Trade Features

In our latest release we have opened up the tools that we actually use to price work quickly from the plans that you send us when you use our pricing service.

For those that are not familiar with the term ‘take off’ (other than in an airport setting!) it is the term that surveyors and estimators use to describe taking the measurements off plans and then using them to calculate the materials needed to complete the project, and from there the time and ultimately the price.

For those of you comfortable with pricing directly from plans accessing these tools should speed up any pricing you need to do yourself hugely. They are the same tools that we use largely, when you send us your plans to price, and that service will remain available always if you are short of time or don’t fancy pricing the work yourself.

To make life easier we have broken down the operations into different “calculators” which will work out the materials, time and cost. The calculators are organised so that the relevant ones for your trade are most prominently displayed, but you will have access to all the calculators should you ever need them.

For larger projects which will include several operations for example, Extensions, you can select the ‘extension calculator’ and it will automatically pull in all the calculators that you will need for all the operations needed to build your extension, and you can add more, say if there is a patio too. This will then give you one price (with all the breakdowns and details) for the whole job, which you can then turn into a quote and send to your customer in seconds.

Here is a selection of the calculators available for pricing domestic building work:

If you feel that you could price work quickly and accurately using our take off sheets you can give it a try for free by registering here:

Request a session with us to get some training once you have registered and by the end of the session you’ll have priced the job, and know how to use Price Doctor!

Following on from last month’s release of new features, we have continued to make improvements around the images. This has allowed us to make a huge leap forward both with the Quote Builder and the Customer Portal.

The Customer Portal is now split into the quote page, which only your customers can view, and a website for you to promote your business. This part is public so all your customers and leads can see. This helps promote your business especially if you don’t already have a website or will provide additional information about you around your quote to help answer any questions your customer might have.

Here are the improvements we have made in this release:

Quote Builder & Images:

As part of the image management enhancements, it is now possible to add an image to your quote lines so you can give your customer a better idea of what you are quoting for. These can be added to your templates so that when preparing quotes for work you complete regularly, a standard image will be included by default, saving even more time.

Other improvements to images are:

• Now when you edit an image, you can choose if you want to save the edited image as a new image or save the changes to the existing image. This is handy if you want to keep a copy of the unedited image
• It is now much easier to move images between tasks on a project, and between projects or even between customers
• The image name is now displayed in the document upload window, with full name on hover-over, so if you add documents to the project upload it is easier to see what they are without opening them



• We have added zoom buttons so you can zoom in and out of images more easily if you are not on mobile – you can still pinch to zoom on mobile as before.
• It is now possible to rotate images
• There is also an “undo” feature so you can remove the last action when editing images

Image and Customer Portal Management:

With all these images you needs a way to manage them and make sure that the right people can see them. We have add “My Images” and “My Customer Portal” sections to your My Profile:

Here you can add images to various albums:

1. Gallery – These are images which will show in the public gallery page of your Customer Portal. You should put the examples of work that you want to show more customers and prospective customers
2. Stock Images – These are images that you want to access for use in other projects or quotes easily. Use a typical example of work you have done and expected to quote for again, so you can quickly find it to include in a quote in future
3. Sharing images with customers – You can share an image directly with customers, which they (and only they) will be able to view in the customer portal assigned to the relevant project. You can choose to email them the image from Price Doctor when you do this, saving you even more time

Remember to confirm that you have permission to use the images before you share them especially publically.

When images have been shared this will be indicated by an asterisk in the image menu and you will be able to see where it has been shared in the menu:

Customer Portal:

This is your free website included with your subscription. You can publish information about you to showcase your skills and experience to customers and new leads. Customers can use it to view and accept their quotes and keep track of the work or your invoices.

On top of the improvements to the portal itself we have added:

• Additional profile text box to the “My Profile” section to include more information about you.
• Social tags and website link so customers can see other places your promote your business
• Profile view to the client portal to make it easier to seen how your changes look
• Improved photo gallery
• Enhanced trade organisation and insurance display layout

Other changes:

We have been asked to make it easier to request our Pricing Service. You can still email us the plans as before, but now you can ask us to price work from inside your account. The button to create a new project has now been split into two buttons depending on who you want to price the work (us or yourself):

Free Training:

Overwhelmed with all these new features? Or just want to brush up on how to get the most from Price Doctor, please get in touch and we can organise a free one-to-one session.

Give us ½ an hour and we’ll save you hours – every week!

New features added:

This month we have been working on making the image uploads in projects easier to use.

• We’ve added additional image editing functionality into the image manager – line weight option along with additional drawing shapes.
• We’ve improved the image zoom functionality so there is need to open the image in a new window.
• We’ve added geolocation tagging to image uploads so you can see where they were uploaded

You can access the images by the clicking “Images” button at the top of the any project: