ProEst Estimating

Vorteile

The software is easy to understand and it truly meets and exceeds all of our expectation when it came time to turn in a bid . We are a building and design firm, the range of the work we bid goes from electrical, plumbing, HVAC to complete turn key. We appreciate the fact ProEst is constantly improving its functionalities and overall performance.

Nachteile

The issues we had over the years are the same issues we get with other software in our systems, updates sometimes fix one program but conflicts with others. Happy to said the issues were not critical nor catastrophic in our daily use of the program nor cause major delays in our bidding process.

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I believe software should conform to the way you do business and not the other way around, you should not have to change overnight everything it took years to learn, to have to conform to a format that doesn't reflect how we do our jobs, or made no sense from the industry point of view. Software should adapt to the approach and methods that have proven true time and time again for your organization, make the software learn from you. If your company is doing the transition from another system or "OLD SCHOOL" of ruler, pen, and pad. The program and its functionality should make sense to you, even if you never sat in from of a computer. It should follow the same approach you take in creating an estimate as if you were doing it with paper and pen.

Look for a program with a reasonable learning curve, justifiable price, good technical support as well as the ability to grow and adapt to the unique way you conduct your business with all its needs and constant demands that new technology brings. Before using Proest, we try other programs that were truly hard to learn.

This resulted in a new set of issues and challenges when it came time to hire a new person. It takes time to teach any system to a new employee. Proest solved all that for us by creating a database unique to our firm, a database that used the same approach and methodology that we can relate to, lowering the learning curve considerably.

Good software should be intuitable, it should follow the same order and path you take to resolved and complete your task and get the job done fast and accurate.

My company has recently purchased the Enterprise Version of ProEst. We have only started learning the system but have so far been very impressed with the functionality, ease of use and product value. The ability to do digital takeoff straight from the program, as well as the flexibility to edit / modify just about every piece of information on the system gives it an advantage to other programs i have used.

Vorteile

This is by far the easiest estimating program i have used thus far. Other pros include - Flexibility to edit almost everything; the large cache of report templates; the large database and pre-built assemblies; the built in digital takeoff; the bid day summary to use for sub-contractor bid tabulation

Nachteile

The preset costs are very generic (i.e. labor costs) - for large projects with heavy labor, this could throw off the labor estimate. In addition, the digital takeoff module, albeit very handy, is somewhat limited. It would be nice to have more flexibility to manually manipulate takeoffs, even after associating it with a digital takeoff. It would also be nice to be able to switch between different forms of measurement, right now you are only limited to the unit of measure determined by the line item for which you are taking off.

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This is an ideal product for small and medium sized construction companies. If you want a flexible program with a small learning curve, ProEst is right for you. Be prepared, however, to need to update the labor costs - i would suggest not relying on the preset amounts.