Ten years ago, Nolan Orfield’s father Wally was looking into new estimating software options for the family’s remodeling business. The commercially available options either had more features than the company needed, or were generally too expensive. Entering everything into Excel was free, but tedious. To solve the problem, Orfield had desktop estimating software built to meet his dad’s needs, ultimately discovering that other remodelers were looking for the same solution. Orfield started selling the software, and now Clear Estimates is on its eighth version. “We’ve been growing a lot, with 50% growth just this year in our user base,” Dean says. “It’s great that people are so excited about it.”
Clear and Simple
Dean says one of the biggest complaints he’s heard from users is that estimating takes too long and requires too much data entry. “If you have a list of 50 or 100 parts for the project, no one want’s to type all that out,” he says. “Some people have set up good workarounds with copy-and-pasting Excel cells, but that’s still cumbersome.”
Simplifying the process, Clear Estimates software comes pre-loaded with details for 12,000 parts, including material cost, labor cost, and a product description. By selecting parts from the list, users can create an estimate with almost no typing needed. Reports can be customized with the user’s company logo, contact information, and payment schedules. The products database is customizable for users that want to call out items they use on a regular basis. Clear Estimates’ partner company RemodelMax updates the data on material prices and labor every quarter for 400 regions around the U.S. so users can be sure they’re estimates are accurate for their area.
Room templates can make the process even easier. Dozens of templates, such as “bathroom remodel, premium grade,” let users select the square footage of the space and have the program calculate all the necessary products and pricing based on pre-determined levels of finish. “If you have templates set up the way you like, you can create an estimate in 5 minutes,” Dean says. “That’s the biggest thing we hear – that people are sick of spending hours to put together an estimate. Getting the work done quicker gives a better chance of winning the bid.”
Other features include:
- Subcontractor bid requests
- Change order processing to show how changes will affect project cost
- Cost Status Reports to track the changing cost of the project and payments made by your customer
- Detailed line-item or summarized tabular reports
- Integration with Quickbooks Pro
- Customer contacts management
Familiar Tool
The idea of preset room templates may sound familiar to readers of Remodeling’sCost vs. Value report. The annual look at remodeling projects’ return on investment is built around pre-determined scopes of work for a selection of mid-range and upscale remodeling work. RemodelMax uses Clear Estimates software to create an estimate for each Cost vs. Value project in each region. Read more about the methodology here.
The Cost vs. Value project uses the latest version of Clear Estimates, which has recently moved from desktop-only to the cloud. “The software is now fully online, and we can make updates regularly without asking users to download a new version,” Dean says. “You can also use it on any device, whether you’re on a tablet, Mac, PC, phone, or anything. We have people who make estimates for their clients right in the field on iPads and give them to the homeowner before they leave the site. It’s gotten even easier.”
