In this quick walkthrough we'll show how to estimate a living room painting job using Clear Estimates. We’ll also show what kinds of templates are available in Clear Estimates for painting estimates, and field some questions live!
While we're waiting here, there should be a chat feature over on the right side of your screen. Please let us know if you're having trouble with sound or anything like that. You might need to enter in your name there in order to see that chat messenger. But then as we go along today, feel free to add in your questions into that chat. We're gonna be getting to as many of those as we can right at the end today.
All right. But I did want to pitch a quick question to the audience here while we're waiting. If you're a painting contractor, what is your biggest challenge when it comes to estimates? Is it pricing the job accurately, finding the right software, may, maybe it's invoicing or something else? Well, if you want to just go ahead and reply there in the chat, always just curious about your experience with that.
Alright. It's about a minute after here.
So one of the questions I get all the time is, hey, I know this is great for remodelers, but how does clear estimates work for a painter? So that's just exactly what we're gonna talk about today. We're gonna jump into clear estimates and show you how clear estimates does two things great. It's gonna help you price out the job accurately and it's gonna help you create a professional proposal that you're gonna be able to share with a client or homeowner.
Now just a little background as we start off today.
Now at clear estimates our focus is cost data. So an amazing amount of work goes in behind the scenes every quarter surveying regional suppliers to provide you with accurate material pricing that you can use to build up your estimates. And these prices are gonna be updated for you automatically. So this is gonna include plenty for a painting contractor, both interior and exterior painting. So you're looking at everything from walls, ceilings, trim, wallpaper, staining, masonry, decks, porches, scaffolding setup, you name it. And the result is you're gonna have this amazing database of reliable cost data that's updated for you automatically and it's just gonna make it really easy to put together an estimate for work like that.
Now to make life even easier there's also going to be pre built templates available that save you tons of time on painting projects. So today we're going to jump into clear estimates. We're going to put together a living room painting job. In this case it's going to be a two sixteen square foot living room.
It's actually going to be this estimate right here. What this is, it's just a take off list. I kind of went through the living area with my client, kind of took all my measurements and figured out everything we're going to need to price out here today. So this is the estimate we're gonna be building.
In this case, like I said, two sixteen square foot living room. Very simple estimate here.
Just a couple of walls, ceilings, trim, a couple of doors and a few windows we're gonna need to price out. Now before we really jump into that estimate, the first thing we're gonna do is go into clear estimates, show you how to find painting costs in the system, and how to add those into an estimate.
So why don't we go ahead and jump into clear estimates and we'll go ahead and get this started today. Really quick I am gonna stop my camera just so you can see everything that's going on here.
And when you log in to clear estimates, the first place it's gonna take you is this, home page right here. And this is where we can set up a new project.
Now really quick if you haven't logged in to clear estimates, if this is the first time you're logging in, I do recommend taking a look at this tutorial that's here on our home page. This is gonna tell you how to start a project. It's gonna give you a general overview of the estimating process.
Definitely recommend taking a look at this if you're just getting started.
Also there's a there's a whole library of support information and getting started guides here in the support drop down under support information and right at the end of the presentation I'm gonna share out a link if you'd like to schedule some one on one training.
But as we were saying here on the pro, here on the home page I should say, we can start a new project just by clicking new project right here.
In this case I've already set up a blank estimate for us to work in today, so I'm gonna go ahead and click that open. Now when I click that project title, it's gonna take me right to my projects page, and this is where all of the estimating takes place in clear estimates.
So if you're estimating a project, you want to be right here on the projects page, and everything really revolves around adding parts or line items into your estimate, and as you add parts to your project, they're gonna appear here in this project parts window. Now we haven't added anything yet, but as we add parts into our project, we're gonna be able to see and manage them here. Now there's a few different ways we can add parts into a project. We can search for them by name.
We can click browse part library. This is like opening up the full catalog of locally sourced cost data provided by clear estimates. And there's also pre built templates which are just lists of commonly seen items in different types of remodels and different types of projects. Tremendous time saver.
Really a great starting point for any estimate. So we're gonna be going over all of this today. But like I said, the first thing I want to do today is just take a look at what's available for a painting contractor in clear estimates. So to do that, once again, I'm here on the projects page.
We're gonna go ahead and click browse part library.
This is gonna pull up this browser where we can sort of look through the the, database of cost information that's provided by clear estimates here. And everything in clear estimates library is categorized. So if we click this drop down we can see all of the categories of cost information provided by clear estimates. Plenty built in for a remodeling contractor.
