Estimates
Price a job, wrap it in a cover page and your terms, and send the customer a link they can read, choose from, sign and pay on.
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What it is
Estimates is where you price a job and send it to the customer. You open it from the left menu: Work›Estimates. On a phone it is under More.
Each estimate is a proper document, not just a total. It carries your company letterhead, a list of priced lines, any photos you attach, your terms, and — new since the last release — custom pages above and below the pricing: a cover page, an about-us blurb, a warranty page, or a PDF you upload. The customer opens it on a link, picks the package they want, ticks off the optional extras, signs on screen, and pays a deposit or the full amount.
The list
Every estimate you have written, with six money tiles across the top — All, Drafts, Sent, Viewed, Signed and Expired — that double as filters.
The editor
On a computer you build the estimate on a page that already looks like the finished document. On a phone you get a stack of cards instead, since the document layout needs the width.
The customer's page
A link with no login. They read it, choose an option, sign with a finger or a mouse, pay, and can download the whole thing as a PDF.
Estimates are separate from Auto Transport Estimates and Garage Door Estimates. Those are industry add-ons with their own pages, their own customer link and their own settings. This guide covers the main Estimates page only.
When to use it
- Quoting a job before the work is agreed, whether or not there is a lead behind it.
- Giving the customer a choice — good / better / best — and letting them pick.
- Taking a deposit up front so a job is properly booked.
- Getting a signature on a scope of work and your terms before anyone turns up.
- Sending a warranty page or a signed contract PDF alongside the price.
Use Invoices instead when the work is already done and you just want paying — or use Convert to Invoice on an accepted estimate, which carries the lines across for you. Use Work Orders when the job is won and you need to hand parts of it to field workers with their own pay.
Before you start
- Your role needs Estimates access. An owner or admin turns this on under Settings›Team Roles. Without it the menu item is hidden and the page cannot be opened.
- Card payments are a separate switch. The deposit is recorded on the estimate either way, but the customer only sees a Pay button once online payments are live for your company. See Payments — it is a five-minute activation form, not an account you set up elsewhere. Until then the customer's page reads "Online payment is not currently set up for this estimate."
- Set your document up once, before you send anything. Admins do this under Settings›Estimate & Invoice Settings, and there is an Estimate settings button at the top right of the Estimates page that goes straight there. Fill in the Branding, Pages & Terms and Defaults tabs first — every new estimate is stamped from them.
- A Price Book saves a lot of typing. Lines can be typed by hand, but Add from Price Book pulls in the name, description, price, tax and photo in one click. See Price Book.
- Texting the estimate needs your number registered. Email works out of the box. A text goes out alongside it only once carrier registration is approved and you have switched the Estimate sent message on. See Phone Registration.
- Your company may use different words. "Lead" and "Office Agent" can be renamed for your account, so the buttons in this guide may read "Job" or "CSR" instead.
Step-by-step
Write and send an estimate
- Open Work›Estimates and click New Estimate at the top right. (Create new›Estimate beside your company name does the same thing.)
- Fill in Prepared for — first name, last name, company, phone and email. Nothing here is compulsory, but the email address is what the estimate is sent to, so a missing one means you can only copy the link by hand.
- Set Valid until if the price should not stand forever. New estimates start at 30 days from today.
- Fill in the Service Location, and use Same as service location under Bill To if the bill goes to the same address.
- Add your lines. Add Item types one by hand, Add from Price Book picks from your catalogue, Add Section drops in a heading such as Kitchen or Materials, and Add from Template loads a saved set of lines.
- Check the totals on the right. Subtotal, Discount and Tax % fill themselves in from the lines; typing over one of them pins it, and a small reset arrow appears to hand control back.
- Set the deposit on the Deposit due to book bar. Use the $ / % buttons to switch between a flat figure and a percentage — the line beside it shows = $X · remaining $Y as you type.
- Write anything the customer should read in Notes to customer, and anything they should not in Internal notes in the right-hand column.
- Click Preview to see exactly what the customer will get. This saves the estimate first, then opens the real customer page with signing and payment switched off.
- Click Save & Send. The estimate is saved, its status moves to Sent, the email goes out, and you are taken back to the list. Use Save Draft instead if you are not ready — the customer is not contacted and nothing is sent.
