Creating an Estimate

Overview

An estimate outlines the services, labor, and materials needed to complete a job. Building and sending estimates is the backbone of how your company makes money, so it’s important to understand how to create estimates efficiently.

This article explains the basics of how to create an estimate. The steps below walk through a scenario where a residential customer, the Boyds, contacted our company, GreenScene, looking for an estimate on installing two maple trees and constructing a small garden area around the trees. To keep things simple for this basic article, we create a new work order opportunity with a fixed price on completion invoice type, which is very easy to estimate for.

Things to know

This article walks you through creating a basic work order estimate and doesn’t examine every field, column, and function in the Estimate screen. For complete descriptions of every part of the Estimate screen, read our estimate screen reference.
An estimate is built of three main components: service groups, services, and items.
There are some important differences in how you build and complete estimates for different invoice types. After you read this article, read our invoice type-specific articles about work order estimating and contract estimating to learn more.
Optional services are services not specifically requested by the client, added as potential upsells either right away or later in the opportunity life cycle. Optional services are not included in the total estimated price. Learn more in our article about optional services.
An estimate and a proposal are the same thing! An estimate is what you build in Aspire. A proposal is a completed estimate sent to a customer for approval.

Requirements

This article assumes you’ve already created a property and an opportunity for the job.
To access the Opportunities module, you need the View Opportunities or View Only My Opportunities permission added to your user role.
To create new opportunities from a property, you need the Add Opportunity permission added to your user role.
To edit Opportunities, you need the Edit My Opportunities or Edit All Opportunities permission added to your user role.
To win Contracts or Work Orders, you need either or both Win Contracts and Win Work Orders permissions added to your user role.
To lose Contracts or Work Orders, you need the Lose Opportunities permission added to your user role.

Note:
Your company may have additional restrictions to accessing properties and opportunities. Read our article about restricting property and opportunity access for more information.

Key terms

Term	Definition
Service group	A field that lets you group related services together on an estimate. Service group labels are shown on printed proposals.
Service	The specific work you're proposing to the customer. Services contain items, and each service becomes a work ticket after the opportunity is won.
Items	The individual components that make up a service. Items include labor, materials, and equipment. Items generally determine the cost of a service.
Occurrence (OCC)	Used on contracts to set how many times a service repeats. Each occurrence generates a separate work ticket when the opportunity is won.
Proposal	A completed estimate sent to a customer for approval.

Steps

Build the estimate

After you’ve created an opportunity for a property, open the opportunity.
Select Create Estimate under the Save button. This saves any changes you made to the opportunity and takes you to the Estimate screen.
Select the Default Group heading, and enter a name for your service group. For our example, we enter “Tree Installation”.
Note:
A blank estimate has two service groups – a Default Group, and an Optional Services group. Anything you put in the default group is required for the work.
In the Select a Service field, start typing the name of a service you want to add to the estimate, then select the service from the dropdown. For our example, we type “tree” and select “Tree Installation”.

Note:
After you select something in the Add a Service or Add an Item dropdowns, a new dropdown always appears so you can easily keep adding services and items to the estimate. Select the + icon next to a service group to add a new one if needed.
Now you need to add items to the service. Select the Add an Item dropdown below the service to add labor, materials, or other items. For our example, we type “maple” and select the “Brandywine Red Maple”.

Note:
Notice that when you select an item, the financial columns like price, cost, and profit automatically update for the service group and the service based on the item cost. Learn more in our article about pricing.
Next, add a labor type item to the service so your crews can get paid. Select the Add an Item dropdown again, and search for the correct labor item. For our example, this is an enhancement, so we select “Labor - Enhancement”.
Repeat steps 4 through 6 to add any additional services and items you need for the estimate. In our example, we ended up with two service groups called “Tree Installation” and “Bed Installation” with the appropriate items.
Tip:
If you added something to the estimate by mistake, scroll to the far right of the estimate table, select the three-dot icon next to the correct row, then select Delete.
In the Quantity field for each item, enter the amount needed if the default amount needs to change. For our example, we updated the quantity for the tree we selected to “2” since the Boyds want two trees. Since one tree takes about an hour to install, we also updated the labor quantity to “2”. We’ll only be using the loader we selected for about half the total tree installation time, so we left its quantity at 1 hour.
If you’re creating a contract estimate, enter the number of occurrences in the OCC (occurrence) column next to each service after all services and items are added. Occurrences entered for a service automatically apply to all items within that service. You can see this in action in our article about fixed payment contract estimating.
When you’re done adding services and items to the estimate, select the Opportunity tab to return to the opportunity screen.

