Labor Estimator

Quick flow

1. Rooms & equipment. Import a proposal BOM (duplicate equipment is combined into one item with a quantity per room), or add rooms and equipment lines by hand. Everything starts at zero.
2. Install hours. Give each line install hours per unit (pick an install preset or type hours). Click the Room cell to assign a line to one or more rooms — hours multiply by that room's qty. Leave it Global / Shared for headend gear.
3. Overhead. Shop, PM, PE and CAD default to a percentage of final Install (PM 25%, PE 20%, CAD 10%; Shop is 0 until you set it). Change the percentages or turn the percentage off.
4. Results. The summary and per-room table update live. Print, or export.

Percent modes and line hours

Each of Shop, PM, PE and CAD is in exactly one mode, shown on its card. % of Install replaces that category's per-line hours; the line hours are kept but are not counted and are greyed out under Advanced. Turn the percentage off to count line hours instead. Imported or restored sessions that already contain Shop/PM/PE/CAD line hours keep them, and the Advanced columns stay visible while they are counted.

Equipment scaling

An equipment row's hours = qty/room × hours/ea × (sum of selected rooms' qty). Global / Shared gear isn't multiplied by any room.

Tech Install — crew & rounding

• Crew size: 1 or 2+ technicians. Labor bills the same for 2 or more.
• Round to nearest day: ceil(raw / crew / 8) × 8 × crew.

Proposal BOM import / export

1. Import BOM reads a proposal BOM workbook (.xls or .xlsx) with an IPT Format sheet, and optionally Project Info, Project Financials and Labor by Room. A preview shows what will be imported before anything changes.
2. Each distinct room name becomes one room (qty 1). Room-name suffixes such as (1:3) are just text. Positive-quantity Equipment lines become estimator lines, each with install hours 0. Section HEADER rows, zero-quantity lines and Service (warranty / maintenance) lines are not editable here and are kept untouched in your file. Cable and wire lines with quantity 100+ are tagged because their quantity is probably feet; bulk actions skip them.
3. Choose Keep and adjust existing labor (the default when the file has Tech Install/Shop/PM/Engineering/CAD hours) or Rebuild labor from equipment (the default when it has none). The BOM stores labor by room and category, not per device, so every imported room has a Labor basis: Room totals counts only the hours typed in that room's row, exactly (its equipment is listed for reference and not counted); Equipment-based counts the equipment assigned to the room plus its own room overhead, starting at 0. Percentages, crew rounding, scaling, flats, minimums and drawing pages apply only to equipment-based rooms, and shared / global equipment is spread only across them. You can switch a room back and forth; each basis remembers its own edited values, and the originals from the file are never altered.
4. Comparison. When you keep labor that was in the file, the Summary shows Original imported / Revised estimate / Difference (and per room). When the file has no labor, only zero labor, or you chose to rebuild, there is nothing to compare, so only your estimate is shown.
5. Export BOM re-opens your original file and writes only the five estimator hours columns (Tech Install, Tech Shop, Project Management, Engineering, CAD) in Labor by Room, and the matching Hours on the Labor rows of Project Financials. Programming, Commissioning, Project Coordination, Sub Contractor, Service Level and all other cells are left as they were.

Not recalculated: cost, margin, sell price and tax. Only hours are updated, so those money columns can be out of step with the new hours (Sub Contractor hours that mirrored Tech Install are also not changed). Review them in your quoting system before use.

Format: .xls files export as .xls and .xlsx files as .xlsx. Values, number formats and sheet layout are kept, but fonts, colors and other cell styling may be lost. Your file is stored only in this browser (IndexedDB) so Export BOM keeps working after a reload; if it cannot be kept, Export BOM is disabled until you re-attach the original file. Nothing is uploaded.

Estimator workbook (.xlsx)

1. Template downloads a starter file with Rooms, Equipment and CAD sheets.
2. Import .xlsx lets you choose which sections (Rooms, Equipment, CAD, Settings) to import. Importing Rooms or Equipment replaces the estimate and detaches any attached BOM.
3. Export .xlsx saves everything in the same re-importable format plus Summary and Settings sheets (percent modes, crew, minimums and flats). BOM-based estimates also save each room's labor basis, its remembered values and the original imported labor, so re-importing a full backup restores the comparison even without the source file. Unreadable basis data cancels the whole import instead of guessing.

Your session is auto-saved

All data and settings are saved in your browser. Reloading restores your last session. Reset clears all rooms, equipment, labor and any attached BOM.