In this episode of Trades, Tools & Talks, we talk Simpro Takeoffs for time saving estimating with our special guest, Steve Frame, a Senior Estimator at AJB Electrical Services in the greater Sydney area of Australia and Simpro’s Senior Product Marketing Specialist, Bonita Reck.

This is Trades, Tools & Talks

The simpodcast making work. Work. I’m Karlie Huckels.

Today we are talking Simpro products!

Steve Promo Cut

“95% of our business is run on Simpro”

Let’s dive into Takeoffs with with Product Marketing Specialist, Bonita Reck and Steve Frame, a Senior Estimator at AJB Electrical Services – a Simpro customer in the Greater Sydney Area of Australia.

Hi Bonita! Hi Steve!

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Bonita

Hi.

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Steve

Hello. Thanks for having me.

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Karlie

I really want to get to know you, Steve, and I really want to hear your back story. So what is your business story? How. How did you migrate to Semi-Pro?

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Steve

So I've only been with my job for two years now. So prior to that, the company has been in operation for 15 years and they ended up getting a business manager in to try and streamline the business better. How they could do things better and simple was part of that negotiation with them and put Team Pro in place.

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Steve

That was probably about seven years ago now, maybe, maybe a bit longer because I remember as a supplier to this company then and that's when they went over to improve. Since it pros come on board for the company it's changed everything when the whole the whole running of the business relies on C pro and it's it's just streamlined the business so much better.

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Steve

95% of our business is run on super.

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Karlie

Tell me about Takeoffs, because that's your bread and butter and you're in that all the time.

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Steve

Yeah, I am. So I use it pro for all my in business. It's just the simplicity of it. It's just a one stop shop now I don't have to keep coming in and out of different software to to get it to work properly. So take offs, it just keeps it all within the one software program. And it's easy.

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Steve

It's easy just to keep going in and out of the same program. Takeoffs has been a absolute goldmine for us to have in our business.

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Karlie

So can you walk me through, like how you would go about a project in Takeoffs? How do you use it?

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Steve

Well, so previously in another software, we'd have to generate all the takeoffs and then transfer across. And then just to simplify that and go back into the previous software, it was really difficult all the time going in and out, in and out. So one of the best things about Takeoffs is you're in the quote and you're in the take off at the same time.

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Steve

And that's so important. It generates the generates the quotation on the back of the take off rather than the take off generating the quotation. So before it was two separate things, but now within the Takeoffs, within it's within the one program. So it makes more sense that it's right in front of you in both versions.

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Karlie

And do you utilize the symbol recognition?

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Steve

All the development of that has been outstanding. It really is the feature of the whole take off tool on and above everything else. Obviously that it's great with the symbol recognition. It just saved so much time. It doesn't focus on the orientation of the symbol, it focuses on the symbol. And that's so important because on the planes that we do, especially in the electrical planes, I'll just use an exit sign, for example, on a plane, the orientation of the exits, so on could be could be to the north, could be the south, to the west could be anywhere.

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Steve

This symbol recognition within Takeoffs. It doesn't worry about the orientation. It focuses on the symbol that you're trying to find. And that makes it so much better. There's, others that we've had to do that and that'll pick up only the symbol if it’s facing north. And you've got to keep coming back in and out, in and out, in and out to try and find the other orientations.

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Steve

And that can be missed too. And you've only going to miss three or four. Doesn't have to be an exit on anything. And that that could be, you know, up to thousands of dollars that you're now being held accountable for, whereas Takeoffs doesn't miss. It picks everything up and it also has the little slide bar. But it depends how much you want to drill into the symbol, because some of our plans are quite busy with different lines coming through for other parts of the design words you can pull that back on the slide bar and it just makes it so much better to find

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Karlie

How would you say that Simpro and Takeoffs have changed your workflow now?

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Steve

Well, it's made it a lot easier and a lot quicker. So the time we’re spending to do quotations obviously been reduced dramatically. Everyone's strapped for time, no one's ever got enough time to do all of their work. But this certainly helps us progress on saving a lot more time and it's a lot quicker and more efficient.

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Steve

And as I keep saying it’s a one stop shop, you just getting into the one area all the time to keep doing your work. So it's fantastic. The value of using the Simpro Takeoffs in the cost alone for the license per month is a feature that Simproshould be pushing further. they should be highlighting that fact.

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Steve

I think I've said it before. You should be asking more, you’re not getting enough buck for your value. To be honest, we are, absolutely. It's it really is cost effective for what you gain back as well on top of the time. It'sunbelievable.

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Karlie

What is your history with Simpro Takeoffs?

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Steve

So when it first when it first came out, we brought a license and then Bonita contacted us and said, would you like to have a chat with us? We'd like to get your feedback on, on how you've found it so far. I think we've had probably four or five of those [meetings] now over the last 12 months plus.

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Steve

Yeah. And every time it just keeps developing better and better. And I'm not saying just on the back of what I've done, but it goes back to what I said about this. The service level, they've listened to the customer and kept streamlining it to make it even better for the customer.

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Karlie

Steve In your own words, how would you what is Takeoffs?

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Steve

Takeoffs is just a tool to develop a requirement on any given job. To be honest, on any given project, it can be used for anything that you're doing in any industry. To be fair, if you've got a set of plans that you have been asked to do, a quote on Takeoffs is the tool.

