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…

Electrical Estimating- How Did We get Here? 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 calculators 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…

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…

Steve with Best Bid. I don’t get the chance to address you guys and gals directly very often. I spend my time estimating and tweaking how things can work better. Electrical Estimating Software is a living thing and needs attention. New technology is coming forth every month and finding ways to implement it into our software is part of what I do. We estimate every day and we have used McCormick, Conest, Infosoft, and Accubid just to name a few and we can get the same outcome from each of these software. These are not bad products and if you spend the time ( and money) learning them they will…

Just when we think that we could not offer any more products or services to help Electrical Contractors like you ,we think of something new. We are now doing Freelance Drafting. Let us do you simple As-Build Drawings, Panel Schedules, Lighting Layouts, We can make simple modifications to any PDF or full blown drawings. For the price we charge you can’t afford to do it yourself. Best Bid Electrical Estimating Software-On-Screen Takeoff Solutions-Freelance Estimating-Online Electrical Estimating Classes-Drafting we do it all. Just let us know how we can help you with any of your electrical needs. Consulting, setting up your shop correctly, how to manage man-hours, anything electrical we can…

Don’t fall for the cloud-based electrical estimating software. The only reason it exists is to drain your wallet. If they can sucker you into this lame idea after you get so far in you are a customer for life. Any financial adviser will tell you not to lease a car and don’t sign up for never-ending services. The key to financial success is to spend less than you make. Cloud-based software is a dreadful Investment The first reason is simply financial. It is a bad investment. One more reason not to fall for cloud-based software is the price per month will go up. The more users, the larger the server…

I have made the statement that companies that try to price their work by the Square will one day go broke. No one has proven me wrong to date.  This is a horrible way to price your work for so many reasons. First, the square foot of a project often times has little to do with most of the key factors. Lighting package, gear package, location of the service, electric heat or gas heat, what is included in the site and the list goes on and on. You also don’t have a material list to work with and no way to actually track the project. For example: A hospital will…