Project Cost Estimation

For service businesses, detailed, accurate estimates are vital. When projects are underestimated, they’ll run at a loss. If you overestimate costs, you’re unlikely to secure new business.

Plus, creating project quotes comes along with its own costs. Specifically, the more labor-intensive this process is, the more it will cost you in admin time.

Our estimator tool empowers you to quickly create accurate, itemized project quotes.

What is a project cost estimator?

As the name suggests, a project cost estimator calculates what a project will cost to deliver. This means calculating the sum of all labor and materials, at each stage of the project.

This process gets tricky when you have multiple stakeholders, disciplines, and departments working on a single project. Of course, this is the reality for most professional services businesses.

Dedicated tools simplify this process, by storing key assumptions about your projects. These include rates for different kinds of work, material purchase prices, and details of any other fixed project costs.

Why use a dedicated tool for estimating costs?

In the service industry, it’s still common to use spreadsheets or even back-of-napkin calculations to estimate project costs. This might work for a while, but it’s not a scalable approach.

It’s also far from ideal in terms of security, convenience, or collaboration.

Relying on spreadsheets leads to poor process management, miscommunications, lost data, and other unnecessary disruption. By contrast, dedicated tools provide centralized information, smooth user experiences, lower admin costs, and improved outcomes.

What should a project cost estimation tool include?

Project estimator tools are based on two key elements:

1. A data layer, for storing key information on projects, labor and material costs, specific tasks, and clients.
2. A front-end interface for calling, querying, and displaying this information.

For service businesses, the data layer should include the daily or hourly rate for the different services you offer. That way, your team can use simple time estimates for each service vertical, to quickly calculate the total cost of each project task.

For example, you could modify this to be used as a financial services, legal, or software development project cost estimation template - or some other type of service.

Estimates can then be viewed, shared, and filtered by department, client, project, and more.

The most effective project estimate tools maximize profitability by cutting unnecessary admin tasks, through automation, file sharing, and third-party integrations.

Our project cost estimation template

We’ve built our project cost estimate template for maximum efficiency. Users can create complex project budgets using a variety of cost estimation techniques, in seconds.

Our template offers:

• Complex estimation rules.
• Complete customization.
• Workflow automations.
• Intuitive UI.
• RBAC.
• Third-party integrations.
• Mobile-responsiveness.
• Optional self-hosting.
• Design customization.
• Efficient workflows.

Our template is the smart way to create, manage, and share estimates.

Itemized estimates, in seconds

Use our cost estimate template to create detailed, real-time project cost estimates, in just a few clicks. We’ve built our estimator tool around four linked databases for projects, project items, rates, and clients. Quickly estimate the costs of entire projects or individual tasks.

Store your fixed rates for each service vertical, and use our simple form interfaces to create project estimates. Our template minimizes admin time, with instant cost calculations and intuitive UIs.

View, share, and manage estimates by project, client, department, and more.

Custom formula variables

Our template makes extensive use of formula variables. Use Handlebars statements and our built-in JavaScript editor to create, customize, and implement powerful automation rules across your cost estimator.

We’ve used formula variables throughout our template to calculate total costs, across entire projects and individual items.

Use our JavaScript editor to create more complex custom rules, which perfectly match your existing process and policies. Modify our app to be used as a financial, legal, consulting, or software project cost estimation template.

Streamlined project management

Use our template to build efficient project management workflows. We’ve provided dedicated screens for managing projects, costs, estimates, and clients. Our intuitive interfaces make it fast and easy to manage key project information.

When you add an estimate for a specific task, the totals for the respective project and client are automatically updated.

Share our estimate screens directly with clients to simplify communications and approval workflow management.

Powerful automations

Our template is built to automate processes. Use any in-app action to trigger our library of built-in automations. Instantly trigger everything from client communications, to invoice approval and project initiation .

Use our third-party integrations, JavaScript editor, and formula variable to create powerful custom automations.

With Budibase, it’s easy to create highly automated project estimation workflows.