So you're looking at items for things like framing and concrete and doors and windows and so on. But if we scroll down to categories number thirty four and thirty five, these are gonna be all of the painting costs and you're gonna see it's separated into two different categories here. One for exterior painting and another for interior painting and wallpaper. So let's go ahead and grab thirty four exterior painting and we'll take a look at what's available for a painting contractor here in the system.
So in thirty four exterior painting, when I click that category, it's gonna show me all of the parts that are built into this category and we can see all of the descriptions as well as the cost data plugged in for each of these items. So it's all set to go. We don't have to research any of these costs. We don't have to look any of this up.
It's all just set to go for us. Now as you can see, there's tons and tons of parts in this category. We're looking at all these different items just for scaffolding rental. So to get a little more specific, we can use this middle drop down to take a look at what types of exterior painting costs are available.
So let's say for example, let's take a look at rental equipment. I'm gonna go ahead and grab that. And in rental equipment, this is where we're gonna find that scaffolding costs. We're going to find things like spray rig, pressure washer, sandblaster, scissor lift, and labor costs for setup and breakdown down here at the bottom.
Elsewhere we're gonna find things like exterior painting prep and this is gonna cover things like sanding and filling, sanding concrete and masonry prep, metal preparation and paint removal by various means. Chemical, burning off, sandblasting, as well as pressure washing, wet cleaning and so on. And then further down in the list, we're gonna get into specific types of painting costs like paint siding. So if I want to grab paint siding, I can sort by type of siding, type of paint and it's all right here at my fingertips.
And then we can just kind of keep going. Paint masonry, stucco, trim, lattice, columns. Plenty included for decks and porches. If we scroll down a little bit, we're going to be looking at staining costs.
Further down, paint concrete floor, painting windows, doors, fences, gutters, and downspouts. So you can see there's so much built in for a painting contractor right out of the box.
And so that's in thirty four exterior painting. Let's take a look at what's available for interiors. I'm gonna go ahead and grab thirty five interior painting and wallpaper. So different category, but same idea here. We can see all of these different costs plugged in. Rental equipment, covering contents and masking, moving furniture and contents, as well as prep work. And then we get into specific types of paint such as painting doors, windows, labor for cutting in, painting walls, painting walls with texture, wall paneling, ceilings, floor prep.
So there's so much built in, you know, even things like painting trim and crown molding. That's all gonna be all set to go for us built in and all of these costs are gonna be sourced from our specific area.
So while we're in this interior painting category, let's go ahead and start working on this living room, estimate. Once again, this is my takeoff list. Just a spec sheet, that I put together going through the client's home. Now the first thing I need to price out is a little bit of prep work. We're going to be covering some surfaces. So So two sixteen square feet of floor area. This is actually just going to be to cover up the carpeting in this living room. And then we're also going to be moving some furniture out of here.
So I want to pass that labor cost along as well. So let's go ahead and while we're in this category here, I'm gonna use my subcategories here and I'm gonna go ahead and grab this first category for cover contents and masking. This is where we're gonna begin. Right here.
Cover contents and masking. And we can see that the second option down here is cover and mask floor with plastic sheeting. And I have a pre markup material cost per unit for this part. So I'm going to go ahead and click the part.
Now when I click that, it's going to pull up this preview where we can plug in our quantity right here in this blue bar. So it's looking for a square footage. Once again, that's a two sixteen square foot floor. So we're going to go ahead and plug that in as our quantity here in our blue bar.
This is going to price out material and labor pre markup. Just the cost to us as the contractor, and then we can just very quickly add this into our job by clicking add part.
So the next we needed to move some furniture and here is a subcategory specifically for that. And I'm going to go ahead and grab this second item move large living room contents out of room and reset contents of room. So I'm going to go ahead and click that. This particular item is just a single labor cost priced by the piece, so we're just going to leave this at quantity one and go ahead and add that part in.
And then we're going to start getting into the painting. So painting the wall, the ceiling, the baseboard. Now I could go line by line. Obviously, we do have costs built in for painting walls as well as painting ceilings and I would still get done very quickly if I were to go through the estimate this way.
However, we do have some other options. So there are pre built templates that we can use to save time on a room painting estimate. So I'm actually gonna finish out the rest of this estimate using some of the pre built templates we have available for a painter. So I'm gonna go ahead and close out of this part search.
We can kinda see what we've done already. We've added these two different parts to our estimate. We see the quantities. We can adjust really anything we want by clicking the various columns and we can even pop these parts right back open using the pencil if we want to make any edits.
But like I was saying, there's about three hundred or so pre built templates. Just list of suggested items commonly seen in different types of estimates, and we have these right here in this add templates tool. So I'm gonna go ahead and click add template, and let's take a look at some of the painting templates.
