category and make adjustments if we choose. We can make, on the fly adjustments to the material or labor cost. So we can really easily modify things about the items in our estimate, as we see fit. And then if we wanted to open up that window that shows us the full calculations in the part, we can do that using the pencil.
And that's going to show us all of the, the settings for the part. So when you're looking at this, you're going to see this when you're adding parts or when you're editing them. This is, your adjust part tool where you could modify the part. Up here it's going to let you know your unit type.
So square feet, this kind of relates to the sheeting that we're we're laying down. It's measured by the square foot. Some items will be measured by the piece. So this is common for things like doors or windows or any kind of singular item that you need to add in.
Linear feet is great for things like baseboard or anything that goes around the perimeter of a space. Cubic yards is usually used for things like earthworks or hauling. And then there's just simple dollar and hour quantities.
So keep in mind each part will have a unit type selected and then it's just going to ask you for your quantity of units here like we discussed. Down low you're going to see the material cost settings. This is where you're going to see those prices from your area.
This is, my cost for material per unit. So it takes this number and it multiplies it by my quantity here to come up with my material cost.
Similarly for labor, it's going to give us an hours per unit number. This is the install time per square foot. So it's going to multiply that by our quantity and then again by a labor rate. So keep in mind you can modify the labor rate as well and choose a different rate from your account. So you can really adjust anything about the part as well here, including adding in some optional subcontractor cost if you choose.
And then down at the bottom is that report text we discussed, just a moment ago. This is what the customer is going to see on the formal proposal, which is kind of the default report. And you can modify your text for any of the reports here.
Just make sure you click save after any changes you make.
But not to digress any further, let's just go ahead and go back to our takeoff and we're going to carry on with this bedroom estimate. So we've got our surface protection added in. Let's talk about our plans. We need to, pull a set of plans for this project. I've estimated it's about an eight to ten thousand dollar project cost. So we're going to go ahead and estimate that now. So we're going to go back into the project.
And this time I'm just going to click browse part library which is, the second method of adding parts to your estimate. So I'm going to go ahead and click browse part library.
You're going to see it looks a lot like that search we were looking at before. The big difference is you're going to see these category drop downs up here at the top. And this is how you can kind of filter through the full list of, parts that are in Clear Estimates. So everything like I mentioned is sorted by category. So we're going to see on a very basic scope, basic level by scope of work here, everything is organized.
And you're also going to notice it's roughly chronological to the way you're going to be conducting the actual work in your projects. We're starting off with prep work and then we're moving into demolition. And then further down we're going to get into the building portions such as framing and roofing and gutters and windows, skylights and so on. So you're going to see there's no shortage of pricing available to you, and it's all kind of sorted and organized using these different categories here.
So if we go ahead and click, project preparation, anything related to kind of the prep work for the project or getting, plans together or permits usually is going to be sorted in project preparation.
Under each main category that we select using that dropdown, there's going to be subcategories to get more specific. So you can see here in the results in browse part library, there's plenty of parts here in project preparations. We're seeing lots of different types of things, and this is pretty exhaustive list of project prep items.
So again, to get a little more specific, we can use this subcategory drop down here and find specific pricing. So the plans and permits, building permit fees, surface protection, etcetera. So I'm going to go ahead and click plans and permits.
And then it's going to show me all of these different sets of plans. Now again, on my takeoff, I estimate this is going to be about an eight to ten thousand dollar project cost. So I'm going to come back in here to my list. I'm going to find an item that matches. So here's one, eight to ten thousand dollar project cost. We're going to go ahead and click that.
And how many sets of plans do I need? Well, probably just the one. So I'm going to go ahead and add that part in.
And that's all taken care of now.
So what's next? So next we have a little bit of travel cost. We're going to be passing along the travel charge to our customer. It's going to be about one hundred and fifty dollars in gas.
Now we do have items in the library related to travel costs, but in this case I think it's a great opportunity to show you how the create custom part tool works. This is where we can very quickly add in an item of our own featuring any cost and description that we like. So I'm going to go ahead and click create custom part and then I'm going to use this dropdown. It's going to have a select category.
I'm going to put this in project prep.
We're going to call this travel cost.
Then down below, it's just going to ask us for a material cost, labor cost or both. So in this case, I'm just going to add in one hundred and fifty for material that's going to cover my gas to and from the site. We're going to go ahead and click save part.
So you see how quickly, even though we were really kind of describing and, instructing on each step of the process, you see how quickly we were able to knock out just this little preparation section here. So it's a really quick process to find and add parts to your estimate. So why don't we take a look at what we've done so far? So what I'm going to do is I'm going to preview the proposal.
