Starting a new estimate
The front door for a new job. New Estimate in the nav opens a start page with four steps and the chat beside it, already in estimating mode on a fresh thread. Only the first step needs your hands. The page is the briefing; the conversation is where the estimate is built, and Base creates the project from what it reads and what you tell it.
- Your plan includes estimating, or you are on the free trial. The Start with AI button on the Projects page checks this and shows the subscribe prompt if not.
- Have the plan set to hand as a PDF. Photos, a specification, a finishes schedule, an existing estimate spreadsheet or a supplier quote all help, but a plan set is what the take-off reads.
- A quote template in Document Studio, so the quote at the end looks like yours. Base ships one you can start from.
- Press New Estimate in the nav. The start page opens and the chat panel opens beside it on a new thread.
- Drag the files onto the first card, Drop the plans, or click it to choose files. PDFs, images, xlsx, csv and docx are accepted, up to 50MB a file. The files appear as attachments in the chat's composer and the card lists what you dropped.
- Type a line about the job if you like, or nothing at all, and press send. Nothing is created until you send.
- Base reads every sheet, records what each one is, and checks the building rules for the job's address.
- It then asks what the drawings cannot settle, as cards in the chat: project type, site or tenancy condition, services, margin, programme, and any compliance point the plans leave open. The cards arrive together, not one at a time.
- Answer them in one go. Base creates the project, asking for the job name, address and client if it does not have them.
- One estimator per trade takes off the quantities from the same plan set, and lines are priced from your rate book with where each rate came from.
- Each section arrives as a card in the chat and on the job's Estimate tab. Tick the lines you accept, or ask for changes in the chat. Nothing is final until you tick it.
- Check the sheet coverage on the Estimate tab: it says which sheets were read and which were skipped.
- On the job's Documents tab, open the quote's Send… menu and press Send quote…. The quote is generated from your Document Studio template.
- Choose how the client accepts: Client signs in Base, Email the PDF only, or Sign it as the company first. The client accepts or signs in their portal.
- When the job is won, Mark won on the estimate locks it and builds the budget from it.
Press Create it on the Projects page at the foot of the start page. The Projects page's New project wizard takes the details first and leaves the estimate for later.
- Dropping a file on this page, or anywhere on the chat, attaches it to your next message. The chat opens on a new thread each time you come to this page, so an old conversation is never continued by accident.
- After the first message, Base renders every sheet, records what it read, checks compliance for the address, asks the intake cards, and then runs the take-off trade by trade.
- Intake answers that are patterns rather than one-offs, such as always running a six-week programme on shopping centres, are kept as the AI's memory of how you work and shape the next estimate. You can see and edit them under AI Memory.
- Nothing is created until you send the first message. Dropping files only stages them.
- A file over 50MB is refused. Split a big plan set by sheet or trade and drop the parts.
- The intake cards come as a burst. If they feel like a lot, answer the ones you know; Base prices the rest on stated assumptions and says so.
- The old shortcut, Projects with a compose flag in the address, now lands here. Bookmarks keep working.
- Each visit starts a fresh chat thread. Earlier estimate conversations are in the chat's thread list, not lost.