8 Best Electrical Bidding Software Solutions to Increase Profits

Electrical bidding software has become essential for electrical contractors to maintain their electrical service businesses and grow profit margins. Small businesses that don’t use estimating software and don’t have a clear estimating system run the risk of producing incorrect or inconsistent estimates, which can reduce their bottom line.

In this post, we’ll discuss the eight best electrical estimating software solutions that will help electricians save time and win more electrical projects, including an in-depth discussion of our own all-in-one electrical bidding software, ServiceTitan.

8 Best Electrical Bidding Software Brands

1. ServiceTitan

2. Conest

3. McCormick Systems

4. Procore Estimating (Esticom)

5. Red Rhino

6. Trimble Accubid

7. TurboBid

8. Vision InfoSoft

8 Best Electrical Estimating Software Brands

There are a number of standalone software solutions for electrical estimating on the market — products that are largely specific to estimating, or with a few added features such as project management and billing. These may suit some electrical contracting shops, however, contractors who go with a software product that focuses predominantly on estimating are addressing only one portion of their operations. 

They’re still going to need solutions to handle all the other elements of their business — like payroll, dispatching, and call booking, to name a few.

They might choose to do this with traditional methods (such as pen and paper, or Excel spreadsheets), or with other software products. Either way, having a patchwork of solutions, rather than one, integrated system can take up precious time and generate problems when staff have to chop and change between different software solutions or manual methods. 

In our experience, the most effective electrical estimators carefully follow a holistic, well-defined project management process and use an end-to-end solution, like ServiceTitan, to act as their electrical bid manager.

1. ServiceTitan

ServiceTitan offers much the same tools that the best stand-alone solutions for electrical estimating software provide:

• User-friendly, tailor-made catalogs of equipment, hardware, wiring devices, templates, assemblies, and services, allowing for easy change orders.

• Price lists that remove math errors from the bidding process and facilitate painless invoicing and work-order creation.  

• Illustrated product descriptions to minimize material mix-ups. 

• Customer-facing presentations with good-better-best options devised to nudge up average ticket prices. 

• Proposals — customizable with brand logo and other personalized info — that techs can generate in PDF and deliver in real-time during site visits.

In addition, ServiceTitan’s estimating software also provides an integrated solution for call booking, scheduling, dispatching, billing, marketing, and more.

Let’s take a more detailed look at some of ServiceTitan’s features.

Customizable Electrical Price Books

ServiceTitan’s Pricebook Pro is an integrated, flat-rate pricing solution that comes with a wide range of pre-built, electrical services including detailed descriptions, explainer PDFs, and vivid images. Pricebooks can be organized by verticals and business units, making it easy to click through each category to reach the specific part you need.

You can link specific suppliers to your pricebook via ServiceTitan’s Pricebook Connect so you are notified of price changes, or you can choose to have the changes made to your pricebook automatically. Pricing updates and adjustments are reflected across the entire pricebook and can be accessed by all office staff and techs instantly via mobile tablet or desktop. 

ServiceTitan will also notify you of any upgrades or recommendations that sell well for the specific electrical services you offer. This means you are always on top of the latest products and opportunities for selling higher-ticket products as soon as they are available. 

PriceBook Pro also offers advanced editing and automation features that speed up your pricing service and ensure that it is always up-to-date. The software lets you apply edits and markups in bulk so that they apply across the whole pricebook, or you can select specific groups or categories. You can also apply edits to individual line items.

Using ServiceTitan’s Dynamic Pricing feature, you can set up rules that automatically update your pricing, such as when you want to change your labor rates or material pricing. 

Presentations with Tiered Options

Creating different pricing options for customers is known to be an effective method of increasing ticket sales. It’s similar to how we shop online, so it feels familiar and flexible, with most customers choosing the mid-price option.

Because ServiceTitan’s software integrates the entire estimating process from flat-rate pricing through to your customized material database, it’s easy to prepare Good-Better-Best proposals — either in real-time when out in the field, or back at the office. 

