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Pros
The help videos attached to every aspect of the program are so helpful in training users and if that isn’t enough the Turbobid team is spot on with customer service to further help you succeed.
Secondly, the reports and bid package this software creates is beyond anything you can do on your own. Its the wow factor to the already amazing product.
In general, this program provides a great solution for estimating the budget. It is easy to use and its customer service is really good.
My first impression of Turbo Bid is excellent. As I said, I'm still in the trial phase but the estimating program is easy to learn and the customer support has been great.
Cons
Inability to adjust take off quantity prior to purchase.
Complete waste of money for Canadian businesses.
I dislike the way navigation through assemblies works. I would rather be able to type in a search bar when I need to add an assembly, especially one not used often.
I get lost on how the pricing appears, or I don't know what price to send to the customer.
Showing Most Helpful
Showing 25 of 29 reviews
"Must Have "
Overall: Its a must have for anyone serious about their business. This software is so customizable and user friendly and will save you a lifetime of sitting at a desk trying to figure everything out yourself. Once you have it tailored to fit your business your set. My time is valuable and demanded in other areas. I don’t have the luxury of desk time. If you don’t love this software you don’t know the first thing about estimating and if you don’t have this software your in the stone ages and just as well close up shop and find a new career.
Pros: Very user friendly and easy to learn. The help videos attached to every aspect of the program are so helpful in training users and if that isn’t enough the Turbobid team is spot on with customer service to further help you succeed. Secondly, the reports and bid package this software creates is beyond anything you can do on your own. Its the wow factor to the already amazing product
Cons: Inability to adjust take off quantity prior to purchase. But I’ve been told they are developing an upgrade to solve this which will be released soon. I can’t wait.
"Electrical Service Pricing and Project Estimating"
Overall: TurboBid has been extremely useful in helping me grow my business. Working with CSRs has helped me better understand the electrical contracting business. Their customer support is always spot on.
Pros: TurboBid is easy to set up and use on a daily basis to price service work. I estimate electrical jobs from a few hundred dollars to over a million. The data base is massive and easy to adapt to any estimate. It gives me clear, easy to understand reports and material take-offs. I have been using TurboBid since 2012 and have seen amazing progress within the system to make it easier and faster to produce accurate estimates and proposals for my customers.
Cons: I have not had any negative experiences using TurboBid or the customer support.
"Complete waste of money for Canadian businesses!"
Overall: I am unable to use it and spent way too much time with support trying to figure it out. I would of been better off throwing my money out of the window of my truck!
Pros: I don't have any pro's. The software is not user friendly in Canada.
Cons: Does not work in Canada like I was informed during the sales process. You are unable to get Canadian prices from distributors to work with the software, hence you cannot perform accurate estimates in a timely matter. Complete waste of money spent that could of been used somewhere else as a newly started business. I just use the excel spreadsheet I developed, which is much faster and accurate. I will purchase a Canadian friendly software when I recover from this wasted purchase, like McCormick or Accubid.
Vendor Response
"Excellent product and excellent customer service"
Overall: I have been elated since I chose TurboBid. I did a LOT of research before choosing them. They had the right base price for the software, I liked that I had an actual software package not an online only program. I can honestly say that a small part of me depends on TurboBid now. Being a small one person shop, I can always do things way faster in my head. Then I get on the job and realize, what about the screws! What about the hole that I didn't think would take me so long and now drilling that one hole ate up my profit. Not with TurboBid. Now I don't do off the top of my head bids anymore, I run the job through TurboBid and I know I will be profitable when I give my price. It may not always be the cheapest bid, but it will be the right bid at the right price for my company. Do a few jobs once and compare them apples to apples for labor hours. If you are honest, I bet your actual jobtime labor hours comes out pretty close to what TurbBid estimates! I am way more profitable now as a company. It really paid for itself after a few bids. Oh and their customer service is top notch!!! I had an issue and the Vice president worked with me on it! That is service!
Pros: I like the ease of use. Overall it is a very easy program to learn. With the way that it is setup like a flow chart, you can keep progressing through the steps on the program to make sure you don't miss anything. That is one of its main positives, it let's you get through the steps for a more accurate (not always the cheapest) more thorough, quicker bid. You know that when you are done, you will have the confidence that you can submit the right price for the job. I am definitely more profitable now.
Cons: There is a slight learning curve. searching through the list tree can be daunting but they have a great search feature that can work around it.
Vendor Response
"Turbo Bid Electrical Estimating Software"
Overall: We are able to turn out the most professional proposals in the least amount of time. You can give your customer anything from just a plain bid price to an extensive proposal that includes all of the equipment being used, and all of the labor being supplied. Even a room by room breakdown of the items included for your customers review.
Pros: Ease of use, was up and running in an afternoon. Great customer service, everyone at Turbo Bid is great and they care about their customers, always available for good advice and a great learning experience. They really go the extra mile to help with a problem you may have encountered.
Cons: There is absolutely nothing that I dislike, the entire program is very functional, easy to learn, and accurate.
Vendor Response
"Great product for small or start ups companies "
Overall: Overall, I use this at my job ( a large corporation) and it’s a much faster was to get estimates out to clients, however for this purpose, it’s almost a glorified word or excel template. We also started to use this with my husband’s electric company he just started, and I find it is much more useful than at work
Pros: I like the cleanliness and physical appearance of bids and estimates. Like I said previously, my company software isn’t compatible to integrate, but again, for a smaller company or a start up, I feel this would be an amazing investment
Cons: As previously stated, maybe it’s a security issue on my end, but users cannot customize lingo Or costs, if this is a software issue, that would be something I would change
Vendor Response
"I use TurboBid for electrical estimating of residential projects."