We haven't done a whole lot of work, but I just want to see how things are going. So we're going to come up here. We're going to find this eyeball view report, and then we're going to click print to PDF. And what that's going to do is it's going to pull up the document that we're eventually going to be sharing with our customer once the project is a little more complete here.
And so here is that document. You're going to see it's a really nice professional proposal that you're going to be sending out. Features my own branding up here at the top. Down below we have my customer's contact info as well as my own contact info.
And then down below we have some example legal language. Now we're going to be customizing this to be our own contract here in a little bit. And then down below what you'll see is that it's already populated the items from the project and written out professional sentences of text that explain the scope of work to my client in, in terms that they can understand. So we didn't search for any of these costs.
We didn't type any of this in. It's just automatically going to populate the contents of our estimate into a professional contract. So it's a really handy tool in that sense. So we're going to see the couple of different items we already added in and a total project cost below.
And then at the bottom is a really nice place my customer can sign the agreement.
Now one of the things I mentioned or one of the things that I noticed here rather is that, this part here from covering the contents is actually an interior painting and wallpaper. I want that to be in project preparation. So just a quick sidetrack here. I'm going to close out of my proposal.
I'm going to head back into the project and I'm going to make that adjustment here. So I'm going to go ahead and click, my category title for the cover contents with plastic sheeting part. I'm going to go ahead and click that here and I can modify that. So I'm going to go ahead and add that to project preparation.
This is just for this estimate. It's not going to change my default settings. So I'm going to go ahead and accept and then we're going to see all those parts are now sorted into project prep. That's going to keep it a little more organized for my client.
So let's get back to work here because we do have a lot to cover. So we have a lot of demolition work to do here as well as, like I said, electrical, drywall, doors and so on. So a good amount of demolition that I need to focus on here. We have a lot coming out. Baseboards, quarter round. We have door coming out. We have, some some flooring materials that need to be removed, and even some more drywall from the wall here.
So to speed up this process a little bit, now we're going to show you how templates work. So we do have pre built templates that are going to help us get a lot further along on this project. So I'm going to come back here into my projects page, and then we're going to use this third method of adding parts in. So add template.
So again, just as a quick refresher, a template's essentially a prebuilt estimate. It's a starting point for your project. It's designed to get you eighty or ninety percent of the way there. And then we can kind of tailor that template a little bit for what our project needs.
So that's exactly what we're going to do right now.
So I'm going to go ahead and click this drop down here in templates. What you're going to see is it's going to pull up this kind of modal where where you can search for different templates in the account. There's over one hundred and thirty different templates available to you when you're building your projects. And then also keep in mind for down the road that once you get a little time with the software, you can build your own templates as well.
So what I'm doing right now is I'm clicking this drop down, select a category. So similar to parts, templates are also categorized. So you're going to see, different types of templates that you can choose from. So additions, bathrooms, demolitions, decks, plenty of different types of room remodels.
So pretty much anything related to residential remodeling, we're going to have a template available for it. So in this case we actually want room remodels bedroom. So we're going to go ahead and select that option here. And then using this middle drop down, we're going to choose a type of template. So there's, a couple of different options in here. You're going to see a lot of these templates are divvied up by the, kind of grade of materials used. So economy, average or premium grade.
And then we're going to see that all these different templates cover different types of flooring. So ceramic flooring, laminate, prefinished wood. Now I look at my takeoff, I see this is a prefinished wood floor that we're going to be installing. So we're going to go ahead and select that. In my case, my customer is using kind of average grade fixtures.
They didn't go on the super high end with the premium grade, but they're also not going on the super cheap either. So we're just going to kind of use this average grade template here.
And what that's going to do is it's going to pull up all of the different parts that are included in this template. So these are suggested parts that I might need in a bedroom remodel and we're going to see them all listed down here below the description, the category, as well as the unit type here. So we're going to see all of these different parts already included and suggested parts that we might need in a bedroom remodel. So it's going to cover as much ground as it can.
And what's great about the templates we include is that all of the parts in these templates include formulas that allow us to price out the template using a total square footage, or footprint square footage really of a space. So in this case the footprint of my bedroom is two hundred square feet. So I'm going to come back into the templates tool here and I'm going to click into this, template quantity in the top right. And we're going to go ahead and type in two hundred square feet. And then we're going to grab calculate quantities right here. We're going to click that and you're going to see that it's going to price out all of these different items based on two hundred square feet. So it's going to, suggest the measurements for each individual line item here.
Now it's important to understand that a template is a starting point for an estimate. Every project is going to be a little bit different and it's going to require, a little something different each time you're estimating.
