5 Best Electrical Estimating Software That Can Upscale Your Business

We won’t waste your time convincing you why you need the electrical estimating software for your electrical contracting business.

You already know that right?

After all, the reports from various studies conclude the same.

In this blog, we have listed the 5 best electrical estimating software by reviewing each of them and studying the feedback of users on software listing sites like Capterra.

Moreover, you will also know the benefits of using one and how to pick the right software for your company.

So, without any further ado, let’s jump right in.

Best Electrical Estimating Software List

Top 5 Electrical Estimating Software You Should Purchase

1. 1. InvoiceOwl

      

      If you are looking for easy-to-use estimate software for quick and accurate estimates, InvoiceOwl is the one for you. It helps electrical contractors to win jobs by professional estimates even before the potential client expects.

      This software not only helps electrical estimators create an estimate but, also makes managing the multiple estimates easier than ever. InvoiceOwl lets you streamline the entire electrical estimating system process.

      Right from the start to the end of electrical estimating, you will not need any additional software. Not even for sending estimates or tracking them. This estimating software lets you know the real-time status of your estimates with live notifications.

      Other than that, it stores all the data like your client information, item details, and even the applicable taxes and discounts on every item. This helps you create accurate estimates in a few minutes.

      Moreover, if you take pride in building brand trust, InvoiceOwl is the best electrical estimating software for you. It lets you collect ratings and reviews directly from the clients. You can showcase the positive reviews.

      Invoiceowl’s electrical estimating software comes with a plethora of features. Thus, talking about every feature will take another blog of its own.

      So just have a quick look at the advanced features that InvoiceOwl offers.

      Core Features

      • Estimates: Create quick and precise estimates and send them professionally to win more jobs.
      • Invoices: Create and send invoices on the go through a computer or your smartphone to get paid faster.
      • Online payments: Accept online payments through multiple payment gateways.
      • Customer management: Save and manage customer information like contact name, address, email address, and phone number.
      • Ratings: Get insightful feedback directly from your customers and showcase it to create your brand reputation.
      • Tracking: Track your estimates, invoices, credit memos, and purchase orders, in real-time with status notifications.
      • Reports: Get detailed annual reports with a single click to analyze your sales, taxes, and profit & loss.
      • Purchase orders: Issue professional purchase orders and manage your inventory efficiently.
      • Credit memos: Win the trust of your clients by sending them precise credit memos.
      Pros

      • Access from anywhere
      • Cross-platform compatible
      • Auto-fill item rates and description
      • Categorized line Items

      Cons

      • No free plan

1. PlanSwift

   

   PlanSwift is the apt electrical estimating software for you even if you are an unskilled estimator. It helps you create detailed estimates. If you want to manage projects as well, this estimating software comes with the project management feature.

   This estimation software is about working in a team on a project. It might not be wrong to call it project management software. It not only helps you create accurate estimates for the entire project but also helps with project management. Furthermore, with this estimating software, you can manage various subcontractors of the project.

   PlanSwift helps you estimate in depth. You can estimate every single switch, socket, piece of wire, and every tiny part of the job.

   Once you are done estimating electrical work, you can effortlessly either print the estimate or export it to send via email.

   Pros

   • Customizable estimates
   • Drag and drop
   • Electronic Plans
   • Estimate exports

   Cons

   • Special training is required
   • Customer service support is not responsive
   • No bid management

2. STACK

   

   STACK is one of the most popular electrical estimating software. This electrical bid manager is the go-to choice for beginners. As it is quite easy to use and does not need any training to use the software. However, you might have to try its features once to eventually get used to working with it.

   You can save your time by using its AutoCount feature. This does all the calculations like labor units, profit margins, and automatically and reduces the chances of human errors in the estimate. Thus, if you are a beginner and not confident about your estimating skills, this is the right choice for you.

   With this software, you can estimate the labor costs, material costs, and electrical equipment rents easily. As it comes with a cost database, you can save your rates to create an accurate estimate instantly.

   As it is cloud-based software, you can sign in from anywhere. This helps you leave your office and create estimates from the site of your electrical projects.

   Moreover, you can manage multiple bids and that makes it a lead management software too with leverage auto count.

   Pros

   • Cloud-based
   • Historical database
   • Accounting integration

   Cons

   • No mobile apps
   • Not 100% customizable

3. ServiceTitan

   

   ServiceTitan is an all-in-one solution for electrical contractors. It helps you create estimates for installing new assemblies, maintaining pre-built assemblies, and repairing contracts.

   With its benchmark job cost analysis, you can make faster decisions. It helps you track and manage the job progress and if you have more than one electrical project going on you can monitor individual job costs and track labor costs, material costs, and equipment costs on the project to limit them under the budget.

   The factor that makes it different than most estimation software is that it provides training in person, online, through webinars, documentation, and videos too. This means you can go through the training at your convenience and in the way that works the best for you.