💡 It saves as you type. Once an estimate exists, changes are saved about a second after you stop typing and a small Saving… appears in the toolbar. The two exceptions are estimates with several options — those show "Multi-option estimates don't autosave — use Save to keep these changes" — and estimates that are already paid, which are read-only.
Quote a job that is already a lead
- Open the lead and use its Estimate action.
- The new estimate opens with the customer's name, phone, email and address already filled in, and it is linked to that lead. If the lead already has priced items on it they arrive as lines and you get a "Loaded N items from lead" message.
- If the lead has notes but no priced items, click AI Generate to turn those notes into lines. (See Writing lines with AI.)
- Price it, then Save & Send as above.
You can also link a lead or a client after the fact, from Link a lead… and Link a client… near the top of the editor. Linking matters: it is what puts the estimate on the customer's history and lets an invoice and a work order inherit the same job.
Offer the customer a choice of packages
- Build the first package as normal.
- Click Add proposal options under the line items. What you have becomes Option 1, marked as recommended, and an empty Option 2 is created beside it.
- Use the tabs to move between options. Each has its own name, Description (visible to customer), lines, deposit and photos.
- Use Duplicate option to copy one as the starting point for the next, and Mark as Recommended to put the star on the one you want them to take.
- Send it as usual. The customer sees a Choose Your Option row of cards and clicks Select This Option; their choice is locked once they sign.
Convert to single option flattens the estimate back down to whichever tab you are on, if the customer has told you which one they want.
To reuse the whole set on other jobs, click Save as Template and keep Save all options ticked. The template keeps every option with its name, description, lines, deposit, discount and tax, and which one is recommended. Load it into a new estimate with Add from Template and all the options come back. If the estimate already has options or lines, you are asked before they are replaced. Pick Only this option instead to save just the lines of the tab you are on.
Let the customer tick the extras themselves
- In the right-hand column, under Customer selection, switch on Let customer choose items.
- Mark the lines they can decline with the Optional pill that appears on each row.
- Send it. Each optional line gets a tick box on the customer's page, and the total recalculates as they tick. Deselected lines show struck through with a Not included pill.
- Their selection freezes once they sign, once they pay, or once the estimate expires.
This cannot be switched on while you have typed a manual subtotal, discount or tax figure, or while the line items are hidden from the customer — clear those first.
How to check it worked
- It saved: a brand-new estimate gets a number and the address bar changes from new to the estimate's own edit page. You see "Estimate created!" or "Estimate updated!"
- It sent: the message reads "Estimate created and sent to customer!", you land back on the list, and the row shows the Sent chip with a small delivery badge beside it. If sending failed you are told so explicitly — and the estimate is still saved.
- They opened it: the Viewed column fills in, the toolbar in the editor shows 👁 Viewed with the date, and the Viewed tile at the top of the list goes up.
- They signed: the status becomes Signed, the toolbar shows ✍️ Signed, and the customer's page shows their signature image under Proposal Signed.
- They paid: the status becomes Deposit Paid or Fully Paid, the Paid column fills in, and the payment appears on the Payments page. Bank payments sit at Payment Processing for a few days first.
- They picked a package: the customer's row in the list shows a green ★ Chose: {option name} pill.
- Your custom pages are on it: click Preview, or Portal to open the live page. The cover page appears above your company header; the warranty page appears after the terms and before the signature box.
Common mistakes
AI Generate wiped the lines
It replaces every line, it does not add to them. And when the linked lead already has notes it runs immediately without asking. Price the job after you generate, not before.
"I fixed the cover page but the old one still went out"
Every estimate takes a copy of your company pages when it is created. Editing the template afterwards changes new estimates only — including drafts you already started. Fix those on the estimate itself.
Nothing on the form can be edited
Once an estimate is fully paid, completed, cancelled or refunded it goes read-only and an amber banner says which. Refund or reopen it to make changes. Signed estimates additionally lock their pages so the signed copy cannot change.
Looking for a Duplicate button
In the Estimates list, open a row's ⋯ menu and click Duplicate: it opens a new estimate with every option, line and setting copied, ready to edit. Duplicate option copies one package inside a single estimate. To reuse a set of lines, or a whole set of options, across estimates, use Save as Template and Add from Template.