So something like a bedroom, no two bedrooms are really going to be exactly alike.
So these templates are designed to be really tailored to the project that you're working on. So up here, you're actually going to see these instructions up here that, you know, the template includes options for various items. Be sure to uncheck items you don't need. So that's a really important thing to understand about templates is that there's going to be items that aren't going to be related to the project, and there's also, you know, there might be things that you need to do in the project that aren't included in the templates. We're going to explain how all of that works.
And then here in this case, we're just seeing some options for flooring type to remove. So we'll be making sure we do that as well as various electrical parts to choose from. So not everything is one and done. We're going to kind of tailor this template to our exact project.
So to do that, we're just going to reference our takeoff, and we're going to make sure that Clear Estimates has figured out the exact measurements that we need for everything, and we're going to adjust anything if needed. So we're going to come back to the takeoff.
So the first thing in my my list of demolition parts here is baseboard, and it's fifty four linear feet of baseboard that needs to be removed here. So let's come back into the template. And while we're doing this, keep in mind the template hasn't been added to the project yet. So it's still just in template form. It's still staged. None of these items have been added in. We're just kind of staging the template to add to the project once everything looks good.
So let's go ahead and take a look. So once again in demolition, I have, a line item for baseboards here. Fifty four linear feet of baseboard needs to come out.
So in the template, we do see remove baseboard right here at the top, except the only thing is that it's figured sixty linear feet. And it's actually fifty four, so the spaceboard isn't covering the full perimeter of this bedroom. So we're going to go ahead and change that over to fifty four linear feet by clicking into this quantity column right here. And that's going to adjust the the part price to reflect fifty four linear feet.
So back in the takeoff, same thing for quarter round, which is next. It's fifty four linear feet of, quarter round that needs to be removed. My next item up in demolition is quarter round, but same thing. I need to adjust that in the quantity column to fifty four linear feet.
So that way the prices are going to be accurate here.
So next is some drywall from the ceiling. We need to pull two hundred square feet of drywall off this ceiling here. So we're going to come back into the template here. We're going to look through our demolition items.
And here's a line item for remove the drywall from the ceiling. And it's correct in this case. So two hundred square feet. So that makes sense.
So next I need to remove a door. And in this case I actually need to charge my customer a little extra for disposing the door. They'd like me to haul the door away, and dispose of it for them. So I would like to charge them a little extra.
Let's see what we have in the template for that. So we do have here in demolition, here's remove door, single interior wood. And it's one. So that's correct.
Just one door being removed here.
The only thing is that this labor cost doesn't cover that removal. Now there's no way in the template to add in an extra cost to the door item here. So what I'm going to do is on my takeoff, I'm going to go ahead and mark this that I need to come back and make a change. So after I add the door item to the project, I do want to come back and tack on a little extra for the door disposal layer.
So next is remove carpet and padding, Two hundred linear square feet, or I'm sorry, two hundred square feet of padding to be removed.
So let's come back into our template here.
And here we have, let's see, some remove carpet tack strips and paddings, and we have two hundred square feet of that. So that's correct.
And then next, I have some nailed strip flooring to come out two hundred square feet of flooring to remove. So we're going to come back into the template here.
And then we do have some solid wood strip flooring right here. So it's important to pay attention to these part descriptions. They're going to give you a hint about what the part contains here. So it's two hundred square feet, so that's correct.
Just below that, I have this remove resilient sheet flooring item. So I'm not going to need that. So no tiles coming out here. We're just going to go ahead and uncheck that part here.
So again, this is kind of built to be tailored to your exact estimate.
So we can uncheck any parts we don't need or that aren't relevant to the project.
And last we have some drywall that are, that, we're going to be removing from the wall here. So it's four eighty square feet of drywall to remove.
So we're going to come back into the template here.
We're going to see what kind of wall drywall we have here. So remove gypsum drywall from wall. It's right here. And it's correct. So at four eighty square feet, so no adjustments necessary.
And I believe that's going to cover all of our demolition.
So moving right along here, let's talk about electrical. So we have, three electrical items that we need to account for. Wall switch for a ceiling box, ceiling box for a light.
And we need to install the new ceiling box or new ceiling light in that box, I should say. So let's come back into the template. Next up is electrical. So we have a lot of electrical items here. So let's look through some of these. We have install box and duplex outlet.
So this is for a wall. So I don't know if this is going to be related. I'm going to go ahead and uncheck that. Next is box and switch open walls. Now I do need a switch, but I'm not sure if this is exactly what I need here. So let's go through the rest.
Install three way switch set. I don't think that's going to be related.
And then further down, we have, install ceiling box, open walls within ten inches of power. So that's exactly what I need. So we're going to keep that checked.