Conditionality and multi-step forms

We’ve based our template around a highly intuitive and usable cost estimation interface. This is built around a simple multi-step form, with extensive conditional formatting. Users can choose the project elements they’d like to include, and provide details of each.

Use our conditional formatting to hide, display, or update any component, based on user behavior, form inputs, back-end data, and more.

Our conditional formatting and multi-step forms are ideal for creating intuitive designs, that work perfectly across all devices.

Role-based access control

Our template offers fully customizable role-based access control. Assign permissions to users based on their location, seniority, job title, behavior, and more. Ensure maximum security and usability by giving your team access to the exact features and data they need.

We’ve built our project cost estimation template around three permission tiers. Basic users can add, edit, and manage details on entire projects, or specific tasks. Power users can manage data on all clients.

Admin users can add business functions, and alter rates for existing functions.

Mobile-friendly design

Our project cost estimation template works perfectly on all devices. All design elements are fully responsive, automatically scaling to fit perfectly on all screens. Our components are also tested for common accessibility standards.

Ensure maximum app adoption, by giving your team a tool they can take anywhere.

Quickly estimate project costs at head office, on client sites, or in the field. Our template is built to create detailed, accurate project estimates, anywhere, on any device.

Build a project cost estimator with Budibase

Budibase is the fast and cost-effective way to build custom tools for the professional services industry. In as little as five minutes, you can build a fully functional and deployable project cost estimator.

Budibase offers:

• Open-source design.
• Scalability.
• Self-hosting.
• Custom RBAC.
• Visualization.
• Advanced security.
• Automation.
• Integrations.
• Support for external databases.
• Total customization.
• Built-in JavaScript editor.
• Auto-generated screens.

Use our template as a deployable solution, or tweak and customize it to fit your specific requirements.

Our open-source, low-code platform

At Budibase, we’re revolutionizing the way professional services companies build custom tools. Our open-source, low-code platform offers fast development times, total customization, and leading security.

Say goodbye to settling for off-the-shelf solutions, or paying for expensive custom developments. With Budibase, you can create feature-packed, custom tools in minutes.

We also offer enterprise support packages and SLAs. Check out our pricing page for more information.

Connect to existing data

Build your Budibase tools around existing datasets. Connect to external databases, using MSSQL, MySQL, Postgresql, S3, Airtable, MongoDB, CouchDB, Oracle, RestAPI, and more. We also offer our own built-in database, with support for direct CSV uploads.

Budibase is the smart way to centralize data. Call, query, and manipulate information from several sources, using centralized, intuitive tools.

Self-hosting or cloud deployments

Host and deploy your Budibase tools however you like. Choose self-hosting or Budibase Cloud. Deploy to your own infrastructure using Kubernetes, Docker, Docker Compose, Digital Ocean, and more.

Budibase tools can be deployed in minutes.

Third-party integrations

Build tools that sit perfectly alongside your existing software. Budibase offers a wide range of third-party integrations , using Zapier, RestAPI, and more. Connect our cost estimate template to invoicing tools, approval apps, communications software, and more.

With Budibase, it’s easy to create fully streamlined professional services workflows. Use any in-app action to trigger automations in a huge variety of external tools.

Security

Budibase offers unrivaled security. Enterprises around the world trust us to keep their data safe. With self-hosting and custom RBAC, you have complete control over how and when users access your apps.

We also offer free SSO across all of your Budibase tools, as well as support for OAuth and OpenID.

Scalability

As your business grows and changes, your tools need to evolve with it. With Budibase, it’s easy to build fully scalable tools. Quickly add new data, users, screens, and features, without the need for disruptive downtime.

Say goodbye to waiting for the functionality you need to meet new challenges. With Budibase, you can build and customize the right tools for your specific needs, in minutes.

Get started with Budibase today

At Budibase, we’re building the world’s largest ecosystem of free, open-source tools. Our low-code platform offers unrivaled functionality, customization, and development times.

Use our project cost estimation template as a deployable solution, or customize its design, functionality, and data to suit your specific requirements.

To start using our template today, simply click below.