Frequently Asked Questions

  Trade price files are supplied to us by the manufactures.

  Prices are updated as soon manufacturers supply us the new price files. Depending on the supplier, their products and the market price of materials this could be weekly, annually or anywhere in between.

  Yes you can add new products and ranges to the database and maintain these yourself. If you have your own range of products we can also import these for you at a pre agreed fee to save you time.

  There are standard industrial fitting times that are useful for some professions like Quantity Surveyors to gauge ball park times, but seriously, this is your livelyhood we would advise you use your own times. You are the estimator, you know your particular type of work and your engineers, who is better qualified to know how long it takes your engineers to fit any individual product? By the time you have estimated half a dozen large jobs you should have laboured most of the items that you use. Most importantly, you know these times will be correct for your engineers and your type of work so you won't be losing money because you priced the job wrong using someone elses ball park times.

That said, the database has around 250,000 products (and not every item would carry a labour time in any event), we can supply a file with around a 100,000 fitting times that are mainly on wiring accessories and can be applied to the database.

Estimatng systems are aids to estimating not a replacement for an estimator, so if you are unable to produce an estimate without the fitting times provided for you then you should probably be looking for an estimator rather than estimating software.

  The products in our database are not generic products, they are real products supplied by manufacturers. Take something as simple a kit for a 2 gang socket outlet assembly. There are 1000's of different items in the database from many different manufacturers that could be used. Which manufacturer(s) would you want to have pre-built - and in what combinations. The options are infinate and you would likely have a database cluttered with assemblies that you would never use. Even if a certain brand is specified in this simple example there are still many different 2 gang socket outlets that could be used. In addition to that, would you use that particular brands back box or a more cost effective back box from your wholesaler? As you can see this is not a realistic option. Fortunately, if you have watched our video on creating assemblies you will see that it is a quick and simple process to build your own assemblies that will be useful to you and speed up your estimating.

  It is not browser based software, the application needs to be installed on a PC running Windows. If you have a cloud based system that is running Windows desktop or server editions then you can install and run the software there. You can then work from any device that can connect to that cloud system. That could be a client running our software locally using a VPN to connect to the database server on that cloud system, or a remote desktop connection to our software running on that cloud system.

  The software is designed for Windows. It compatible with all Microsoft Windows desktop and server editions (Home and Pro - Not SE or Mobile). MAC users will need a compatible virtualization systems like Parallels, VmWare, etc. with the required Windows libraries installed on their MAC to run Windows software.

  Depending on the time we receive an order delivery is 3-24 hours, or next working day if the order is placed over a holiday period or the weekend.

This question is mostly asked by users without experience of using these systems. If you are not an estimator with prior experience in using this type of electrical estimating software and are buying the software because you are taking on something out of your normal comfort zone and expecting the application to magically produce the estimate for you tomorrow then please pospone your purchase. As with all software there is a learning curve and you may want to set up some prefferences for best results. If you are under pressure to get the estimate out the door then that is not a good time to be learning a new system.

  This depends on the individual user and their requirements. If you have the required experience it can speed the job up for you and make it easier, but don't think you can pass it to someone without knowledge and it will churn out a professionally priced estimate for them. It is an "aid" to an estimator not a replacement for them, none of these systems will do the job for you. Like any software the more time you put in the faster it gets and the more acurate you become. This is especially so with estimating software as there are many things that can be setup to speed up the process.

   Professional electrical estimating systems require time to setup in order to use them effectively. The Contract Estimating page has 20 videos that cover the program in detail. An initial Contract Estimating overview video shows how the system works. There are then 19 further training videos that show aspects of the system in detail. In all there are around 3 hours of videos that will show you the system faster than you could assess it with a trial. After viewing these videos, if there are still aspects you want to look at we can arrange a live online session where we can show you any areas you wish to explore and answer your questions directly. If customers still want a trial at that stage then we may provide one at an agreed fee. The other option is to rent a licence for 12 months and then buy the software later. In this case we can credit you with the initial 12 month licence against the purchase licence if you wished to switch from rental to purchase.

  We provide a course of training videos - absolutely free. This provides you with on demand training 24/7.

  We operate a fair use support policy that provides you with Free support.