Estimator

A construction estimate builder that runs in your browser

The estimator turns measurements into a priced, printable estimate. You enter dimensions, it works out the materials, you put your own prices against them, and it produces a document you can hand to a customer and an order list you can hand to a merchant. It needs no account, keeps everything on your own device, and works with no connection once the page has loaded.

It is the same arithmetic as the calculators on the rest of the site, with somewhere to put the answers. A calculator tells you that a slab takes 4.2 m³ of concrete; an estimate tells you what the slab, the reinforcement, the labour and the markup come to, on one page, with your business name at the top.

Building an estimate, step by step

1. Start a job. Press + New job, then give it a name, a client and a site address. Pick the region — it decides the pack sizes materials are ordered in and seeds the currency. The currency is the job's own and can be changed on it at any time — around forty are offered, or none at all, which prints plain numbers for anyone working outside the countries the calculators are written for. Nothing is ever converted: every price is one you typed, so the setting decides which symbol appears and nothing else.
2. Add sections. A section is a part of the work: Groundwork, Rear patio, First fix. Each one totals separately and prints as its own block, so a customer can see what each part costs.
3. Add lines. Three ways: + Add calculator runs one of the site's calculators and drops its materials in; + Add assembly adds a unit of work you have built from its parts; + Add custom item is anything you type yourself.
4. Price it. Type a unit price against each material. The wastage percentage sits beside it and is editable on every line — never hidden, never applied twice.
5. Add the rest. Labour, provisional sums, contingency, your markup or margin, and tax. The grand total updates as you type.
6. Print it. Print / save as PDF in the top bar. Choose one of 20 formats first if the default does not suit the job, and Print preview to read the whole document on screen before anything reaches a printer.

Sections, calculators and assemblies

Calculators feed the estimator directly. Currently 133 to 155 of them are wired up per region, across 25 sections — air conditioning, bathroom, concrete & foundations, conversions & units, drainage & earthworks, driveway & hard paving, flooring, garden rooms & outbuildings, home cinema & av, insulation & energy, kitchen, landscaping & outdoor, masonry & brickwork, painting & decorating, plumbing & heating, roofing, security & surveillance, solar sizing, structural steel & metal, swimming pool, timber & framing, underfloor heating, wall & ceiling, waterproofing, windows & doors. Anything the calculators do not cover goes in as a custom item, priced per unit exactly like a calculated line, so nothing about the total depends on whether a calculator existed for it.

Section dimensions

Where more than one calculator in a section asks for the same measurement, that measurement is promoted to the section and entered once. Change the wall length and every line that depends on it recalculates. A dimension used by only one line stays on that line, because promoting it would just create a second place to type it.

Assemblies

An assembly is a unit of work priced from its parts: one square metre of stud partition is studs, board, screws and the hours to put them up. Build it once under Assemblies and every future job can pull in the whole set of parts at a quantity you choose.

Materials, wastage and the order list

Every material used anywhere in the job is combined into one consolidated list, and rounded up to whole packs once, at the very end — not per line. This matters more than it sounds: rounding six lines of sand up to a bulk bag each buys six bulk bags for a job that needs two. The order list shows what you need, what to order, and the estimated delivered weight, which is the figure the merchant needs for the lorry.

Wastage is set per material rather than as one project-wide percentage. A complicated roof wastes more tile than a simple one and a careful bricklayer wastes less than a pallet's ten per cent, so the catalogue figures are ordinary trade allowances rather than laws. Override them for your own habits under Your details, and adjust any single line on the job itself.

Labour, prices and the commercial lines

Labour goes on as a lump sum or as hours against a crew rate you have saved. Crew rates are yours to enter, including the burden — payroll tax, insurance, holiday and sick pay — which is the part most often left out of a quote. There is no wage table behind this, because a national average is wrong for everybody and would need maintaining forever.

Above the materials and labour sit the lines that turn a cost into a price: provisional sums for work not yet specified, a contingency percentage, and your uplift as either markup or margin — two different numbers, and the estimator makes you say which. Twenty per cent markup on 100 is 120; twenty per cent margin is 125. Tax is a rate you set per job, with a CIS domestic reverse charge switch for supplies between registered businesses.

A payment schedule can be attached as percentages of the total rather than fixed amounts, so it stays correct when the price moves — which it does, right up until the customer signs.

The document you send

The printed estimate is a separate document, not the working screen with its controls hidden. 20 formats are available and the choice is saved with the job, so a conservation job and a warehouse fit-out can look like different documents while carrying identical figures — no format can add or omit a line.

