Find out during the job.
Not at the end of it.
Price it, build it, and watch the real cost arrive as it happens — hours from your crew’s phones, receipts from the counter, all against the same budget.
No spreadsheet to build, no formulas to break. Ten minutes to set a job up from a cost library that already knows what things cost where you work — and from then on the change orders, the invoices, the client’s copy and your margin all keep themselves up to date.
The whole job, start to closeout
Set up a job in minutes. No spreadsheet to build, no formulas to break — and your margin is there without you working it out.
Spreadsheets work. They’re just a lot of work.
A good spreadsheet does the job. The math is right, the proposals look fine, and you know where everything is. Nobody is going to tell you spreadsheets don’t work.
They’re just a lot of work. One change order means updating it in three places. Keeping track of what has been invoiced, what has been paid and which version the client actually has is a job on top of the job — and it happens at night, after the day’s work is done.
CostSlate is that worksheet, already built. Same numbers, same way of working — but the change orders, the invoices and what the client sees keep themselves up to date instead of waiting on you. It was built on real jobs, and it still runs them.
The parts that save you the evening
Tell it what the work is in a sentence and it drafts the budget from your cost library — quantities worked out, client selections marked as allowances, and the questions it had to assume. You correct it; you do not start from a blank sheet.
A 283-item cost library adjusted to your ZIP. A framing crew in Rhode Island doesn't cost what one costs in Alabama, and the numbers shouldn't pretend otherwise.
Snap it and it lands against the trade it belongs to before you have left the lot. No shoebox, no Sunday evening sorting through it.
They fill in the week from a link on their phone — no app store, no password, and it works with no signal on a site that has none. The hours land on the right job already costed, and go out to payroll as one file.
Send it, they open a link on their phone and put their name to it. It rolls into the contract total the moment they do — no chasing paper, no arguments later about what was agreed.
Your client sees the scope, the total and what's outstanding. What you paid your subs stays yours.
Bill by trade as the work completes, with a payment link on the invoice. Paid invoices land back on the budget sheet on their own.
Every allowance tracked against what was actually spent, so the overage conversation happens while there's still time to have it.
Kitchen, bath, deck, addition, basement, roof, new build — the trades already laid out and priced for your area. Start from a real breakdown instead of a blank sheet.
Take money up front, then bill the work against it. The client sees what they paid, what it has covered and what is left, and an invoice it covers outright says paid.
Every job in one profit and loss — month by month, labour against material — and one press to a spreadsheet your accountant can open.
What it costs
Less than an hour of your time, every month.
Price your own renovation. Draw the room, and every line is built from it — materials and labour apart, so you can see what doing it yourself saves.
Win the job. Estimating and client-ready documents.
Run the job. Everything in Lite, plus tracking and the client portal.
Three users sharing one cost library.
Try it on your next estimate
Thirty days, no card, nothing to cancel. Put a real job in it and see whether the numbers come out where you expect.
Start free