Actually, no. Because right below that, I also see this other item for installing a ceiling box and wall switch. So it's actually kind of covering two of my, tasks here all in one item. So rather than keep this, item above checked, I'm actually going to uncheck that. And we're just going to include this ceiling box and wall switch, since the price of both, the wall switch and the ceiling box are included here in this single part. So it's important to keep, paying attention to these descriptions here.
A lot of parts are kind of assemblies where they're going to include a couple of tasks at once here.
And then here's install ceiling light in existing box. So that's exactly what I need as well. So looking at this item here and this item above for the ceiling light in existing box and install ceiling box and wall switch, That covers all my electrical just in these two parts. So I'm going to come back up here. I had an extra part that I need to uncheck here. So install box and switch. We're going to go ahead and uncheck that.
And then we just have these two electrical items for ceiling box and wall switch and ceiling light, installed in an existing box. And then here in my takeoff that's exactly what I have here. So wall switch for ceiling box, ceiling box for light and install new ceiling light.
So next we need to, we need to install some new drywall. So we have wall drywall and ceiling drywall.
So let's take a look at what we have in drywall here in the template.
So next up here in the template list is going to be wall coverings and ceiling coverings. I always like to reference this category column in the middle. It makes it a lot easier to find particular types of parts rather than reading each description here. So if you do need to find something quickly, that's what I'd recommend.
But here in wall coverings I have install half inch drywall and let's see what we have for measurements. We have four eighty square feet and that was correct.
And then we also have new drywall for the ceiling, install half inch drywall for the ceiling at two hundred square feet. So these in this case, these are correct, but if let's say there was anything different about that drywall, maybe a different dimension of drywall, maybe it's moisture resistant drywall, you can always just uncheck these parts and then add in some moisture resistant drywall or a different dimension of drywall from the library after the template's been added. So we'll we'll we'll show you that here in a minute, but keep in mind this is you're not locked into any of this at all.
So that's all my drywall. So next up here, I have, a door that we need to install. It's going to be a pre hung oak door.
And we also have a lock set that we need to install. Now in this case, the customer's already purchased the lock set.
So they just really need me to install the lock set for them. They've already went out and purchased a lock set they like and they want me to install it on this new door we're going to be installing here. So pre hung, pre hung oak door here that we're going to be installing. So let's come back into our template and then we see these parts for interior doors. So pretty much exactly what I needed, an interior lock set and a, pre hung door here. But again, my customer has already paid for this lock set. I'm not going to be charging them for any materials.
So this is another case where we're going to come back into the takeoff and we need to mark off that something is different here. So this lock set, I need to remind myself here that we need to come back and remove the material cost here because the customer will be providing that. So next is install pre hung oak door. So I'm going to come back into my template and here's an item for a pre hung door, but in this case it's pine.
So I actually needed an oak door. So this isn't relevant to my project at all. So I'm going to go ahead and uncheck this part and we're not going to add in this door, but I will on my takeoff remind myself here that I need to account for that door price later. So I'm going to go ahead and mark that here.
And then next we needed to, price out some trim. So we have new base molding that we need to add in here. As well as new baseboard. We have fifty four linear feet of each.
So new base molding in oak and new baseboard in oak. So let's start with this new base molding. It's fifty four linear feet. We're going to come back into the project here.
We're going to see what we have in our trim section. So down below I do have some trim.
So install shoe base, install base shoe mold rather, oak, and it's three eighths by three fourth.
So that's correct except the measurement is wrong. So once again, we're going to switch this over to fifty four linear feet because that's actually what I need.
And then here for my baseboard, it's also oak fifty four linear feet. So we're going to come back in. Here's decorative. Oh, it's it's pine base.
So in this case, we're not going to add this item in because we actually need to add in an oak base. So the pine base isn't relevant here. So we're going to uncheck that as well. And then I need to remind myself here that this is something I need to come back in and add.
So next we have some flooring. We need to provide and install some oak flooring at two hundred square feet. We're going to come back into the template.
And it looks like there's a couple of different flooring parts. So there's label, labor to install flooring, prefinished solid wood strip flooring. And we have install oak floor solid prefinished. So this is the item I need. So the labor to install the solid wood strip flooring, that's not relevant. So we're going to uncheck that as well.
And then here in install oak floor, that covers my material and labor for that.
So next we have a good amount of painting to knock out here. So we have, some walls, some ceilings, some baseboard, door and window and trim. So let's start off with paint walls, latex. We see that it's four eighty square feet of, walls that we need to paint with two coats. So we're going to come back into the template. And as we're doing this, just keep in mind, you know, we haven't added any of these parts into the project yet. They're still kind of in template form getting staged to be added to the estimate.
