Tutorials
Learn TrenchIQ one job at a time
Short, step-by-step how-tos, in the order you'll need them. Start with your company's numbers, and you'll have a bid out the door by the end of the second one.
Getting started
From your numbers to your first bid
- 01
Set up your company's rates
Enter your overhead, margins and sales tax once. Every new bid starts from them, and you can override any of them on a single job.
3 minRead - 02
Start a new bid
Create a bid, name it, and land in the bid builder ready to add your first section.
2 minRead - 03
Import a bid schedule from Excel, CSV or PDF
Bring the engineer's bid schedule in as line items — descriptions, units and quantities, in the owner's order — instead of typing it.
4 minRead
Pricing faster
Price lines in seconds, not minutes
- 04
Build a unit price, cost by cost
Open a line's cost build-up, add what the work really costs, and watch overhead, margin and tax turn it into a unit price.
5 minRead - 05
Add a whole crew to a line item
Build a crew once — the people and machines that do the work — and add it to any line item instead of entering each one.
3 minRead - 06
Drive the bid builder from the keyboard
Move through a bid, add lines from your catalog and open the cost build-up without touching the mouse.
2 minRead - 07
Save a priced bid to your catalog
Turn the lines you just priced into catalog items, so the next bid that uses them starts pre-priced.
2 minRead
Finishing and your team
Hand it in, sharpen it, share the work
- 08
Generate the bid PDF
Produce the bid you hand in — a bid schedule, a full proposal, or a summary — with your company, license and terms on it.
3 minRead - 09
What to do when a number looks wrong
How TrenchIQ flags a price that's out of line, the one habit that catches the rest, and how to tell us.
3 minRead - 10
Save a version and compare two bids
Save a checkpoint before you sharpen the pencil, then see exactly which lines changed and what it did to the total.
3 minRead - 11
Mark a bid sent, won or lost
Keep your bid list honest — and keep an exact copy of every bid you send.
1 minRead - 12
Invite your team
Add your estimators and project managers, each with the access their job needs — and remove someone the day they leave.
2 minRead
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.