Document → What the customer sees decides how much of the working goes across the table: every material line or one figure per section, unit prices shown or not, labour hours or only the money, your markup named or absent. None of it changes the total. Exclusions and terms print under the totals, and every fixed word on the page — headings, column labels, the tax row, the notice at the foot — is an editable setting with a restore button. Add a logo, or let the estimate carry a mark drawn from your business name.

Asking to be paid

Document → Provisional invoice turns an accepted estimate into a request for payment. It itemises: the same sections and lines, labour, provisional sums and tax, then what is due. A job with a payment schedule can be invoiced one stage at a time — deposit, on starting, on completion — and each stage gets its own number, kept, so reprinting the deposit invoice months later hands back the number your customer already has rather than a second document for the same money.

It is a provisional invoice — a proforma — and it says so on the page. In most tax systems a customer cannot reclaim tax against one, so a full invoice still has to follow. Add your payment details under Your details and they print with it; set the days until payment is due and the date is worked out for you. It uses the same 20 formats as the estimate, so both documents look like they came from one business.

Getting the numbers out

• Print or save as PDF — the customer's estimate.
• Provisional invoice — the whole job or one stage of it, on its own numbering.
• Print order list — the merchant's sheet: pack counts and weights, and nothing about your margin.
• CSV — every line, or the order list, for a spreadsheet.
• Export job file — one job, to move or to send.
• Backup → Export all data — every job, your details, prices and assemblies in one file. Importing it replaces everything on the device, so it is a true restore.

Where your work is kept

By default, in your browser on your device. No account, no upload, and no copy on our servers — which also means no password to lose and nothing for us to leak. The practical consequence is that clearing your browsing data clears your jobs with it, and the estimator cannot put them back.

The alternative is a file you keep yourself. The button at the top of the screen says where the work currently lives; switch it and every job, price and assembly goes into one document you choose the location of — your desktop, an external drive, or a folder your cloud client already watches. Put it in Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive or iCloud and it follows you to your other computers, still with no account here and nothing passing through us. It saves on its own, a moment after you stop typing.

That option needs Chrome, Edge or Opera on a desktop — the browser feature it uses does not exist in Firefox, Safari or on phones, and where it is missing the app says so rather than offering something that cannot work. Either way, Backup → Export all data is worth doing periodically.

Common questions

Do I need an account?

No. Build a job, price it, print it and export it without signing up. Everything is stored by your own browser on the device you are using, so there is nothing to log in to and nothing sent to a server.

Where is my work saved?

By default in this browser, on this device, using its built-in storage. That means it survives closing the tab and works with no connection — and also that clearing your browsing data deletes it. On a desktop Chrome, Edge or Opera you can instead keep everything in a file you choose, which the app saves to on its own. Either way, Backup → Export all data keeps a copy you control.

Can I keep my jobs in a cloud folder?

Yes, indirectly. Save the file into the folder your cloud client already syncs — Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive or iCloud Drive — and it reaches your other computers the way any document does. Nothing passes through us and no account here is involved. Two points worth knowing: Google Drive and OneDrive keep some files online-only unless you mark the folder to stay on the device, and editing the same file from two computers at once means the later save wins.

Can I invoice from an estimate?

You can produce a provisional invoice — a proforma — for the whole job or for one stage of a payment schedule, each on its own number. It is a request for payment and says on the page that it is not a tax invoice, because in most tax systems a customer cannot reclaim against one. A full invoice from your own accounting system still has to follow.

Which currency does it use?

Whichever the job is set to, and you can change it on the job. Around forty are offered, plus an option to print plain numbers with no symbol at all for anyone working outside the four countries the calculators cover. No amount is ever converted — every price is one you typed, so the setting only decides which symbol is printed.

Are the prices supplied?

No. Every unit price is one you type. Nothing here reads a supplier feed or a published rate, because a price that goes stale without anyone noticing is worse than no price at all. What the app does remember is what you last paid for each material, and offers it back.

Can I change the wording on the estimate?

All of it. Every fixed word on the printed document — the column headings, the totals rows, the tax label, the notice at the foot — is an editable setting under Your details, with a Restore defaults button for each group.

Is the estimate a fixed price?

No. Quantities are calculated from the measurements you supply and are for ordering and pricing only. Check them against the job as built and against your supplier's pack sizes before you buy, and take professional advice on anything affecting structure, services or drainage.