Grow profits with accurate electrical job pricing.

What Is Electrical Estimating Software?

Electrical estimating software streamlines the electrical bidding process with digital tools that help facilitate quantity takeoffs, calculate equipment and material pricing, and build accurate estimates with greater speed and consistency.

There are two main types of estimating solutions on the market:

• Electrical estimating and takeoff software: Platforms created primarily to help electrical businesses facilitate estimating and related processes such as digital takeoff, billing, and pricebook management. Examples of these platforms include Vision InfoSoft, PlanSwift, and McCormick.

• Electrical contractor software: Comprehensive field service or construction management software solutions, such as ServiceTitan, that help contractors facilitate estimates and related processes in addition to other core aspects of business operations, such as customer relationship management (CRM), scheduling and dispatching, payroll, inventory management, and more.

Benefits of Electrical Estimating Software

Improve bid accuracy and profit margins: Estimating software offers tools to automate your pricing calculations based on your equipment costs, material costs, and labor costs to help reduce potential errors when calculating bids manually. They also help calculate your markups to ensure you price your estimates for profitability. 

Get bids done faster: By automating aspects of the estimating process, estimating software allows contractors and estimators to save time when creating bids, ensuring they don’t miss out on jobs due to delays in creating their estimates.

Centralize bid management: Estimating software allows electrical contractors to manage all of their bids in one place. Rather than needing to track and manage bids across miscellaneous Excel spreadsheets and file folders, every bid is stored and accessed from one cloud-based estimating system.

Implement better follow-up practices to close more bids: Some estimating software systems help ensure open bids are followed up promptly. With ServiceTitan, for example, our follow-up feature helps to automate the tracking of open bids and notify the right people on your team to follow up at the right times, ultimately allowing you to close more jobs.

Common Features of Electrical Estimating Software

Pricebook management and/or supplier catalog integration: It is common for estimating software to integrate with digital pricebook solutions or provide access to trade-specific material databases. This functionality helps to ensure electricians have the most up-to-date costs when pricing services and creating bids. With ServiceTitan, contractors benefit from:

• Native pricebook functionality that allows you to upload, build, and/or manage your entire pricebook directly within ServiceTitan.

• Advanced editing features such as bulk editing that make edits and markups to groups of services, packages, equipment, and/or materials. With a few clicks, changes can even be applied across an entire pricebook. 

• Dynamic pricing automations provide the ability to set up rules to auto-update pricing according to customized parameters, such as when certain overhead costs change (e.g. labor rates, materials, etc.).

• Direct, cloud-based access to materials and equipment from top industry supplier catalogs for HVAC, electrical, and plumbing, with automated updates of item descriptions, product images, and pricing as manufacturers make changes.

Digital plan takeoff: Estimating software tends to include tools for facilitating quantity takeoffs to provide speed and accuracy during the takeoff stage. 

With ServiceTitan, customers can export a bill of materials from a takeoff solution and import this data into ServiceTitan to support downstream workflows including selling the estimate, procuring materials and equipment, performing the work, timekeeping, payroll, invoicing, payments, job costing, and reporting.

ServiceTitan is continuously engaging with partners and prospective partners to further streamline workflows via direct integrations through our open API. For more information on our API and integrations that exist today, please refer to https://developer.servicetitan.io/ and https://marketplace.servicetitan.com/partner.

Electrical quoting and estimates: Estimating software provides tools to calculate quotes and estimates based on the most up-to-date pricing of your parts and materials. Most often these tools are specific to construction estimating. However, some platforms offer estimating solutions for both construction projects and service work. 

With ServiceTitan, users benefit from:

• Access to pre-built estimate templates for common jobs to reduce the time it takes to deliver quotes to customers.

• Functionality for creating proposals for residential and commercial service work.

• Functionality for creating in-depth electrical estimates for construction projects. 

• Seamless pricebook integration that ensures accurate pricing.

Inventory, purchase order, and change order management: Estimating software will sometimes provide inventory and purchase order management systems to facilitate requisitions and change orders. With ServiceTitan, contractors benefit from:

• The ability to view and filter through all of their inventory to get the information they need, from item names and codes to quantities on hand or on order.

• Automated tracking of equipment and materials by location (ie. truck, warehouse, etc.), and real-time updates to reflect the number of items needed in a given location.