- Sending with no email address. Send to Customer appears whenever the estimate can reach someone: an email address, or a phone number when your Estimate sent text is switched on under Settings›Quotes & Docs›Estimate Settings›SMS. With neither, sending is refused — use Copy Link and paste it into a message yourself.
- Expecting a Decline button. There isn't one. The customer can choose an option, untick extras, sign, pay or download the PDF — nothing else. If they say no, change the status yourself from the badge on the list.
- Confusing the two dates. Valid until is a note on the document; it does not stop anyone opening the link. The link itself expires separately, after the number of days set in Settings›Estimate & Invoice Settings›Defaults (365 by default), counted from the last time you sent it. An expired link shows Link Expired — resending mints a fresh one.
- Turning the portal design switch on the wrong estimate. Use the new design changes this estimate and quietly becomes the default for every estimate you create afterwards.
- Looking for estimate tags. Settings›Estimate Tags belongs to the Auto Transport add-on and does not tag estimates on this page. Use Statuses and their sub-statuses instead.
- Expecting a spreadsheet export or a sort control. The Estimates list has neither. It is always newest first, and you narrow it with the tiles, the search box and the two drop-downs.
- Uploading a big PDF. A file over 10 MB is refused with "PDF must be under 10 MB". Keep it under 10 MB and 25 pages.
- Deleting instead of archiving. Delete in the row menu is permanent and only asks once. If you just want it out of the way, move it to a status you keep for dead quotes.
More detail (13)
Finding an estimate again
The six tiles across the top of the Estimates page are both a summary and the quickest filter: All, Drafts, Sent, Viewed, Signed and Expired, each showing a count and a money total. Click one to filter to it.
Below them, the search box takes a name, email, phone number or estimate number, and there are two drop-downs — All statuses (which includes any statuses you have created yourself) and All balances (Balance due, Expired balance). The list is always newest first, 50 to a page.
The table shows, from left to right:
- Estimate # — and the linked lead number underneath, when there is one.
- Customer — links to the client record, and shows the package they chose.
- Total and Deposit (the deposit column appears once card payments are on).
- Status — click the badge to change it without opening anything.
- Invoice, Viewed, Signed, Paid — hover the Created cell for exact timestamps.
- Created By and Created.
The ⋯ menu at the end of a row holds:
- Edit — open the estimate.
- Collect payment — take a card in person, when Tap to Pay is on.
- View Portal — open the customer's page in a new tab.
- Copy Link — copy that page's address to paste into a message.
- Download PDF — the same PDF the customer gets, saved to your computer.
- Print — opens that same PDF in a new tab, in your browser's PDF viewer, ready to print or save from there. In the phone app (1.2.2 or newer) it goes to the phone's print screen instead.
- Send to Customer — email it, or text it when the row has only a phone number. Works on a signed, paid or cancelled estimate too: the customer gets their copy, nothing is asked of them, and the estimate's status is untouched.
- Convert to Invoice — carries the lines across; a second attempt just reopens the invoice already made.
- Reset Signature — clears the signature and drops the status back to Sent so they can sign again.
- Delete — permanent.
Ticking rows opens a bar with Change status and Apply status, Resend, SMS reminder, Email reminder and Delete. The header tick box takes the page you are looking at, and the bar tells you how many of your selection have an email address and how many have a phone number. Delete asks first and says how many of the ticked estimates are signed or have a payment; it cannot be undone.
Line items, sections and the Price Book
Each line has a Type (Service, Product, Labor or Other), a name, an optional description, and then Qty, Price, Disc% and Tax%. Drag the handle on the left to reorder, and use the small camera button to put a photo on a single line — it shows on the customer's page next to that item.
Add Section inserts a heading row with its own description. Sections group the work visually and never add anything to the total.
The internal cost strip (admins)
Type a figure in the orange Cost column and a grey strip opens under the line showing Markup %, Margin and Line profit. Type a markup and the price is worked out for you. The right-hand Profit (internal) panel adds it all up. None of this ever reaches the customer.
Add from Price Book opens your catalogue with a search box, a category filter and — for admins — a Show cost/margin switch. Tick several items and click Add N items. Catalogue items that have options open a second window so you can pick which ones to add; each becomes its own line under a section named after the item.