The customer is presented with the three price points, chooses the best bid, and ServiceTitan seamlessly connects the estimate to the rest of the electrical workflow.

Offer Memberships & Financing

Offering customers extra services such as membership contracts and financing options provides flexibility and increases sales opportunities. 

Memberships

Signing customers to service contracts (memberships) is an effective way to bring in reliable recurring revenue for your business and demonstrate good customer support. 

ServiceTitan lets you create membership agreements from scratch or you can adapt and improve an existing agreement that works for you.

Agreements are easy to set up and integrate with your estimating programs — electrical contractors can select a contract from a wide range of customizable templates and set up and store multiple agreements to suit different membership types. 

Financing

Likewise, electrical contractors who offer financing options with their estimates close more deals.

"If you walk into any sales opportunity and you have multiple different options, it's an absolute game-changer," says Carly Armstrong, National Account Manager at ServiceTitan. 

"Offer these each and every time, and you're going to see a huge impact on the bottom line of the business."

ServiceTitan has partnerships with popular providers GreenSky, Service Finance, Turns, and Financeit, so electrical contractors can easily offer customer financing. Electrical businesses customize their own financing plans, so all financing solutions remain profitable.

“When you talk about integrated financing, it’s not just whether they finance or not,” says Darius Lyvers, Chief Operating Officer at F.H. Furr Plumbing, Heating, Air Conditioning and Electrical in Northern Virginia.

“It opens the door for the customer to afford all your products, and they may buy something they otherwise wouldn’t have if you hadn’t presented financing options."

Mobile Agility

The ability to offer customers good-better-best proposals as well as additional services such as memberships and financing in real-time is essential to bidding successfully.

With ServiceTitan mobile, your electricians can access estimate templates and create proposals while out in the field by selecting pricebook items and attaching them to the relevant photos and visuals. This helps explain the need for each service to the customer, who can approve and e-sign the estimate then and there.

Automated Lead Follow-Up

Many electrical shops don’t have a dedicated employee to follow up on electrical estimates, so ensuring that you have a well-defined, automated process for this is critical to securing sales.

ServiceTitan helps with following up on open estimates by automating reminder emails or texts. This eases the workload of office and field staff and means that no outstanding bids are forgotten. 

All the pertinent data (such as customer information, the estimate details and any questions they’ve answered) is stored within ServiceTitan, so whoever is following up on the estimate has everything they need to close the sale. 

Data Tracking

Tracking and analyzing data from your electrical estimates and jobs is an important element of the estimating process and will help you keep on top of your electrical business’s performance.

ServiceTitan estimating software provides a big-picture view of your company's performance and lets you track more granular components such as average ticket price and closing rate. 

With our technician scorecard, you can stay up-to-date on every tech’s stats, such as number of calls per day, estimates closed, revenue generated, memberships sold, and more. Likewise, our CSR scorecard lets you monitor metrics for your customer service team, such as number of calls handled and conversions. 

ServiceTitan’s analytics data gives you insight into how you can improve your electrical estimating and bidding process, so you can grow your business.

Integration with Other Business Operations

The stand-out benefit of using ServiceTitan as opposed to more specific estimating software is that ServiceTitan integrates your electrical estimates with all your other business operations so you don’t have to switch between different software or Excel spreadsheets. 

Using one solution that takes care of the entire workflow — from the initial phone call through the electrical estimate to carrying out the work and billing — helps save time and reduces the likelihood of errors.

Here are just some of the tasks where ServiceTitan helps electrical contractors:

• Generating electronic purchase orders 

• Ordering equipment and materials

• Logging change orders (and having those changes automatically apply to all relevant processes)

• Handling and capturing all calls so you have reliable information to produce your estimates

• Scheduling and dispatching work orders

• Producing electrical invoices, distributing them via email, and automatically filing them electronically. Check out our electrical invoicing tips here.