So similar to your parts, your templates are categorized. If I select this drop down here, we can see all of the templates that are built into the system. So you have about three hundred or so. And in this case, we're gonna go ahead and grab painting.
And then using this middle drop down here, we can take a look at different types of painting templates. So we have a couple built in for exteriors, for one or two story homes. And then right down here is an interior room painting template. So I'm gonna go ahead and grab this template here.
Now when I select the template, what we're gonna be seeing is the contents of the template below and we can see it's just a list of suggested items commonly seen in an interior room painting template. It's gonna try to cover as much ground as possible, but you have to think about these templates as a starting point. We're gonna be fine tuning this for what our job needs. Now what is nice about these templates is all of the parts within have formulas attached that tie back to this template quantity right up here in the top right.
So as an estimator, this allows me to just plug in my floor square footage. So that's two sixteen square foot living room. And we're gonna go ahead and calculate quantities right here. And what that's gonna do is it's gonna try to figure out the quantities we're gonna need, for a two sixteen square foot living room based on that quantity I added in. So we can see now that all of the parts have quantities and costs attached.
Now again, like I was saying, we want to think about this as a starting point and we want to fine tune this template. This is just a preview. We haven't added this to the project yet. So now we can kind of dial it in for our project's needs.
Now in this case, now we're looking at this template. I've got a couple of prep work items for cover and mask floor with plastic sheeting and moving living room contents out. Now as you may remember, we just added those two items in just from the library. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna uncheck these two parts since they're already in my estimate. This doesn't delete them from the template. It just makes it so they don't get added with the rest of these template items.
And now let's go ahead and take a look at what else is in the template we want to match up the work we do need to do with the measurements we have defined here in our takeoff. So first off, paint wall. I have five hundred and seventy square feet of wall area that needs to get painted with two coats of paint. So let's see what we've got here.
And third from the bottom, I do see a part for paint wall and this is two coats of paint. That's gonna be just what I'll need. Only I'm seeing that it's suggesting five hundred and seventy four square feet. So very close, but I actually only need to paint five hundred and seventy square feet. And this is just gonna dial in our price a little bit or a little better. So what I did was I just clicked into that quantity column and made an adjustment there. Now next up, paint ceiling. I have two sixteen square feet of ceiling painting that I need to price out. Here I have a part four paint ceiling with two coats of paint. I have two sixteen square feet, so that's just what I need.
Next up is baseboard. I have seventy linear feet of baseboard that needs to get painted for this living room. Right down here at the bottom, I have paint baseboard plain, four to eight inches wide with two coats of paint, seventy linear feet it's suggesting. So I'm gonna switch that over to seventy. But keep in mind, you know, if this was a different type of baseboard, maybe it's an ornate baseboard or maybe it's different dimensions.
We can always uncheck this item, add the remainder of the template to the project and find a different paint baseboard item in the library. So it's built to be customized, but these templates are set up based on what's most commonly seen in customers estimates. So that is all set to go here.
And then we also have a bifold door we need to paint. Let's see what we have for a bifold door. Paint panel, bifold door with a brush. I'm noticing this is per side here, and I'm actually gonna be painting both sides of this door, so I'm gonna swap that quantity over to two because we're painting the whole door here.
And then we're gonna paint window and trim, and we have three windows to paint. So let's take a look. And here is paint window, and we just need to switch that quantity to three. And now as we're switching these quantities, it's dialing in these costs and again using locally sourced cost data from my location I set up when I signed up.
And so now everything looks good here. So I'm gonna go ahead and add this template in bulk to my project just by clicking add template. And what that's gonna do is copy and paste all of the selected template items into my project and it saved us the time of finding those items one by one. So now just about everything is good to go here.
The only thing that wasn't included in that template is cleanup work area. So now that I've added this template into my estimate, I can just very quickly search for some cleanups. I'm just gonna say first floor cleanup, and I'm gonna go ahead and grab this item. First floor, two hundred to three hundred square feet.
This is just gonna be a quantity one single labor cost. We're gonna add that part in and we're done. So we've only been on about fifteen minutes here. We're already completely done with this estimate.
We found everything we needed to add in, and you can see how quickly we were able to put this together.
