User Manual
This manual is for the people who use CrestApps Estimator every day: estimators who price bids, estimating managers who review and approve them, and administrators who manage the site from its admin screens. It explains what each screen is for and how to use it, one task at a time.
You don't need to write code or edit files to follow anything here. When a task needs an IT person or a developer, the page says so and links to the Technical Manual.
Early development
CrestApps Estimator is in early development. This manual describes only the screens that exist today, and it grows with every feature that ships.
New here? Start with these
| Read this | To learn |
|---|---|
| Set up a new site | How to create a new CrestApps Estimator site from the setup screen. |
| Features and settings | How an administrator turns the Estimator features on. |
| Projects | How to keep a record of each job you bid on. |
| New Bid wizard | How to add a project, its first bid and the bid/no-bid checklist in three steps. |
| Bids | How to add a bid for each general contractor or owner, and follow it to the result. |
| Bid calendar | How to see the bids that are due next. |
| Documents | How to add the drawings, specifications and addenda of a bid package. |
| Sheets | How to check the sheet index, and see which sheets an addendum replaced. |
| Takeoff viewer | How to count devices, measure runs and areas, and calibrate the scale on a sheet. |
| Takeoff items | How to see the quantity of each item over every sheet and per location. |
| Catalog | How to keep the items you estimate with, their units and labor units. |
| Prices | How to see the price history of an item and add a price. |
| Assemblies | How to build reusable bills of items with formulas, and test them with a quantity. |
| Price updates | How to import a price file and compare its prices with the prices they replaced. |
| Labor rates and crews | How to keep the wages, burdens and crew mixes that price the labor. |
| Labor factors | How to keep the questions and factors of the job conditions. |
| Job conditions | How to set the labor factor, crew and labor rate of a project. |
| Glossary | Plain-language meanings of the words used in this manual. |