Alright. So let's take a look at what we have in painting an interior panel door, windows and trim.
And here is paint wall over smooth finish as well as paint ceiling. So what were we going to go ahead and knock out first? Paint walls with latex four eighty square feet. So let's make sure that is correct here.
So this is paint wall over smooth finish latex roll in. It is two coats. So this is correct. Four eighty square feet.
So what else? Paint ceiling, two hundred square feet of ceiling that we need to paint. So we're going to come back into the template once again.
Here is paint ceiling over smooth finish. It's also two coats. So that's correct. And it's two hundred square feet.
So we had to paint some baseboards at fifty four linear feet here. So we're going to go ahead and look back into our template.
If I scroll down a little bit, here's paint baseboard, sixty linear feet. So we're going to go ahead and change this once again to fifty four.
It's really going to dial it in for our exact project needs here.
Paint door. So we need one coat per side. So we're going to come back into our painting work here. Let's take a look at what we have for paint and here it is. Paint interior panel door, one coat.
Now I noticed this is actually figured out two doors need to get painted. Is that true?
No, because if we read the part description it says per side. So what this is saying is that, quantity of one is for each side or this is a cost per side of painting. So like I said before, it's really important to read these descriptions. This doesn't mean two doors. It just means per side here. So just make sure to read those descriptions.
So that's correct. We need to, we need to paint both sides of the door. So that's correct there.
And paint window and trim. And it's just going to be one window. So we're going to come back here. Paint window and trim.
And that is correct.
And that knocks out all of our paintings. So what's next? Next we have accessories. So we want to install, an Oak shelf.
Let's come back into the template and Oh, that's actually where the template ends. So it doesn't contain anything for shelving here. So there's nothing included in the template for shelving. What else do I need to price out in this estimate?
Some finalizations. So dumping debris and cleanup. I don't see anything in the template for that either. So So it's important to remember that the template template's really a starting point for the estimate.
It's not going to always include every item that you might need, but you can add in those items later. And there may be things about the template you need to modify. So we kind of went through this template today. We adjusted quantities, we removed or unchecked parts that weren't relevant to our project, and it's given us a really nice starting point for the estimate.
We didn't have to search for all these parts. They're all just staged right now to be added to our estimate. So that's exactly what we're going to do. We're going to go ahead and add the template in.
And then down below, we're going to see these different options in terms of where to add it. In this case, we're going to add it to the main window with the rest of our estimate. But we could add it as an alternate for a change order, as a component to create kind of a new room or section, or in an existing section. So again, we're just going to keep that in main window and we're going to go ahead and click add template.
That's going to add that's going to really copy and paste, I should say, the entire template into my project here. So now we're seeing all of those items from the template.
We've compiled a good amount of our estimate here already.
So next, let's come back into our takeoff and let's see what else we need to add in. So we had some shelving we needed to add in. So these are going to be oak shelves. So we're going to come back over here.
We're going to see just how much of that we need. It's actually three linear feet of oak shelves right here.
So let's go ahead and we're going to search for oak shelves.
And right here I see install open shelves. It's ten inches deep on brackets and standards. So if I look at my takeoff, I actually needed to price out brackets as well. So it was just kind of one set of brackets, but it's going to be three linear feet of shelving. So this is great because this is actually kind of knocking out two of my, takeoff items here at once. So we can kind of price out two things at once, the shelves as well as the brackets. And this is, ten inches deep, so that's just what I need.
And then again, we're just going to enter in our linear footage here. So it's, let's take a look here. I believe it was three linear feet and it is. So we're going to go ahead and add in three linear feet. It's going to price out our shelves and we're going to go ahead and add that part.
And lastly, we needed to knock out some finalization. So we wanted to dump some debris. So it's about four cubic yards of debris. So let's come back over here.
I'm going to click at this point browse parts up here and that's going to kind of reset the search here and it's going to allow me to select a category.
So something like dumping debris, that's typically going to be in project finalization. So I can click this dropdown and I could scroll through this list. But a really handy hint here is that you can just type in a term and filter. So if I type in finalization, it's going to pop that category right up. Makes it really quick to find, and select a different category here.
So within finalization, I'm going to use that subcategory drop down again. And we're going to see, general cleaning, dumping debris, dumpsters. I'm going to go ahead and, click load haul and dump debris.
And let's see how much of that I needed. So it's four cubic yards.
So here is an item for four point five cubic yards.
I'm going to go ahead and add that in.
And Then we just had some general cleanup. We wanted to price out. So it's two zero five square feet of cleanup to do here. I'm going to select this drop down again.