   Moreover, this estimation software helps you manage the customer database. Therefore you to enter the customer details every time you create an estimate. This is more useful in maintaining customer service relations.

   Pros

   • Reliability
   • Simple workflow
   • Lead management

   Cons

   • No free trial
   • Training is paid

4. Intellibid

   

   Intelibid is an electrical estimating software that helps electrical contractors create a quick takeoff process. It is available on the cloud (as web-based), Windows desktop, on-premise Windows, and on-premise Linux. Availability on these many platforms makes it easily accessible.

   Electrical contractors like you don’t have much time to do market research every now and then. Thus, the bid electrical estimating software already comes with industry-standard labor units. You can customize these units to create your own material pricing model.

   And not only labor units, but has an entire industry-standard database. It includes more than 120,000 material prices items for electrical and low voltage contractors. And over 350,000 pre-built assemblies.

   When creating quantity takeoff, Intellibid lets you break down the project into smaller phases so that you can estimate accurately for every phase.

   The wise electrical contractors know that the first bid they submit is mostly negotiated and they have to pitch multiple revised bids to win the job. Thus, this electrical estimation software lets you create multiple bids for the same job for different situations with different labor departments and material prices.

   The Intellibit estimating software lets you email the bid to the client via the in-built emailing option. You can send the bid packages to multiple clients.

   Pros

   • Automatic selling price comparison with local competitors
   • Accesses control for multiple users
   • Pre-built assemblies

   Cons

   • Paid support
   • Fewer updates

   So, these were some of the top electrical estimation software you should check out if you are tired of creating estimates manually.

   Using estimating software might resolve many issues and help your electrical contracting company grow exponentially.

   Does that feel farfetched?

   It won’t once you read the below-mentioned benefits of using electrical estimation software for your business.

Benefits of Using Electrical Estimating Software

Most businesses either want to purchase an estimation software or are already using it.

So, let’s understand why electrical estimating software is such a growing trend.

• Accurate Takeoffs

  Manual work is prone to human errors. Whereas, electrical estimating tools can reduce the chances of estimating mistakes. This not only saves your time in revisions and correcting those mistakes but saves the cost of correcting those mistakes.

• Time-saving

  Most electrical contractors would say time is more precious than money. Thus, estimating needs tools that help you save a lot of time by quickly creating estimates. Software like InvoiceOwl lets you use ready-made estimate templates that can cut off half the time you spend creating an estimate from the scratch.

• Increased Accessibility

  If you do not use any software for estimating, you would only create the estimates from your office. And it would demand a pile of paperwork to confirm and verify the minute details of the project. Whereas, the estimating software like InoviceOwl lets you create an estimate form wherever you want. You can create it on your computer, or your smartphone.

  Moreover, it stores all the data in the cloud. Thus, you don’t risk losing any important information such as your unit prices and customer contact information.

• Bid Management

  Managing all the bids at once is a hectic task. This needs a lot of scheduling and tracking of multiple bids. But, only if you don’t use estimating software. Bid management is made simpler with the quote management tool.

  For example, InvoiceOwl notifies you in real-time whenever the client receives, opens, and approves your estimates.

  So, these were some of the major benefits you see directly when you adopt an estimating solution for your contracting business.

  Other than these, it brings many indirect benefits. And to experience them, pick the best estimating software for your business and get started.

  Wait!

  You know the top tools, but do you know which one is right for your business?
  If not, don’t worry!

  That’s exactly what we are going to talk about next.

How to Choose the Best Electrical Estimating Software

To employ the best estimating software purpose for your electrical contracting business, you need to know a few things.

So let’s go over them quickly.

To choose the best software for your business, you need to match the following things.

• Pricing

  Pricing is most probably the first thing contractors pay attention to. Every business runs on a strict budget. So, go further only if it is affordable for your company.

  If the budget doesn’t allow you to buy the software you want, you need to revise the budget and priorities.

• Scalability

  Inquire if the software is able to handle the workload of your company.

  Let’s suppose, you have 5 accountants that create 10 estimates a day. Then the software you buy must be capable enough for doing that. If it does not support multi-users, it will not add value to your business.

  And if the software is capable of way more than that, you should rethink buying something that you don’t need.

Other than that, you need to look out for the following features in electrical estimating software.

• Estimates and bids generation
• Item cost database
• Customer information database
• Estimate templates
• Estimate tracking
• PDF exports

Conclusion

Gone are the days when electrical contractors used to rely on pen, paper, and their memory to create estimates and bid their prices. The electrical estimating software companies have revolutionized the estimating industry and you need to board the trend as soon as possible.

We hope this blog has helped you to compare the most suitable electrical estimating software in the market.

If you are still on the fence, we recommend you put your finger on the InvoiceOwl. It has got all the essential features and more. If you want to automate your estimating process, signup now!