Decks, fences, small jobs. Priced by the metre.
Area, length and count, each off your own rate. Enough to quote a deck or a reno stage properly, and to know afterwards whether it paid.
Quoting today: you give it an area, a length or a countWhat Stringline does about each one.
- The customer asked for "a bit bigger" and the joist count changed by eleven. Change the measure-up and the quantities come out again. And once the quote is accepted, extra work is priced on the job and agreed before you do it.
- You priced the timber from memory and your supplier had other ideas. Materials sit in your price book at your cost, with your margin on top. Change the cost once and every quote after it is right.
- The balustrade was an afterthought on the quote and a full day on site. Measure it as its own run and it prices by the metre off your own rate. If it keeps taking longer than that rate says, the clock tells you and offers to move it.
What you measure, and what falls out.
Tap the dimensions in on site. Stringline works the quantities out from what you measured, so your pricing stays accurate.
Your rates. Minutes for one of a thing, times what your labour costs.
A rate is how long a piece of work takes you for one square metre, one metre or one of them, and what your labour costs. Multiply it by what you measured, add the materials and your margin, and that is the item on the quote. These examples are made up; yours won't be.
- Deck subframe
- 45 min / m²
- Decking, laid and fixed
- 35 min / m²
- Balustrade
- 40 min / lm
- Step
- 50 min each
Then your crew's hours check it. Every hour is against the work that priced it, so when a rate is costing you more than you charge for it, Stringline tells you and offers to put it up. You approve it, and every quote after that uses the new rate.
The ones builders ask us.
Decks by the square metre, fences by the metre?
Both, on the same quote. A deck is an area, a fence is a length, and anything counted, posts or piles or a gate, is a counted item. Each one prices off your own rate.
Your supplier's invoice came in over the allowance.
Put the bill against the job and it is compared with what you allowed, item by item. You see the gap on that job instead of at the end of the year.
The customer added a pergola halfway through.
Price it as extra work on the job: what they asked for, the price, the hours if you want them. Your customer accepts it online, it goes on the final bill, and its hours join the estimate.
What builders get today.
Builders quote on the general measure-up: an area, a length or a count, each priced off your own rate, with the trade's usual price book categories suggested.
- Areas, lengths and counts measured on site, each priced off your own rate
- A building price book, set up with your categories, in minutes and what your labour costs
- A proposal the customer accepts online, and follow-ups that stop once the quote is answered
- Quote to job without retyping, crew on a board, clock-on from the ute
- Deposit, progress and final invoices off the quote, with overdue reminders
- Rates that tell you when the clock disagrees with the book
- Before and after photos on the job, from the phone
- Materials ordered from the quote and emailed to your supplier, closed off by their invoice
- Card payments on your invoices, and invoices into Xero with the payments coming back
- Quote templates, and a price book read out of your old quotes
- A wishlist board, where you put up what you need and vote on what others have asked for
Something missing? Every account has a wishlist board, where you can put up what you need and vote on what others have asked for.