We're going to go ahead and grab general cleaning and we have some different options. So we audition cleanup or clean up first floor. This is a first floor bedroom, so I'd say that works. And it's two zero five square feet.
So you're going to see a lot of these parts account for up to a certain square footage in quantity one. So when you're seeing it says up to, that's usually what that means. Or, if it's saying one hundred to two hundred square feet, it's accounting for anywhere in that range all in quantity one. Certain parts will say over x square footage, and those will allow you to type in a square footage, but we see these are actually priced by the piece.
So it's accounting for that square footage it's designating there for you in, one quantity.
So here is cleanup first floor, two hundred to three hundred square feet. Mine's two zero five. So I'm going to go ahead and use this.
It's just going to be one. So again, it's accounting for all two to three hundred square feet in quantity one. And we're going to go ahead and add the part.
And that completes my takeoff other than a few adjustments I need to make. So if we come back up here to the top, we see we still needed to add in an extra charge for disposal of my door. So if I come back into my project here, I'm going to close out of the search. We're going to scroll back down here and look at all of the project parts.
So we're seeing all of these different parts in the project.
What I'm going to do is I'm going to kind of focus on my category in the middle to find my demolition and here's all my demolition.
And here is that item for remove door right here. So I'm going to go ahead and click that open using the pencil. Now there's a few different ways I could do this. If I would just want to tack on an extra cost or an extra charge for, hauling it away, I could add it to the labor cost just by increasing the hours per unit number by clicking the plus.
Another way to do this would be to add in a lump sum number. So I could take my thirty three seventy one, add fifty or so dollars to that, and add it all as a lump sum. So the way we do that is click this hours per unit drop down in blue and add in a flat cost. So there's a few different ways you can charge for labor by the unit.
You can add in a flat cost or just a simple number of hours.
But in this case, I think even easier than any of this would just really be to add in an extra custom part for the trep, for the, cost of removing it. So keep in mind we could tack it onto the cost here. If it were a material cost, you can always, use this multiplier as well, which is great for adding extra percentages in. So for example if this was a material cost here, I could change my multiplier to one point five and add fifty percent of the material.
But not relevant here. This is a labor only cost. So if I don't want to just adjust the labor cost here in the, part then what I can do is just add in a custom part. So I think that's what's going to be easiest. So I click create custom part. We're going to go ahead and put this in finalization.
Or actually I'm sorry. We're going to go ahead and put this in general demolition.
We're going to say haul away door charge.
It'd be better if I just say door disposal.
We're going to go ahead and add in I'm going to say it's a hundred dollars in labor cost here. So we're going to go ahead and save that part.
That was added in. Let's take a look at where that is.
So here's door disposal. And what I want is I think I want that actually sorted below the door part here. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to go ahead and click the dots here on the left of my door disposal part.
And I'm going to drag this down so you can kind of drag parts around a different category, around a particular category.
Right here below remove door, you're going to see there's kind of a red box that's going to indicate where the part's going to get dropped. So that's just where I want it. I'm going to go ahead and let go. And you're going to see that it's going to highlight it in blue and show me where the part was moved right underneath remove door. Now when you're doing that, remember that you can only move parts within one specific category.
So we wouldn't be able to move these into project prep, for example. But, keep in mind that you can also customize the category. So if you needed parts sorted with other parts, you can always adjust the category here. So just a quick hint, about moving parts around.
And so that was all set then.
So next we had this lock set down here and our customer was actually going to be providing the material cost for that. So we're going to go back here into our project. We're going to find that lock set.
It's going to be interior doors.
Here's that interior lock set. And again, the customer already paid for this. So we're going to go ahead and open open this up using the pencil and I'm going to go ahead and uncheck the material cost. That's going to zero out my material and we're going to click save.
That was handled.
So next install pre hung oak door. So we actually need to do just add this item in. So we're going to come back into our project here. We're going to search, oak door.
Now let's look at our dimensions really quick here. So it's two, eight by six, eight and six panel.
And here it is two eight by six, eight, six panel Oak door. We're going to go ahead and grab that item. I just need the one door. We're going to add the part and that knocks out all of the door work.
And the last thing was we just needed to add in this oak base. So it's one half by four and one half oak baseboard and fifty four linear feet. So we're going to come back here to search.
And zero that out. And we're going to type in oak base.
Pine base here comes up first. And then down below, I'm seeing some oak base.
And for my oak base, it's one half by four and one half. So let's come back in here.
One half.
Pine base.
Oak base.
Here it is. Install oak base one half by four and one half.
And again, that's going to be fifty four linear feet. We're going to go ahead and add that part in.
