Home Builder Estimating Software

Successful Home Builders are turning to home builder estimating software to help control costs, communicate better and bring more profit to their bottom line.

They’re implementing estimating software to help them expedite the creation of:

• More accurate estimates & budgets to control cost overruns
• Professional looking proposals/specifications for the customers to sign
• Purchase orders, Subcontracts and Work Orders to communicate more effectively with vendors and employees

Custom and Semi-Custom home builders are looking for their estimating system to estimate, track and generate client change orders along with expedite the creation of detailed estimates, budgets and purchase orders associated with those changes.

Production and Semi-Custom home builders are looking for their estimating software to expedite the creation of budgets and purchase orders from standard floor plans and options.

Successful home builders are looking for their estimating software to help them:

• Build an item cost database to be used to expedite the generation of estimates, material lists, budgets, proposals/specifications and/or purchase orders, work orders subcontracts and RFQs.
• Build a database of assemblies that can be used to takeoff multiple items with one entry. Example: Exterior Wall types, Standard options, etc.
• Assign specifications to items and assemblies so as they’re building the estimate their building the scope of work/specifications at the same time
• Build Bid Sheet Templates to be used to estimate new homes (Example: Custom Home, Standard Floor Plans and Standard Options bid sheet templates) – Use the catalog of cost items and assemblies along with specifications assigned to them  to build templates (Checklist) to be used estimate new homes
• Easily maintain their cost database  – Allow the updating of vendor pricing electronically via Excel or .csv file format
• Use the estimating system to create Budgets and purchase orders in seconds rather than hours

These same successful home building companies are integrating their estimating software with their  Job Cost Accounting, CRM  software and Scheduling/Project Management software to eliminate entering the same information multiple times.

They’re integrating their estimating software to their job cost accounting software to reduce the need to re-enter the same information, which includes:

• Job information – job name and address
• Contract amount – The contract sale amount
• Buyer information – Buyer information assigned to the job
• Budgets by Category of Work – To track actual costs to budgeted costs to control cost overruns
• Approved Purchase Orders – To aide in processing vendor invoices & payments so they don’t overpay or double pay vendors

Semi-Custom and Production home builders are integrated their CRM software’s “Build a Home” feature with their estimating software to eliminate communication errors. The “Build a Home” feature allows sales people to build a buyer’s purchase agreement from pre-setup floor plans and options. This way what is sold to their buyer is communicated to the estimating department’s estimating system to create budgets and purchase orders. They  also integrating their estimating software back to their CRM software to keep their standard floor plans and option prices up-to-date. This way as cost changes are made in their estimating system so are the retail prices in their CRM software.

Home builders are integrating their estimating system with their Scheduling and Project Management software to setup job’s tasks and vendors associated with those tasks to expedite the setting up job task’s start and end dates along with dependencies.

Many successful home builders are integrating their estimating software to a Builder/Client/Vendor web portal to share released purchase orders, work orders and subcontracts. This way their vendors and/or project managers can view them remotely with any smart phone or device that has internet connectivity. This way they’re reducing the need to manage the communication of purchase orders, subcontracts and work orders via e-mail.

Contractors Software Group’s (CSG’s) estimating products are full-blown estimating software that  expedites your estimating process and the creation of professional looking proposals/specifications for the client to sign. Once the job was sold It was also designed to create purchase orders, subcontracts and work orders from the estimate in seconds.

For more information on Contractors Software Group’s products go to:https://contractorssoftwaregroup.com/construction-software-solutions/construction-estimating-software/