• Ability to accept check or credit card payments on the spot via mobile or through the ServiceTitan web-based portal

• Integrates directly with accounting tools such as Intacct and QuickBooks so you don't have to change your current processes

• Provides an all-in-one marketing solution to help drive leads

While we believe that the best electrical estimating software is holistic electrical service software (like ServiceTitan) that includes features such as scheduling and dispatching, we know some electricians want to focus on addressing estimating-related issues, or are especially interested in takeoff software. 

So, here’s an overview of seven software solutions on the market that are focused on just the estimating and project management process of bidding.

2. Conest

Conest provides estimating, takeoff, and reporting software for electrical, low-voltage, and datacom contractors. This software includes a huge assemblies database, material price updates via NetPricer®, EPIC®, and TRA-SER®, phase breakdown, and in-built reporting. 

To cater to different needs, Conest is available as both an on-premise and cloud-based solution.

3. McCormick Systems

McCormick estimating software offers customizable estimating and digital takeoff software that can be scaled to fit the scope of your business. There are two products on offer:

• McCormick: For small and midsize businesses.

• McCormick Pro: A faster, more customizable version that also includes change-order management and advanced executive dashboards.

Both products include Design Estimating Pro, a point-and-click digital takeoff tool built into the software.

4. Procore Estimating (Esticom)

Procore Estimating (formerly Esticom) offers estimating software for trades including HVAC, fire and sprinkling, and painting — in addition to plumbing and electric. But that doesn’t mean they don’t offer plenty of electrical contracting-specific features. 

With Procore Esticom, electricians can deploy features for construction takeoff, electrical takeoff, job management, branded quote creation, and markup tools, as well as access to an extensive electrical materials database. 

5. Red Rhino

Red Rhino is a cloud-based electrical estimating software solution with advanced capabilities so that electrical contractors can estimate quickly and accurately. Its material pricing is updated monthly while its “Recap!” tool intuitively provides an overview of all the material and labor components so you can see how each element contributes to the total cost. 

Red Rhino also includes interconnected modules for purchasing, billing, and project management, making this a more integrated solution than some stand-alone estimating software.

6. Trimble Accubid Classic

Trimble Accubid Classic is a full-featured electrical estimating solution that facilitates several aspects of the construction and electrical workflow, from estimating to purchasing, project management, and billing. This software includes a material and labor database of over 40,000 items, lets you see what’s been added or taken away since the last revision, and it gives multiple users access to the same job. 

Trimble Accubid is the company’s value product. Electrical contractors wanting more advanced features may wish to consider its sister product, Trimble Estimating MEP. 

7. TurboBid

Designed for residential and light commercial jobs by both plumbing and electrical contractors, TurboBid offers affordable software that can create estimates both for individual projects and flat-rate service work. 

Prioritizing user-friendliness, TurboBid helps users get the most out of the software by calculating your company overhead and employees' labor costs, as well as offering a variety of live tutorials and support options.

8. Vision InfoSoft

Like TurboBid, Vision InfoSoft serves both electricians and plumbers. Their product, Electrical Bid Manager, includes thousands of assemblies, millions of electrical components from more than 100 materials catalogs, and a bid analysis and management tool that allows business owners to adjust profit, overhead, materials and labor costs. 

Offering bid management for electrical projects of all sizes — small to multimillion-dollar jobs — Vision InfoSoft comes in three versions: Standard, Plus, and Pro.

Ready to Try ServiceTitan’s Electrical Estimating Software?

While there are several comprehensive estimating software solutions available, including ones that offer project management and other useful bolt-on features such as billing, in our experience, contractors who adopt an end-to-end software solution like ServiceTitan find themselves in a much better position. 

With ServiceTitan, many contractors find it easier and more efficient to maintain an effective, holistic management system for electrical estimates — one that ensures they have an exact understanding of the time, costs, and profits for every job, and guarantees that they price bids correctly every time.

Want to see ServiceTitan in action? Schedule a call with us to learn more about how our software can help grow your business.