And I think that's it. We've knocked out this entire takeoff list. We've priced out everything in the takeoff and everything should be correct at this point. So let's come back into the project.
Now what else do we need to do? We're not quite done yet. So there's a few more steps here. We need to make sure our markup is correct.
So down here at the bottom, we are like I said in the beginning, you're going to see the actual total of the project here. Next in blue, you're going to see the dollar amount of your markup and then you're going to see your base bid or the number for the customer here in red. Now if we want to adjust our markup, we can do that here using the material labor and subcontractor markup tools. So let's say I wanted to, change this to sixty percent for material and labor, this is where I could do that.
So it's defaulting to fifty percent. It's not a recommendation.
It's really just kind of the default setting. You can adjust this however you see fit to account for your own markup and profit.
So let's go ahead and, change this over to sixty, sixty percent markup for material and labor.
Now, if you'd like some pointers on calculating your markup, just a quick side note here. Right up here at the top, you're going to see the support dropdown and support information.
So if we come over here, we have a great webinar from industry expert, Michael Stone, on calculating your markup. So if we type in calculating your markup, that's going to pop right up. Michael Stone has decades of experience in the construction industry, and has written a number of books on calculating profit markup for contractors in specific. So this is a fantastic webinar if you have questions about that.
And then once again, this is where we can set up the markup for the project.
So we also need to account for tax. So I'm going to come down here to the bottom. You're going to see this miscellaneous item section. We're going to go ahead and click the plus. And this is how we can quickly add in, an extra percentage, or just a dollar amount for taxes or for discounts. We're going to go ahead and call this sales tax.
Let's say six percent.
Down here blue excuse me. Down here below, we can choose, which documents we want the sales tax to appear on. So preliminary, formal, subcontractor, and cost status report. I'm really only using the formal proposal, but I like to check all of these just to be consistent.
And then over here on the right side, we have that choice between a dollar amount or a percentage. I'm going to choose percentage in this case, and we're just going to add in a six percent sales tax here. Just below that, it's going to show you this drop down where you can choose how to calculate that percentage. So do we want that to be from the actual total before markup? We could do it based on the dollar amount of markup, or we could do it based on the base bid, which is the total after markup. And then down here, we'll see other options. So material cost, just the labor cost with or without markup and so on.
So we're going to go ahead and save the item. It's going to show you, really quick the value of the tax item so we can see what that is here. And we're going to go ahead and click save.
Keep in mind, you can manage that miscellaneous item down here in the miscellaneous items list. You You can always open it with the pencil or delete it.
I should mention if you do want to delete parts from your estimate, you can do that using the trash can or by bulk selecting them using the check boxes and you'll see this actions tool where you can move, copy, or delete.
Didn't mention that before, so I did want to just quickly mention that.
Alright. So let's take a look at the report and we'll see how we're doing. We're going to click view report and print to PDF.
And here is the formal proposal. So again, here is my, logo up here at the top. We have our nice company branding there. We have my contact information as well as my homeowners. Though I do want to add a little more detail for my homeowner. I'd like to add his number, and, a few more details about his address and so forth.
Another thing I need to do is I need to customize this contract. So why don't we do that right now? So what we're going to do is we're going to close out of this. And when we want to adjust that boilerplate or contract language that you see at the top of your estimate, we're going to click reports up here at the top. You'll see it looks like a clipboard.
That's going to take us into the boilerplate tool. It's the first page it takes us to. When we want to customize that paragraph of text, this is exactly what we should be looking at is the bottom left of this page here. So once again, we're in reports and boilerplate. And then in the bottom left you're going to see this gray box that says boilerplate information.
So what we'll see here is a number of sample headings or sample language that you can add into a contract or really that are added by default just to show you as an example. So these really aren't intended to be used on any real estimates. They're just examples.
So what we can see here is just all these different examples. As we click them, it's showing us the text within over here on the right side. So for boiler plate, what is it? We're seeing the text for that particular contract here.
General conditions example. Here is the text here on the right. So you can kind of think of these as chapters of a book. And as you click each of them, you see the actual text within over here on the right side.
Now the way you tell Clear Estimate where to put contract language is using these check boxes, P, F, and S. That stands for preliminary, formal, and subcontractor.
Now preliminary and formal, excuse me, preliminary and subcontractor reports can be printed right up here from this tab.
But most often you use the formal proposal. That's why there's that shortcut to the formal proposal that we've been looking at on the projects page.
So down here in the bottom left, we see these three check boxes.
