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Bring in your estimate

You've already worked out the job. Upload the estimate you made and Finishwork builds the proposal around it.

The New document page with four ways to start
  1. 1Upload your estimate. This page covers it.
  2. 2Copy a proposal you sent before. See Templates and past proposals.
  3. 3Describe the work in your own words.
  4. 4Start with your usual pages and fill in the lines yourself.

Upload your estimate

PDFs, Word documents, spreadsheets and CSV files all work, including exports from estimating software like BuilderTrend. Click Import an estimate, choose the file and click Upload and read it. Reading it takes about half a minute. Then you go through three short screens before anything is added to the proposal.

  1. The money

    The money screen: eleven lines that come to $87,220.00, every price read from the estimate
    1. 1The total, which should match the total on your estimate.
    2. 2Each group shows whether every price was read from your file.

    Your lines are grouped the way your estimate grouped them. Click Show the lines to check any group, and untick a group to leave it out. If the total doesn’t match, or a price couldn’t be read clearly, it’s flagged here.

  2. Words from your estimate

    The words screen: exclusions and a deposit found in the estimate, each with a tick box

    Estimates often say more than prices: exclusions, a deposit, payment terms. Tick the ones you want in this proposal. Exclusions go on the fine print page under What’s not included. If they aren’t on your standard list yet, you can add them to it so every new proposal starts with them. If an exclusion reads like contract language, you’re offered a shorter, plainer version to use instead.

  3. What you're building

    The list of pages the proposal will have, each with a tick box

    These are the pages the proposal will have. Turn off any this job doesn’t need and click Make the proposal. You can also ask for a page that describes the project in plain words, written from your lines. It won’t print until you’ve read it.

Describe the work instead

No estimate for this one? Click Draft from scope notes and type or paste your notes about the job, including the prices you want to charge. We draft the proposal pages from your notes. The only prices in it are the ones you gave, and you can change anything afterwards.

Bring an estimate into a proposal you already started

In the editor, click Import estimate at the top of the first page. If the proposal already has groups, for example from your template, the new lines are sorted into those groups. No line is dropped and no price changes. Anything that doesn’t fit a group goes into a group called Additional work, and the check before sending points it out.

After it’s in

Every price is yours to change. See Change a price.