There’s so much more you can do in an estimate including using one time items, editing service details, applying and overriding pay codes, setting up visit checklists, and more. Our estimate screen reference and our service details screen reference articles are a great place to dive deep and learn more about all the available features.

Complete the estimate

On the Opportunity Screen, select the Complete button below the Save button.

The complete button.

For Fixed Price on Payment Schedule work orders and Fixed Payment contracts, the Payment Schedule window opens where you can create payment milestones. After configuring the payment schedule and saving, you can send the proposal to the customer.

For all other invoice types, the opportunity’s status changes to Approved, and you can send the estimate proposal to the customer right away.

Note:
If you have estimating approval workflows set up, the opportunity’s status instead changes to “Pending Approval”, and an approver has to approve the estimate. Learn more in our article about approval workflows.

Send the proposal

Once the estimate is marked as complete, you can send the proposal to your customer. On the opportunity, there are two buttons below the Save button: Print Proposal and Email Proposal.

The Print Proposal and Email Proposal buttons.

Print Proposal

When you select Print Proposal, the Report Settings window opens.

If you’ve added customized report layouts to your system, use the Report Layout dropdown to select one, or use the default layout. Learn more in our articles about layouts.
Select an Export Type. Options include PDF, CSV, XLS, XSLX, HTML, PNG, MHT, RTF, and Text.
When you’re done making your selections, select Print. If you selected PDF, the proposal opens in your browser, and you can print it. For other file types, the file downloads to your device.

The steps just described.

Email Proposal

When you select Email Proposal, the Email Opportunity Proposal window opens.

The first To field automatically includes the primary contact for the property you’re estimating work for. You can search for more people to send the email to.
If you want to send the proposal to someone not in the Contacts list in Aspire, enter their email address in the second To field.
If you want to copy a contact on the proposal, use the CC field to find and select them.
If you’ve added customized report layouts to your system, use the Proposal Layout dropdown to select one, or use the default layout. Learn more in our articles about layouts.
Use the Template dropdown to apply a template to the proposal email if necessary. Learn more in our article about email templates.
Check the Enable Electronic Signature box to let the customer agree to and sign the proposal when they open it from the email. Learn more in our article about using electronic signatures.
Enter an Email Subject.
Fill in the Email Body. This section is a formatted field that lets you style text in a variety of ways like lists, bolding, color, and more. Read our article about using formatted fields for a complete look at what you can do.
Note:
Both the Email Subject field and the Email Body field support expandable tokens. Tokens are placeholders that are replaced with real company and customer information after the email is sent. Learn more in our article about using expandable tokens.

The steps just described.

Win or lose the opportunity

After the customer accepts or rejects the proposal, you need to mark the opportunity as won or lost, or reset the opportunity to the bidding phase.

When viewing the opportunity, there are four options below the Save button after sending the proposal:

The four options just described.

Won - Immediately marks the opportunity as Won.
Sign and Won - Opens a Contact Signature window where the customer can sign their name to approve the proposal. When you select Save, the opportunity is marked as Won.

Note:
Customers can also sign proposals on their own. Learn more in our article about using electronic signatures.
Reset - Changes the opportunity status back to “Bidding” so you can adjust the estimate and re-send it to the customer.
Tip:
Instead of resetting the estimate to bidding, you can copy the opportunity and start with a fresh estimate. Remember to mark the original opportunity as Lost.
Lost - Marks the opportunity as lost. Better luck next time!

Expected results

After winning the opportunity, Aspire creates individual work tickets for each service on the estimate. For contract estimates, the number of tickets matches the occurrences entered for each service on the estimate. Each ticket details the specific tasks a crew needs to complete for that visit and lists the required materials, equipment, and hours.

Next steps

Now it’s time to start scheduling those shiny new work tickets! Read our articles about using the Scheduling module to get started.

As work tickets are scheduled, the opportunity status automatically changes to “In Production”. When all work tickets are complete, the status changes to “Complete”.

Note:
While the “In Production” and “Complete” statuses are based on work ticket actions, canceling work tickets does not cancel the opportunity. You can cancel the opportunity and all scheduled and unscheduled work tickets using the three-dot menu when viewing the opportunity.