Best Electrical Estimating Guides

How to Run a Successful Electrical Business Becoming a successful Electrical Contractor does not just happen. You aren’t born with Electrical Estimating skills or knowing the perfect electrical estimating software. The good news is there are people that are willing to help. Check out bestbidestimating.com. Many electricians decide to go into business for themselves. After all, they’ve mastered the trade, created relationships with loyal customers, and developed a good sense of the rules and regulations. However, knowing how to run a successful electrical business requires a different skill set than that of a first-rate electrician. I spend hours each day talking to electricians that are taking the step to become an Electrical Contractor. Going in business for themselves sometimes is a life- long dream and other times it is out...

Paul from Abernathy Electrical Services Company Size: 2-10 employees Industry: Electrical/Electronic Manufacturing Time Used: Less than 6 months Review Source  Ease-of-use 5.0 Value for money 5.0 Customer support 5.0 Functionality 5.0 December 2018 Simple To Use- The Complete Package As an electrical educator, I have taught over 40,000 students in my time. When I talk estimating to folks I want to show them something simple and easy to understand. The complexity of a software means the difference in using it and putting it on the shelf to collect dust. I can promise you that will not the case with the Best Bid Hybrid Pro software because it is so easy to use and is so amazing affordable that it is a no-brainer for any electrical contractor. Pros I have been an electrical industry expert for...

A customer calls me and says man my company is having all kinds of issues. Everything is going wrong. We are losing money and I can’t keep employees on the job. Covid is making everything harder than it use to be. I really need some help. I need some kind of estimating program, bidding software, one of those electrical cost estimation software things that you guys sell. I have been thinking about buying the Best Bid Hybrid Pro. I have been looking at it and talking to you on and off about it for about a year or so but I got to do something and stop talking about it. This is the worst year that I have had and I am not sure I can keep going. He then...

This could be the most important article that you will ever read pertaining to your Electrical Contracting Career. After all you will fail or succeed based on your ability to estimate.Your ability to estimate will large be accomplished by what electrical estimating software you use. Why should you purchase the Best Bid Hybrid Pro? When you started your search for electrical estimating software you thought it would be easy right? Just Google “electrical estimating software” and “vwah-LAH”, issue solved? Well you may or may not know the top (4) spots and the last (3) spots on the first page of Google are paid possessions and may not even apply to your search term at all. These spots are costly and guess who pays that cost?-- Correct, the user. Then there...

Get your pre-game together This post is for electrical estimators that may be just a little nervous when they start to price electrical work. That can be a good thing, at least it means you care about the results and quality of your bid.Ok you have electrical estimating software and you have on-screen takeoff software to fall back on but electrical cost estimation is a little more than just the electrical estimate.  Electrical bidding software with programs for pricing electrical work is a must but electrical cost estimation just starts with the electrical parts, pieces and labor to install them. Good electrical estimators pricing electrical work with the best electrical estimating software like the Best Bid Hybrid Pro still need to account for items that the electrical estimating software will not include until you tell it to....

A customer calls me and says man my company is having all kinds of issues. Everything is going wrong. We are losing money and I can’t keep employees on the job. Covid is making everything harder than it use to be. I really need some help. I need some kind of estimating program, bidding software, one of those electrical cost estimation software things that you guys sell. I have been thinking about buying the Best Bid Hybrid Pro. I have been looking at it and talking to you on and off about it for about a year or so but I got to do something and stop talking about it. This is the worst year that I have had and I am not sure I can keep going. He then...

Best kept secret of being a successful Electrical Contractor. There are many things that have to come together to take your company to the next level. We have experienced them all. At Best Bid. We have lived through times when  business was  good and we have seen it when business was bad but there is one thing that gets you through all seasons of you Electrical Contracting Career and we will give you our secrete later on in this post. When you are just starting out in business you may not understand the basics of how things work. Getting projects to bid on may be one of them.Most areas have a local plans room where most of the work that is bidding will be posted. This is a great place...

What does it take to be a successful Electrical Contractor?  When owning and running a successful Electrical Contracting Company you learn to wear many hats. Being a great electrician does not prepare you for owning your own company. You will need to learn many new skills. There are so many things that go on behind the doors of an Electrical Shop that you never see as an electrician in the field. One lesson that you learn quickly is winning jobs doesn’t equal making profit. Another lesson that you will learn is working hard does not necessarily equal making a profit either.You can work yourself to death and still go broke. Once you win a project then you must install the project for less than you bid. Now you must get...

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What's the Best Electrical Estimating Software for My Company.? This is a common question that we get asked every day.The simple answer is the best one that you can afford.Now with the Best Bid Hybrid Pro you can easily afford the best. You may be a guy with a dream still working in the field or a small (3) man shop, we assume you both have the goal as the larger shops and that is to grow and make money. To grow you need more work and to get more work you need to bid more jobs to bid more jobs you either have to work longer hours or invest in electrical estimating software like the Best Bid Hybrid Pro. At first this is always a hard choice to make....

Don’t be fooled to price your work based on Sq. Ft prices that are set by people working out of their home with no insurance. Residential Electrical work is not a great way to make money. Being forced to price by a Sq. Ft. number in lieu of actual cost.

The Days of Pen and Paper and a Lot of Guesswork The days of pen and paper with lots of luck thrown in. Thirty years ago electrical contractors had no choice but to run their businesses the old-fashioned way by using pen and paper, writing down endless list of material and using their calculator to extend pricing and man hours. I still have nightmares of extending pages and pages of numbers hopping I didn’t make a mistake. We relied heavily on historical data to check our prices against, along with all sorts of rules of thumb. We sometimes let out gut feelings control the final price. These techniques worked largely in part to having much better drawings to work with than we do today. Lots of time was spent consulting...

Surely not another change, You will never eliminate changes in construction estimating  but you can stop the problems that come with managing your revised drawings. With the Accura Cadd PDF Draw software you can overlap new drawings on top of the original drawings to easily identify changes.  The aggravation of addendums  is a familiar scene.  Estimator receives a bid request for a project that he’s very interested in bidding. He spends a couple days performing a takeoff and gathering his material and subcontractor quotes. Then, right when he gets his sales price put together, boom, he receives a revised set of drawings. Now he has to reviews the new drawings to find drawing changes and we're not talking about title block or drawing number changes. To make matters worse the changes...

All this begins with the estimation. An electrical estimator is a very specialized and very important position. The project is based on the estimation. It is also among the most gratifying. In the US, electrical estimators earned a median compensation of 68, 800, and the top pay in the industry is 176, 000 plus bonus, 401K, phone, insurance, truck, etc. The career is also rather promising as it offers a very bright future perspective with a growth rate of 36.4% in ten years. In the same period of time, more than 185,000 workplaces will be offered in this sector. Electrical estimating does not have a single degree program; therefore, anyone wishing to pursue such a career can take different paths in the quest of realizing his dream. Why the Estimate...

Best Bid Electrical Estimating Software has just purchased Real Time Pricing. . We can now help you with keeping your prices updated. Real Time Pricing is an affordable way to keep your A list items up to date. www.electricalestimating.net All of Real Time Pricing data matches Best Bid’s 100% so there is no need to modify UPC codes etc. We still work closely with NetPricer for more advance price updates. Also visit us at:  www.bestbidestimating.com  800-941-7028