As a painting contractor, you probably already know that the act of painting isn’t the most challenging part of the business. Instead, most painting company business owners spend a lot of their energy planning for the painting jobs they have to complete for the customers.
A contractor needs to estimate just how much material, manpower, and time is required to do every job correctly. These estimations are challenging to do on your own. Luckily there are estimating software programs for painting contractors that can be very helpful.
Estimating software helps you estimate everything you’ll need for a painting job. In doing so, you’ll be able to create bids and make proposals for projects in a highly efficient and accurate way. The more precise your estimations are, the fewer problems you’ll run into on the job and avoid common estimating mistakes.
Estimation software comes in many forms. Some are very simple and only consist of spreadsheet templates that you can fill in yourself. Others are applications with more sophisticated features to take your business to the next level. Estimating software can also help you simplify your accounting process. Whatever your needs are, there’s an estimating software out there that’s just right for you. While some are specifically aimed at painters, others are more general like for remodeling or construction professionals.
Still, not all estimation software for painting contractors are made the same. They should have features such as:
Digital Takeoff Features - Digital takeoff features are the ones that help you accurately estimate just how much material you’ll need to start the painting job. With those accurate estimates, you can ensure that you have enough painting supplies, and you can be transparent with your client so they know exactly what they’re paying for.
Estimating Features - Estimating features cover the next step in the bidding process by calculating how much it will cost to get the job done. That includes labor costs, material costs, and subcontractor costs if that’s a part of the project.
Bidding Features - Once you’ve sorted out all the previous details, you’ll need to use bidding features. These features help you with the bidding process by generating proposals, scheduling, comparing bids with other contractors, and managing the contact details of everyone you interact with, including customers and your subcontractors.
Extra Features - Some estimating software for painting contractors may include additional features. These could be job analysis tools and integrations with other kinds of software. Although these extra features aren’t crucial, you may find them incredibly helpful to your business.
Top 7 Estimating Software Programs for Painting Contractors
Now that you know what to look for in estimating software, here is the best estimating software for your painting business.
JobNimbus
JobNimbus is an award-winning CRM that helps painting businesses become more efficient and boost profitability. Completely customizable to your workflow, JobNimbus painting CRM can be built around your business. JobNimbus provides tools through their painting contractor software to save you time and take control of business processes, and their users see an average of 43% revenue growth.
The automation tool helps speed up all your painting business operations by setting up automatic processes, such as sending customer emails or changing job status. With automations, you can save time, reduce errors, and put more time into growing your business.
Give your team better visibility with the Boards feature that provides instant access to job status and the ability to move jobs through your process with a quick drag and drop. The simplicity of tracking boards enables you to spot bottlenecks easily.
JobNimbus painting CRM also includes a mobile app that gives everyone in your business the information they need to communicate with customers and provide accurate information. When you join JobNimbus painting CRM, you also gain membership to the largest ecosystem of the best companies in the industry, like Global Payments, Quickbooks, and Sunlight Financial.
On top of improving customer experience, the JobNimbus mobile app facilitates team communication and allows you to manage your painting business from wherever you are.
The EDGE™ Estimator from Estimating Edge
Estimating Edge markets its software as being an all-in-one solution for painting contractors. It includes features like Smart Labor™, which helps with labor cost estimation, and it's so easy to use that you can update your entire project with just a click of the mouse.
On top of that, The EDGE also includes powerful analytics and reporting features. With those, you’ll be able to stay well-informed as you make decisions that can affect your business.
Best of all, the company also offers one-on-one training and excellent customer service to improve your experience after you’ve started using it.
The Paint Estimator by Patrick Miller
If you prefer software that’s a little simpler, then you’ll appreciate The Paint Estimator. This software is a ‘for painters, by painters’ type of product designed for independent painting contractors. Its features and design come from Patrick Miller’s 30 years of experience in the painting industry, which is evident when you look at it for the first time.
The user interface looks good, but the software is focused more on functionality. It offers you a few different estimating methods to choose from, which gives you a lot of flexibility. You can also export any proposals you create to all sorts of formats, like PDF, Docx, and even OpenOffice formats. You can use it to send professional-looking invoices to your clients too.
Paint Scout
PaintScout is an easy to use, mobile and desktop software solution designed specifically for the needs of the modern painting contractor. Not only can you estimate painting projects quickly and accurately, but the software creates work orders, proposals and invoices simultaneously.
These features combined with sales reporting and team management allows contractors to build their sales team efficiently with consistent estimates.
Field Circle
Field Circle is another well-built all-in-one software for painting contractors. Its creators have tailored the software to pretty much every type of employee directly or indirectly involved in the painting job. Whether your employee is a manager, supervisor, worker, or even the accountant, this software has a feature relevant to most of your employees.
You can allocate jobs efficiently to workers and track their progress. Those workers can then keep track of their tasks using the same software. Whoever’s in charge of the numbers in your painting business can also analyze costs and revenues through the analytics features.
Estimate Rocket
Estimate Rocket software is user-friendly and simplifies the running of your painting business. You can use it to create and send documents like estimates, work orders, and invoices so much faster to customers. It cuts down on your overall paperwork and even helps you avoid mistakes like duplicate entries and other errors. The software is entirely browser-based. That means you can use it from any device you may have. Better yet, it also backs up all your work data automatically. You’ll never lose your data, no matter what.
No matter whether you're a painting contractor, roofing contractor, or HVAC contractor, software helps simplify your administrative business needs.
On Center
On Center is another excellent software option for painting contractors looking for estimating software. This software’s three most notable features are its On-Screen Takeoff, Quick Bid, and Digital Production Control.
With the On-Screen Takeoff Feature, you can easily calculate the precise area you and your team will need to paint. That includes height and width calculations of the wall, the ceiling, and any other part of the structure.
Quick Bid helps you put together estimates for bids while filtering out minor mistakes in calculations and data entry. Digital Production Control is your project management feature that allows you to plan and measure your team’s progress. All-in-all, this is a very versatile piece of software.