Save as Template stores the current set of lines for the whole company under a name you choose; Add from Template loads one. Templates add to what is already there rather than replacing it. A template saved with Save all options is the exception: it brings back all of its options and asks first if that would replace what is there. On an invoice it adds the lines of its recommended option.
Under Client sees in the right-hand column you control how much of this the customer actually gets: Items, Quantities, Line prices, Line totals, Section subtotals, Hide $0 totals and Hide $0 prices. Switch Items off entirely and they see a summary with the totals only. The starting position for all seven comes from Settings›Estimate & Invoice Settings›Defaults.
Custom pages: covers, warranties and uploaded PDFs
An estimate is not only a price list. You can wrap content around it — a cover page, an about-us page, a warranty page, photos, or a PDF you upload with the customer's details stamped onto it. There are exactly two places it can go.
Above the estimate
The first thing the customer sees, before your company header. This is where a cover page goes.
Below the estimate
After the terms and before the signature box. This is where a warranty page, a thank-you note or an uploaded contract goes.
You build the pages once, for the whole company, under Settings›Estimate & Invoice Settings›Pages & Terms. The tab has three parts in the order the customer reads them: 1. Above the estimate, 2. Terms & Conditions, and 3. Below the estimate. One Save Pages & Terms button saves all three, and a live preview sits beside them.
Content is built from blocks. Add block offers Heading, Text, Bullet list, Photo, PDF, Divider, Space and Page break. In Settings you get the full set of controls — drag to reorder, heading size and colour, bold, text size, image width and alignment, captions, and the uploads. There is an Undo button, and Ctrl/Cmd + Z works inside the editor.
Uploading a PDF
- Add a PDF block and click Choose PDF. Up to 25 pages, under 10 MB.
- Its pages appear in the editor. On any page, use Drop a field here to place a detail such as the customer's name or the estimate number.
- Drag the field where you want it, or select it and nudge it with the arrow keys — hold Shift for bigger steps.
- Give it a size (S, M or L) and a colour.
- Replace PDF swaps the file and keeps the block.
Insert field works in every block type and drops a detail in at the cursor: the customer's name, first name, email, phone or address; the estimate number, total, deposit, balance, issue date or valid-until date; your company name, phone, email, website or address; or today's date. They fill in automatically when the customer opens the page.
Page break only does something in the downloaded PDF. On screen there are no pages, so it is invisible; in the Settings preview it is drawn as a dashed line labelled Page break · PDF only.
⚠️ Each estimate keeps its own copy. When an estimate is created it takes a snapshot of the company pages as they were at that moment. Changing the template later does not touch estimates that already exist — deliberately, so a proposal a customer has already signed can never change under them. It also means a draft you started last week still has last week's cover page.
On an individual estimate the same two areas appear as Pages above the estimate and Pages below the estimate (on a phone they are under Notes, as Estimate pages). Here the editor is deliberately cut down: you can retype the words, delete a block you do not want, and add a simple heading, paragraph, list, divider or space. You cannot reorder, reformat or upload — photos and PDFs inherited from the template show as "Photo from your company template" and "{name} — N pages from your company template", which you can keep or remove but not re-author. Once the customer has signed, the pages lock completely.
There is a ceiling of 60 blocks on a single estimate. For the full walkthrough of building a template, see Custom Estimate Pages.
Writing lines with AI
AI Generate turns a description of the job into line items. It sits in the toolbar of the document editor, and in the header of the Line Items card on a phone.
- If the estimate is linked to a lead and that lead has notes, the button runs straight away against those notes. No window opens and nothing asks you to confirm.
- Otherwise a Generate Estimate with AI window opens. Describe the work, click Generate, and it writes the lines.
It replaces the whole list of lines, clears any subtotal, discount or tax figures you typed by hand, and fills in a deposit. It works from your words only — it does not read your Price Book and it does not know the customer. If no prices appear in what you wrote, every line comes back at $0 for you to fill in.
💡 Have it run on its own. Under Settings›Estimate & Invoice Settings›Defaults there is an Auto-generate from lead notes switch. With it on, starting an estimate from a lead that has notes but no saved items kicks off the generation for you. It is off for every company until someone turns it on. AI runs use your account credit — if you run out you are told to top up under Billing›Credits.