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Karlie

I love that.

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Bonita

See, I told you he’d have a good answer

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Karlie

He’s so good. Oh my goodness

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Steve

Stop it.

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Bonita

But you know, my answer is, Steve,?

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Steve

What is it?

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Bonita

It's an add on estimating software.

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Steve

Well. Well, that is.

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Bonita

Yeah, I know, but your answer is way better.

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Karlie

Okay. I feel like we should do a who versus who now.

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Steve

I'll just. I'll just get on the whiteboard. That's one to me.

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Bonita

Yeah. Keep a tallye.

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Karlie

What businesses do you think Takeoffs for? Like, who should be using Takeoffs?

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Steve

Oh, electrical, plumbing. Just all the trades. Just all the trades that are in the building industry, at least at the very minimum. And I'm sure looking outside the square, there's probably a lot of other trades that can use it as well. But certainly the the building trades the first market to hit because we all have plans, we've all got to do our take offsl so we've got to do our quotations.

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Steve

So what we start with the building industry, the construction industry, definitely.

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Karlie

Bonita, what? What's your counter?

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Bonita

Oh, no, mine was very much the same. Basically, anybody that uses a plan, like any industry where they've got a plan and they need to either count items or mark up a plan was basically mine. And like you said, Steve, you know, thinking outside the box, I know I've spoken to customers previously where like they're in the forestry industry and they're literally using Takeoffs to like plant the trees, like mark out where they're planting the trees.

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Steve

Wow there you go. .

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Bonita

How outside the box is that. That's crazy. Yeah.

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Steve

Yeah, yeah.

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Karlie

So what does each feature do? A lot?.

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Bonita

Yeah. Look, it does. And I know Karlie, we've gone into this higher up, but yeah. So the plan page is basically where you can see where you've uploaded your plans, you can see whether or not they've been completed or if they've been worked or if their an Asbuiltt. So you can also manage your cost centers and sections in that area as well.

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Bonita

The plan upload wizard is actually the process of which uploading the plan you can add your logo, crop items out on the page and do things like that to make it easier to create a take off from that plan. And then the drawing page itself is actually the, I guess the area where you're doing all your marking up, ccounting, measuring and things like that.

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Bonita

So that's where the symbol recognition tool sits, yeah, all the fun stuff happens on the drawing page.

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Steve

Now see I couldn’t have answered like that, that was brilliant.

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Bonita

It's all right. I've got a lot of practice on webinars for that one.

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Karlie

What is the symbol recognition tool and how does it save you time?

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Steve

If you've got a very clean plan when it's like clean, you haven't got a lot of lines and other areas from other o trades that are required on the plan and need recognition tool will work really well. But I found with with the Simpro symbol recognition tool that a lot of my plans aren't clean, they're very, very messy and very, very.

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Steve

What's the word to use?

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Bonita

..Busy.

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Steve

Yeah, very busy. Very busy. So. So symbols can be lost within those other lines. But with the recognition tool, of course, it's, it's more just on what you want to find and it finds it better than anything that I'm saying. And that slide bar with that, that slide bar, it probably wouldn't work as effective. So whoever's put that in there has nailed it because that helps you narrow it further just to pick what you want.

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Steve

But the number one, I think the thing that most important about the recognition tool is the orientation of the symbol is irrelevant. That's the key because very little, very few symbols are always in the same orientation on any plan. And the orientation is the key.

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Karlie

I forgot if we talked about this, Bonita, but is there a limit on how many symbols you can have?

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Bonita

There's not a limit on the number of symbols you can check. So you can check as many on a page as you want. But there is a limit to how many can actually find at a time. But I think that limit is quite high.

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Steve

It's really good.

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Bonita

Yeah, I can't remember the exact number, but I don't think in one single go you probably looking at more than 500 anyway. I think that's why we put it up there. The other thing that I would touch on is that the symbol recognition tool for Takeoffs, it's included in the price. It doesn't cost you anything extra to use.

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Bonita

It's not an add on to the add-on, it's all included so you don't have to worry about how many you're looking at. And if you need to mark up like 20 or 30 different types of symbols for all the different things that you've got on the plan, it's all included and you don't need to worry about it because it's just there.

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Steve

And just further to that, that it's included in the price for your sales team who are going to go out there and market Simpro Takeoffs, other software depending on how many symbols you recognize within the month, up to a limit, the price then doubles to go further than that limit I found when I first started using it after week one, my price had doubled.

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Steve

For the next three weeks I was paying double the amount, which was more than the license for the software. So I've stopped. I haven't used that now, probably four or five months because I refused to pay for it. It's crazy. That's a selling tool for your Takeoffs.

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Karlie

Absolutely. Yeah. I think that's all that I have for you guys today. Question wise. But I just want to say thank you for sitting down and talking Takeoffs with me today and thanks for coming on Trades Tools and Talks.

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Bonita

Thanks for having me. Sign up for Takeoffs.

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Steve

Thanks for having me, guys. I hope everybody enjoys Takeoffs like I have.

Takeoffs is one cool deal.

If you are ready to learn more about how it can help you and your business, reach out to Simpro today.

If you're already a customer, contact your account manager. If you're not well, what are you waiting for? Join team Simpro today! Head online to Simprogroup dot com.

This is trades tools and talks.

Talk to you next time!