Create a Standard Estimate | Design Build/Install

In this article:

Before Creating a Standard Estimate

Create a New Standard Estimate (Design Build/Install)

      From the CRM Contact

      From the Standard Estimate List

Add Discounts to Standard Estimates

Payment Milestones

Mobile Estimates (for Standard Estimates, Only)

Before Creating a Standard Estimate

💡 It's important to understand why LMN suggests using Standard estimates for any installation or "one off" work that you may offer your clients.
LMN suggests using Standard estimates for the following reasons

• Progressive or milestone billing
• Creating multiple workareas (projects) to facilitate hours required

When building your first Standard estimate, you can create a new estimate in two different ways:
(A) From the CRM Contact
(B) From the Standard Estimate List

Create a New Standard Estimate (Design Build/Install)

(A) Create a Standard Estimate from a CRM Contact

1. Navigate to CRM > Contact
2. From the CRM Contacts page, click the Estimates tab at the top.
3. Click the + New Standard Estimate button to create a new Standard estimate for this Contact.

(B) Create an Estimate from the Standard Estimates list:

1. Navigate to Estimate > Standard
2. In the top right corner of the screen, click the +New button.
3. In the New Standard Estimate screen, use the Lead/Customer lookup tool to find the contact you wish to create the estimate for.
4. Once you've found the correct customer, use the Select button to verify the customer.
5. Next, on the Estimate Information section, choose the Division, Salesperson, and Estimator. You will also be confirming the Project Name for this estimate; ensure the correct Jobsite is also chosen.
6. Now, you're ready to start building your new Standard Estimate and customer proposal.

Add Discounts to Standard Estimates

Add discounts to both Standard and Service estimates to ensure accurate pricing is both quoted to a customer, and applied to contracts.

⚠️ Before adding a discount, you will first need to add in Discount as a line item within your "Other Catalog". 

1. Navigate to Price List > Other
2. From the list, click on Discount
3. You will only add in the Description of the Item, and ensure there is no tax and profit override of this line item when added into an estimate.
4. Click Save

1. Find your estimate after adding discount line item. Navigate to Estimates > Standard
2. Select the proposal you'd like to discount from the list
3. Click the Workareas + Pricing tab
4. Within your Estimate, click the + Add Work Area
   
5. Label the Work Area Name: "Discount" and click OK.
6. Add the line item Discount within your work area by clicking Add Items + Templates. 
   
7. Now you can add the discounted price with a negative (-) in front of the amount. This line item will impact the Total Price being charged out to the customer for Standard Estimates.
8. You can now navigate to the Billing Setup tab and it will allow you to create your milestones based off of the price indicated after the discount. 

Payment Milestones

With Contracts for Standard Estimates, you can set up Milestone payments for your Standard jobs. With those Milestones you can split payments up by a dollar amount or a percentage of the total job.

Navigate to and Select Milestone Type

1. Navigate to Payment Milestones: Estimates > Standard > Contact tab
2. In the Payment Milestones section, click the green "+" button next to Add Milestones

3. Click the dropdown next to Create Milestone Using. You have three options to calculate your milestones: Estimate, Work Area or Cost Code.

   Estimate	Will take your total estimate value, and divide it accordingly depending on how many payments you have selected. From there to come up with the price for each payment you can select to do it by percentage or by dollar amount.
   Work Area	Will take your total estimate value, split by work area on your estimate into multiple payment milestone line items. This will be ideal for customers using QuickBooks for job costing or to give more details to your client.
   Cost Code	Will take your total estimate value, split by cost codes on your estimate into multiple payment milestone line items. This will be ideal for customers using QuickBooks for job costing.

   • Payments will be broken down according to how many payments you need (deposit, progress payment 1, etc) and estimate pricing.
   • These milestone payments will not have dates by default. This is the major difference between Standard and Service Estimates. Once the estimate gets sold and goes over to Time, you can then set the dates for these invoices.
4. Splitting Milestones by Taxability: If your Estimate contains a mix of taxable and tax-exempt items, you'll definitely want to make use of the Split Milestones by Tax Status function, which is toggled checked by default when creating a Standard contract.
   Regardless of which of the three milestone options you selected, having Split Milestones by Tax Status checked will create an invoice that has separate line items for the taxable and non-taxable portions of each Work Area, Cost Code, or User-Named Milestone:
5. When finished, click Add and Save all changes 

🎥 Video: Payment Milestones

Mobile Estimates

• For more information about the Crew App, visit the LMN Crew App article.
• For more information about Mobile Estimates, visit the section Mobile Estimates (for Estimators & Crew Leads)

Need more help?  Contact our Support Team by email at lmn-support@granum.com, through Live Chat, or by phone at (888) 347-9864

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