What the customer sees
The customer gets a link that opens without a login. It reads top to bottom like a proposal:
- Your cover page, if you have one.
- Your company header — logo, name, phone, email, website and address, each of which can be hidden.
- The title block: your heading, the estimate number, the date it was issued, Valid Through, a status pill, and who it is prepared for.
- Choose Your Option, when you sent more than one package. The recommended one carries a ★ Recommended ribbon.
- Services & Items — the lines, with tick boxes on any you marked optional, then Subtotal, Discount, Tax, Total, Deposit Due and Balance After Deposit.
- Photos, if you attached any, and your Notes.
- Terms & Conditions.
- Your warranty or thank-you page, if you have one.
- Acceptance & Signature — a tick box agreeing to the terms, a box to sign in, and the accept button.
- The payment box, once they have signed.
A Download as PDF button sits at the top, and a bar sticks to the bottom of the screen showing the amount and the next thing to do — Sign to Accept, Pay Deposit, Pay Now or Pay Balance. The accept button stays greyed out until they have both ticked the terms and drawn a signature.
The link is a short address on your own company web address, and it carries a private code — anyone with the link can open the estimate, so treat it like a password. After it expires the page shows Link Expired with your phone number; sending the estimate again gives them a fresh window.
There are two looks, classic and the newer design. They contain exactly the same things — the difference is styling. You switch between them per estimate with Use the new design under Portal design in the right-hand column of the editor. There is no setting for this in Settings, and flipping it also sets the default for estimates you create afterwards.
Deposits and payment
The deposit is set on the estimate, either as a flat amount or a percentage, and defaults from Default Deposit % under Settings›Estimate & Invoice Settings›Defaults. The estimate always records it. Whether the customer can pay it depends on two things: online payments being live for your company, and the Online payment switch on this particular estimate.
- Before signing there is no payment box at all — signature first, then money.
- With a deposit set, the button reads Pay ${amount} Deposit; without one, Pay ${amount} Now.
- After a deposit is paid, a Remaining Balance box appears with Pay ${amount} Balance.
- Card or bank is offered where both are available. Bank payments show Bank Payment Processing and take a few business days to clear.
- Refunds show on the customer's page too, as Payment Refunded or Partial Refund Issued.
You can also take the money in person: Collect payment in the row menu opens the card reader flow for the deposit, the balance or the full amount. See Tap to Pay on iPhone.
⚠️ Paid means locked. A fully paid estimate becomes read-only and the form stops accepting edits. The banner tells you why — "Refund the payment to make changes." Plan for that before you take money on a quote you are still negotiating.
Sending, resending and chasing
There is no send window and no channel picker — sending is one click, from any of:
- Save & Send in the editor.
- Send to Customer in the row menu, or Send on a phone.
- Resend on the bulk bar, for a batch.
What goes out is the branded email you set up under Settings›Estimate & Invoice Settings›Email — subject, CC addresses, header title and colour, greeting, introduction, which figures to show, button text and footer. A text message goes out alongside it automatically if you have switched on Estimate sent under the SMS tab and the estimate has a phone number. You cannot choose one or the other at send time, and you cannot edit the wording there either.
Automatic reminders
Under the Reminders tab, switch on Auto reminders and set Maximum reminders (3 by default) and Days between reminders (3 by default). Choose whether they go by Email reminders, SMS reminders or both, and edit the reminder email and text on the same tab. They only chase estimates that have been sent and not yet signed. Auto reminders start off.
To chase by hand, tick the rows on the list and use SMS reminder or Email reminder. The text can be edited in the window before it goes, with a live character and message-part count; the email uses your saved reminder template as-is.
Statuses
An estimate moves through Draft → Sent → Viewed → Signed → Deposit Paid → Fully Paid, with Payment Processing in between for bank payments. Most of those move themselves as the customer acts. You can also change one by hand from the badge on the list, the bulk bar, or the badge in the editor toolbar.
Admins manage the list under Settings›Estimate & Invoice Settings›Statuses. Each status has a Status Name, a Badge Color from ten presets or your own, an Applies To choice (estimates here, plus the industry add-ons you have), a Set as default status tick box, and optional Sub-Statuses — useful for recording why a quote was lost. Drag the handle in the Order column to reorder them.