• Purchase order management to requisition equipment and materials for jobs (from preconstruction through project completion), create and send purchase orders to the appropriate vendors, and track those orders through fulfillment.

• Workflows for managing change orders, adjustments, returns, warranty parts tracking, and more. 

Job costing: The best electrical estimating software provides tools to keep track of costs and monitor profitability for projects. With ServiceTitan, subcontractors and project managers benefit from:

• Job costing flyouts give you a quick breakdown of job costs based on materials, equipment, purchase orders, commissions, and labor units so you can see your profit on every type of job. 

• Project budget versus actual tables that are updated in real-time (a feat that cannot be accomplished in spreadsheets) as crew members log hours in at the job site, inventory is used or ordered, etc.

• Project summaries that help you stay on top of your accounts receivable and improve cash flow.

Electrical project management: Estimating software often includes project management tools that help to facilitate job management. With ServiceTitan, contractors benefit from:

• Digital portfolios for tracking progress and profits throughout the entire project, including a single place to store and access all project information and project documentation (estimates, POs, etc.). 

• Real-time visibility for every line item, so every project stays on budget.

• A task management system that allows you to create, assign, and track job tasks. 

• Job cost management features to know sooner if a project is off track, allowing time to fix the problem to protect profit.

Invoicing and billing: Estimating solutions often include capabilities for invoicing and billing, along with closeout and accepting payments. With ServiceTitan, contractors benefit from:

• Automated generation of payment applications that follow AIA standards to efficiently manage progress billing.

• Automated connection with ServiceTitan job costing to have real-time visibility into your project financials. 

• Seamless connection into ServiceTitan’s accounting features.

Accounting software and integrations: Estimating software typically offers accounting integrations that help to sync estimating and accounting systems. With ServiceTitan, contractors benefit from:

• Real-time financials are updated automatically as jobs or phases of jobs are completed. 

• The ability to click and view job costs from any invoice in real-time (which isn’t possible in traditional accounting software such as QuickBooks).

• Efficiency gains that provide a greater ability to scale your contracting business without adding to your accounting team. 

• Integrations with top accounting platforms (e.g. QuickBooks) and CSV exports to keep your data in sync with your preferred providers.

Factors to Consider When Choosing Electrical Estimating Software

How well does the estimating solution integrate with the other tools you use to run your business? If you’re looking at platforms that are built specifically and primarily for estimating and takeoff, it’s important to figure out how well they integrate with the other tools and platforms you’re using to run your business. 

For example, does it integrate with your CRM, project management, or accounting software? If it does not, that could lead to workflow inefficiencies and data discrepancies down the road. This is why many electrical contractors can benefit from holistic solutions like ServiceTitan, which provides features for CRM, project management, and accounting that work seamlessly with estimating in a single platform. 

Do you have a service division in your business, or are you strictly in construction? Most of the estimating and takeoff solutions on the market are geared toward construction and do not offer tools for creating the types of estimates and proposals that businesses need when doing residential and commercial service work. If you have a service division, it’s worth considering solutions such as ServiceTitan that offer estimating systems for both construction and service work. 

Is the platform easy to use? The intuitiveness of estimating software varies from platform to platform. To get the maximum value and use out of your software, and ensure that your employees actually like using it, it’s essential to choose a platform that is easy to use in both the office and the field.

What resources does the platform offer to help you get the most out of their product? An undervalued aspect of choosing electrical software is considering what resources they offer to help you get maximum value out of their product. With ServiceTitan, users benefit from access to the following:

• Titan Exchange: A cloud-based platform for sharing assets such as contracts, templates, checklists, and other valuable information.

• ServiceTitan Community: A users-only message board to share ideas for our software and business in general. 

• Titan Advisor: A personalized assistant to help you better utilize the platform and accomplish your goals.

• Certified Admin Program: Our Certified Administrator program provides a structured approach to increasing knowledge of ServiceTitan, as well as constant and continuing education on the software.

• Free Peer-Group Training: A program run by ServiceTitan employees through Ember and Spark sessions, designed to share best practices.

Many ServiceTitan users find these resources invaluable for getting the most out of our platform, as well as staying up to date with best practices and strategies that are working for other companies.