TrenchIQ

How it works

Plans in. Bid out.

The same steps you already take to build a bid — with the math, the catalog and the paperwork handled for you. Here's how a bid gets built in TrenchIQ, start to finish.

  1. 01

    Set your numbers once

    Enter your overhead, your markups for materials, labor and equipment, and subcontractors, and your county's sales tax. Choose whether you mark up on margin or on cost. Every new bid starts from them, and any bid — or any single cost on a bid — can override them.

    • Margin or cost-plus — your call
    • Tax applied to materials only, automatically
    • Override any rate on any bid
  2. 02

    Bring in the bid schedule

    Upload the engineer's schedule as a CSV, an Excel file or a PDF. Every item, unit and quantity comes in, in the owner's order, ready to price. No schedule? Add sections and line items by hand — the keyboard moves you from one to the next.

    • CSV, Excel or PDF
    • The owner's item numbers and order
    • Or type it in, keyboard-first
  3. 03

    Price each line item

    Build each unit price from what it really costs: materials, labor, equipment and subcontractors. Pull items you've priced before from your catalog, add a whole crew and its machines in one click, or price from a production rate — so many feet a day, and the hours work themselves out.

    • Pull from your own catalog
    • Whole crews in one click
    • Price by production rate, waste and overtime
  4. 04

    Sharpen the pencil

    Save a version before you cut, then compare the two side by side. Price check flags a unit price that's wildly off your catalog price — the extra digit that costs you the job — and if you've loaded past bid tabulations, you'll see where you likely land against the field.

    • Saved versions and compare
    • Catches the fat-finger typo
    • Your number vs. past lettings
  5. 05

    Hand it in

    Generate the PDF: a bid schedule, a full proposal with your cover letter and signature block, or a summary. TrenchIQ warns you before printing if something the bid needs is missing. Export a CSV, and keep an internal cost report that shows exactly how every price was built.

    • Schedule, proposal or summary
    • Your license, terms and boilerplate
    • CSV and an internal cost report
  6. 06

    Win it, then run it

    Early access

    A won bid can turn into a job schedule built from its own production rates, and your crew can clock in against its line items from their phones. These parts are newer, and we're proving them on real jobs with our beta testers.

    • Job schedule from the bid
    • Field time clock, equipment inspections and receipts
    • Load tickets for truck drivers

The math, out in the open

Why the bid always foots

A city engineer checks that every unit price times its quantity equals the line total. Spreadsheets fail that check when a unit price is rounded after it’s been extended. TrenchIQ rounds the unit price to the cent first, then multiplies — every time, on every line.

All of it lives in one place in the software and is tested against worked examples to the penny. Nothing is calculated twice in two different ways.

  1. Quantity × unit cost
    for each material, labor, equipment and subcontractor cost
  2. + sales tax
    on taxable materials only
  3. + overhead and markup
    on margin or on cost, per your settings
  4. = unit price, rounded to the cent
    rounded first, before anything is multiplied
  5. × quantity = line total
    so the printed price × quantity always equals the printed total

Try it on your next bid

TrenchIQ is in a closed beta for contractors who bid unit-price work. Founding Testers get the estimating free, for as long as we offer it.

Ask for beta access