And when we were looking at our proposal a moment ago, we were seeing this language, we were seeing this language. And the reason I know that is because these both have f checked in the middle column here. And that's how we know they're on the formal proposal. So I'm going to go ahead and uncheck these. And in fact I'm just going to uncheck all of the sample language here from any document, with the exception of the subcontractor agreement here. I'm going to leave that because I might want to customize that myself later.
But down here at the very bottom, we're just going to go ahead and click this add heading button. You're going to see it looks kind of like a gray cross in a green circle. We're going to click add heading. And what that's going to do is it's going to create kind of a blank heading here. So new heading. So over here on the right side, I'm going to give it a title. I'm going to say general agreement.
And then I'm going to go ahead and, open up my files here because I do actually have a contract that I went over with my attorney, kind of, put some language together for me, to include on my documents here. So I'm going to go ahead and copy this language.
So you can copy this from a word doc, you can copy it from a PDF, or really any other source.
And then of course we can also just type in an agreement here in the text box. In this case, I'm just going to paste that in.
So here is my contract.
And then I need this on my formal proposal. That's what we're working with today. So I'm going to go ahead and click formal, the f checkbox.
And then if I had anything that I needed at the bottom of the agreement, anything in at the top is really going to be an intro. Anything at the bottom of the agreement is going to be in the outro section. So things like our signature line and so forth. In this case, I just want our general agreement right at the top of the document.
So everything looks good there. So we're going to head back to projects.
And then we're going to go ahead and click the eyeball again for view report and print to PDF.
We're just going to make sure our contract looks good at this point.
So that looks great. And the only other thing I wanted to do was just add in some more contact info for my customer. So I'm going to click out of this. I'm going to click into customers.
It already is going to know which customer I'm working with. So it's going to pull their profile right up. So the way we enter our customer's address and contact info is we're going to click edit from their profile. Again, we're here in customers.
And then we're just going to add in some additional info. So he's at one and two three main street.
It's also here in Ann Arbor.
And we're going to add in his phone number.
We're going to go ahead and click save changes.
Let's go back to our report here. We're going to go to we're going to click projects. That's going to take us back into the project.
Now we're going to click view report. Again, that looks like the eyeball and print to PDF.
And voila, there it is. Here is my formal proposal and you'll see that it's a really nice, very professional agreement that I can send to the client. And again, we see all of the contents of our estimate here. So here's all the line items.
We didn't type any of this in. We didn't have to look up any of these costs. It's even including exact measurements. It's including a good level of detail that the customer can understand here.
And you'll see that everything's kind of organized by cost category. It makes it really easy to spell out the total scope of work for the client in a way they can understand. It looks organized, and very professional. Down here we see our sales tax itemized just below our, project cost and before our total cost after tax.
So that looks great. And then we have our spot for the customer to sign the agreement at the bottom. So this looks great. So I'm going to go ahead and send this to my customer.
So to do that, I'm coming back to the projects page. I'm going to find this send a customer option right here. We're going to send the report to my customer.
When it pops up this box that says send estimate, this is where you can customize the message that's going to be sent in the email. It's going to send your proposal as a PDF attachment.
Might be tempting to come in here and change the customer name in brackets or the company name to your own, but you actually don't need to do that. It's going to do that for you automatically just as is. So if you'd like to see what that looks like, you can just type in your own email here. So let's take a look at how this is going to look for the customer. So I'm going to go ahead and type in my email address.
And then we're just going to go ahead and click send. Keep in mind you can send yourself a copy regardless of where you're sending it off to.
So we're going to click send.
We give it a second to process and there it is.
And we're just going to head into my email here really quick.
And here it is. And it's saying, hi, John. Your estimate is ready from Michael's estimates. We're going to go ahead and click into that.
And here is the proposal attached to this message. You'll see it already inserted my customer's name as well as my own company name here.
And then we could see the proposal attached to the email so they can download that and sign it and everything looks good. So that about covers the process. At this point, we're going to turn to the audience and see if you have any questions. We do want to go ahead and make sure all your questions get answered. So let's take a look.
There's actually no questions from the audience. But if every anything does come up, you can always reach out to us. Let's go ahead and pop back into our slideshow here.
And here is our contact info. If you'd like to get in touch, please reach out to us. We're available nine to five eastern, Monday through Friday for live support. You'll also notice in the bottom right of your screen, there should be a blue chat button.
When you're working in the software, you can reach out to us, that way as well. So we have, phone or chat support and you can also reach out to us at support at Clear Estimates dot com. So as I said in the beginning, we will be doing a few more of these presentations. If you have any suggestions on topics you'd like to see covered, please write in to us at support at Clear Estimates.
And if you do have any questions about the presentation today, please also reach out to us the same way. Thank you so much for joining in and we'll see you next time!