Worth knowing
- Core statuses carry a System badge. They cannot be renamed, deleted or switched off.
- A status that estimates are already using cannot be deleted — switch Active off to retire it instead, which keeps your old reports intact.
- The default status cannot be deleted either. Make another one the default first.
- Keep the list short and tied to real stages. Four near-identical "waiting" statuses make every report unreliable — use sub-statuses or notes for the detail.
Branding and wording
Under Settings›Estimate & Invoice Settings›Branding you choose which company details appear on the customer's page — Show Company Logo, Show Phone Number, Show Email Address, Show Website and Show Address, all on to start with. Below them, four override boxes let you print a different company name, phone, email or website on estimates than the one on your account; leave them blank to use your company details. There is also an Accent Color.
The logo itself is not uploaded here — it comes from Company Settings and the estimate reads the same one.
The Portal Text tab controls the words: Portal Heading (which reads "Proposal" until you change it), Portal Subheading, Accept Button Label and Post-Signature Message. There is a Rewrite with AI box at the top that will draft all of them from a sentence about your business. The boxed Extra Button Text and Extra Button Link put one more button beside the payment button — for a finance application, say — and it only appears when both are filled in.
All the settings, in one place
Everything an admin can configure lives on one page: Settings›Estimate & Invoice Settings. It opens with two tabs at the very top — Estimates and Invoices — and the Estimates side has nine tabs of its own. The Estimate settings button at the top right of the Estimates page goes straight there.
Branding & Portal Text
Which company details show, name and contact overrides, accent colour, and every heading and button label on the customer's page.
Pages & Terms
Your cover page, your terms sections, and your warranty page — with a Generate Terms button if you are starting from nothing.
Defaults
Default tax and deposit percentages, how many days the link lasts, an estimate number prefix, the auto-generate switch, and which columns new estimates show.
Email, Reminders & SMS
The email the customer receives, the follow-up schedule, and four text templates — estimate sent, estimate paid, invoice sent, invoice paid.
Price Book
Your catalogue of priced services and products, edited without leaving the page.
Statuses
Your estimate lifecycle, its colours, its order and its sub-statuses.
💡 Set-up order that works: Branding first, then Pages & Terms, then Defaults, then Email. Send one estimate to yourself and open it on a phone before anyone sends one to a customer. Only then bother with Reminders and SMS.
Two quirks worth knowing. The SMS tab's on/off switches save the instant you flip them — the Save button underneath is only for changes to the message wording. And the whole SMS tab is replaced by a set-up card until your carrier registration is approved. The Estimate Portal Domain shown on the Defaults tab is your company's own web address for these links; it is shown for reference and cannot be edited here.
Photos
The Photos panel takes reference shots — the broken part, the site, the finished look you are quoting for. Drag them onto the panel or use Add photos. Each can have a caption, which is saved when you click away. They show on the customer's page in a grid they can click to enlarge.
- JPG, PNG or WEBP, up to 5 MB each.
- On an estimate you have not saved yet, photos wait with a PENDING badge and upload when you save.
- With several packages, each option tab keeps its own photos.
- If you use CompanyCam, Add from CompanyCam offers This job (the linked lead's project) and All photos. See CompanyCam.
Photos on individual lines are separate — those come from the small camera button on the line itself, or arrive with an item you added from the Price Book.
On your phone
- Estimates are cards rather than a table. Tap one to open it; each card has Edit and either Invoice, Send or Copy Link.
- Pull down from the top of the list to refresh it.
- The editor is always the classic stack of cards, and every card starts folded — tap a heading to open it.
- The tiles, the search box and the filters are all there. The bulk bar and the tick boxes are computer-only.
- The customer's page is built for a phone, signature box included — most customers sign on one.
Who can do what
- Estimates permission — reaches the page at all. Set per role under Settings›Team Roles.
- Owners and admins — see the Estimate settings button, the orange Cost column, the margin strip and the Profit (internal) panel, and can open every settings tab.
- Field workers limited to their own records — must link a lead before an estimate can be saved.
- Logins with customer contact hiding on — see the phone and email as dots and cannot edit them.
- Customers — need no login at all. The link is the key.