Price the instant estimator

The instant estimator is a public link — /estimate/your-business-name — where a homeowner answers a handful of questions and sees real installed pricing instead of waiting on a callback. Settings live under Instant estimator in the sidebar, with a live Preview that switches between the Questions and the Quote page and updates as you type, unsaved edits included.

Publish the estimator is the on switch. Off, the public link shows a “not available” message rather than a broken page.

Pick your trade first

Which estimator? — HVAC, Fencing, Roofing, Gutters, or General. This is not just wording: each one measures a different thing, which decides how you price.

Trade	What it measures	So you price
HVAC	Sizes a system from the home	Flat, as a complete installed system
Fencing	Length × height, in square feet	Per square foot
Roofing	Squares, from footprint and pitch	Per square (100 sq ft)
Gutters	The run, allowing for height	Per linear foot
General	Nothing — it does not measure	Flat, as complete jobs

The estimator tells you which basis it wants in the Pricing section, in its own words for the trade you picked. Follow it: on a per-unit trade, your main material and labour line is a rate and the estimator multiplies it by what it measured. Gates, permits, tear-off and dump fees stay flat.

Caution

A rate typed as a total produces a nonsense quote. Enter $8,500 in a per-square-foot field and the estimator quotes a seven-figure fence. It warns you in settings when a rate looks like a total, but it does not block you — an expensive trade is allowed to be expensive.

Where the price actually comes from

This is the part worth understanding, because the estimator never invents a price. It works down this order and stops at the first thing that can supply one:

1. A package family, if you selected one. Set Good / Better / Best options to a family you built in Catalog → Packages and the customer sees those three tiers with their own selling points and warranty.

2. Otherwise your catalog items. Leave it on Use my catalog items and it prices from the catalog:

• Items priced $0, and anything with a labour pricing mode, are ignored entirely.
• If two or more items are marked Good, Better or Best, those are used — up to three, in tier order.
• If they are not marked, it orders them by price and lets position stand in for tier. Three items give Good/Better/Best, two give Good and Best, and one gives a single option.

Nothing is padded. Two products make two options, not three. An earlier version guaranteed three tiers by multiplying the real one by national spreads, which meant a shop with one product showed two prices that appeared nowhere in their own price book. That is gone on purpose.

Danger

If nothing in your catalog can be priced, the customer gets an error — “Could not build your quote” — not a quote. An empty catalog, everything at $0, or everything set to labour pricing all end here. Publish the estimator only once you have at least one priced, non-labour item or a package family.

Services the estimator draws from narrows which of your catalog types it may use. Leave everything ticked and it uses the lot; untick to keep the estimator to the work it should be quoting.

The price range

Price range shown (± %) puts a band around the figure — the customer’s own measurements are approximate, and a band is honest about that. Set it to 0 to show a single number. It caps at 50%.

Worth knowing: the “as low as” financing payment is quoted from the low end of the range, so a wide band advertises a cheaper monthly payment than the middle figure supports. Keep it tight enough that the payment is one you would stand behind.

Changing the questions

Reword anything in the Questions section. Questions marked REQUIRED are the ones that set the price — you can rephrase them into your own language, but you cannot switch them off, because removing one would leave the estimator without an input it needs to measure.

Rewording is worth doing. “How is the home heated today?” is fine; the way you actually ask it on the phone is better.

What sells the quote page

Everything below Pricing is presentation, and it does more work than it looks like it does:

• About us — section title, body, team photo, years in business, license number, and badges. Real details, on the page where somebody is deciding whether to let you into their house.
• Financing & savings — APR and term drive the monthly payment; typical yearly energy cost drives the savings and payback figures.
• Reviews — customer, rating, quote and source, shown alongside the price.

A sensible order to set it up

1. Pick the trade, and read its pricing note
2. Price your catalog on the basis it asks for, or build a package family
3. Set the range, then check the Quote page preview for a real number
4. Fill in About us, financing and a couple of reviews
5. Publish the estimator, then open the public link yourself and run it through