Now just a couple of more things we need to do before we send this out. First of all, we want to double check our markup settings. So remember all of the part costs are pre markup and pre tax. So just the cost to you as the contractor. So we can see our actual total here. Then we see the dollar amount of markup to be applied and then we see the number for the customer. This is in orange. It's called your base bid. Never shows your markup to your customer. It's just gonna kinda roll that into the project cost. Now how you determine your markup is using this markup tool right here. So you can all you can see it's, all based on percentage. A percentage we're adding in for material and labor cost. Now the system default is fifty percent. This isn't a suggestion. We're really gonna leave it to you to set your markup however works best for your business. However, I am gonna share out a resource right at the end of the presentation on best practices. If you're not sure how to calculate that, I'm gonna share a great resource here at the end.
Couple of more things we can do in a painting estimate if this was a multiple room painting estimate. We can set up what are called components and this is how you can organize your estimate by room or by phase and have subtotals for different rooms. If you're curious how this works, just come down here to this components tool. Hover your mouse over the question mark and then you'll see this more information link that'll take you to a full guide on how to set that up.
Alternates are great if you wanted to show some different options for styles of paint or maybe some different options in terms of paint, grades. You can set that up using this alternates tool here. And same idea if you're curious about this. Just hover over this question mark and grab this more information link. It'll walk you right through that tool. Last thing we did here. I actually set this up prior to the presentation. I put in a a line item for sales tax using miscellaneous items. So this is great for things like taxes or discounts, any extra percentage you need to add your estimate. I just set up a quick line for sales tax. This is really easy to set up. You just click the plus, plug in a description, tell it how to calculate, and you're good to go.
So let's go ahead and take a look at the fruits of our labor here. We're gonna take a look at the proposal that we're gonna send out to our client. To do so, we're gonna come right back up to the top of clear estimates. We're gonna find this view report button. Looks like an eyeball. We're gonna click that and click print a pdf, This is gonna pull up the document that we're gonna be sharing with the homeowner here.
Great. So here it is. This is the proposal. You can see what this looks like. It's personalized. I added in my company logo when I signed up so this is all personalized to my business. I have my contact information as well as my clients. I also have a paragraph of contract language I plugged in for all my estimates. This is gonna print up here at the top and then we're gonna get into the estimate contents itself. So here is the project info right down here for the client. You can see we didn't look up any of these costs. We didn't type any of this in.
Clear estimates just automatically prints out professional sentences of text that explain the scope of work to the homeowner in language they can understand. We could see it's even very organized by cost category here. Then we have our, total project cost followed by a convenient place our client can sign the agreement. So it just saved us a ton of time putting together this estimate. We could see we were able to put together this whole living room painting estimate in just a matter of minutes and we did so using locally sourced cost data.
So when we look at costs for different markets, we dry draw on a wide variety of data sources to provide you with accurate pricing for your area. And as a subscriber, you're even gonna get our quarterly behavior index which monitors change in material cost over time, changes seen per region for different types of materials, and those are gonna be sent to you automatically as a subscriber. So it's built to keep your estimates accurate and also save you the time of putting these estimates together. A major time saver and it's really great for a painting contractor.
So with all that in mind, that about wraps up the process here. I'm gonna go ahead and check-in with our audience and see what kind of questions have come in in the chat. Actually not seeing too much coming in. So hopefully that was nice and straightforward for you. What I did want to do is just share out a couple of resources. Let me stop the camera again.
And I just wanted to share out a couple of resources for you here. Number one, this is a QR code. This will actually take you to that webinar on calculating your markup. Remember we talked about that the material costs provided don't include markup for you. So if you're curious on what the best practices are for calculating that, this is a webinar we hosted with Michael Stone from markup and profit dot com a few years back. Excellent resource seeing this help out a lot of contractors.
And by the way, this is a QR code. You can go ahead and scan it with your phone. It'll take you right to that resource. I'm also gonna go ahead and share a direct link to that resource in the chat for you. So that should be coming in right about now. And then this next resource here, this is how you can schedule a walk through call with our team. If you do sign up for a free trial, we include free training. You can schedule a walk through call really at your convenience, or if you're a paid subscriber right now, feel free to schedule anytime. It's all included in your subscription. So go ahead and scan this QR code with your phone. It'll take you right to our calendar. I'm also gonna share a direct link to this calendar in the chat message as well.
And if you're watching on YouTube and you're having any trouble with that QR code or maybe you just, can't see those links we're sending over, just feel free to email me. I'd be happy to send over those resources to you. We can be reached supportclearestimates dot com. Or if you have questions about the presentation, or you just want to chat, feel free to reach out.
We'd love to hear from you. And if you're working in the software, there's also a blue chat button you can use to send us a message! We're available nine to five eastern, Monday through Friday. So even while you're working in the tool, you can get live help to help you build your estimates. So I do want to thank everybody so much for joining in today. It's been great having you, and we look forward to catching up with you at the next one!