Overall: Faster estimate completion time.
Pros: I like the formal proposal feature. It save a lot of time and lays everything out in an easily understandable format for customers. I also like how I can setup assembly groups.
Cons: I dislike the way navigation through assemblies works. I would rather be able to type in a search bar when I need to add an assembly, especially one not used often.
"Why I use TurboBid for my Electric Estimating"
Overall: After the takeoff, the reports are beneficial at confirming to customers what the job consists of, and what our costs are, and make it easy to pass on job management items to others.
Pros: TurboBid is easy to use, and very accurate.
Cons: Having to do price updates manually. I have not chosen the automatic updates.
"Simplify Your Estimating "
Pros: The ease of it. To be honest i look forward to the updates because there is always something new. The volume of material is huge!
Cons: There isnt really anything that stands out.
"Very detailed and useful!"
Overall: I'm beginning my own electrical business as a Master Electrician. I purchased Turbo Bid because I needed to accurately estimate new residential and commercial projects. With direction from Bill Ruffner and Andrew Ruffner, I was able to very quickly learn how to use their program and navigate through their software program. I'm very happy with how easy it is to learn and with the customer service they provide.
Pros: The detail in which program has. There are so many hidden company expenses a company has that Turbo Bid brings to light and allows you to account for in estimating. Also the ease of making a fast estimate through the material assemblies. Also, Turbo Cloud enables you to get updated pricing and updated assemblies.
Vendor Response
"New to business - Turbobid has helped"
Overall: We started a electrical business without a lot of experience and talent in all areas except estimating. I'm so glad we went with Turbobid. Not only were we able to figure it out with this software but their customer service was so helpful and got us in the right direction.
Pros: Customer service is amazingly helpful. Pretty user friendly. Lots of options to help. Never bid before using this system and even I can do it with Turbobid! Lots of helpful videos are available.
Cons: Setting up assemblies are a little harder to figure out but I'll call and I'm sure I will get help.
"Very good software to make pipe estimates. Large database available. "
Overall: For some projects, I have compared the actual cost of each project compared to the estimated costs based on this program and similar ones, considering that the costs estimated through the TurboBid were almost always those that were closer to the real costs. Although I have used it for small projects (houses), I think it is feasible, given the results I have obtained, to increase its use to larger projects, for which I continue to use other software.
Pros: Although I have not used it much yet, if I have monitored the evolution of its database in some specific items where I know that there have been specific price variations in a relatively short period of time. I have been able to verify that the database has faithfully reflected these changes, unlike other similar software, where these changes are not reflected or are observed with an important time lag. Your customer service is above the average to which I am accustomed to receive when I have made inquiries.
Cons: Although as I said previously, the customer service is higher than the average that I'm used to receiving technically speaking. However, his response time, on the other hand, has been quite slow, at least in my particular case
"My Oppinion "
Overall: I hope to have time this winter to sit down and learn the program better
Pros: The are always working to make it better
Cons: Never been able to adjust for different crews and pay scale to get my true number
Vendor Response
"Newbe"
Overall: So far I'm very happy with Turbo bid. I'm new to estimating so it was all very unsettling at first but I've used it for several projects now and I'm getting more and more familiar with the software and more confident with my numbers.
Pros: My favorite thing about the software is the Technical Support. I've only used it once but it was fantastic!
Cons: The thing I liked least is that it's overwhelming at first. There are so many things you can do with it that it's just a lot to take in at first. However if you're a contractor, you're already used to that and you already know how to eat an elephant.
Vendor Response
"Turbo bid"
Overall: It has good customer service but some of the prices dont add up. For example 1/2" emt is more expensive than 3/4" emt
Pros: Ease of use
Cons: price differences
Vendor Response
"Amazing software!!I would recommend this to any estimator"
Pros: Turbobid is a very logical step by step estimating process. Has a lot of cool features and report generating capabilities.
Cons: I don't really have anything negative to say.
""
Overall: I began using TurboBid's new Flat Rate feature the moment it was uploaded and I made our first Flat Rate book to distribute to the residential service crew. I just plugged in our rates and it was ready. The most useful feature is the estimate pricing detail in proposals. It’s simple to use and is exactly what my customers have been asking for in a proposal format. I can create a quick accurate proposal for small service jobs with every task already broken out. They don’t have to call back and ask for a breakdown. This has already saved me time and the tedious task of defending the total job price. They see from the start what the job will require. TurboBid is the best system I have seen. It allows complete customization. I don’t feel like I have to give up my manual take-off experience and let a machine do it as many claim a software requires. It just has sped up every estimating task with greater accuracy and consistency. I have made believers out of the old guys who never trusted the other systems. I’m now quoting jobs with much less headaches.
"Very satisfied with Turbo Bid "
Overall: I now have used Turbo Bid for our company for the past month. I scheduled my second meeting to go to the next level of my training. For me, this biding software is easy to use, easy to learn, very user-friendly, and a good step by step process. I was wanting to learn a more advanced level of Knowledge on this software, and that is what I received. Thanks Bill for going above and beyond on this training for me.
Pros: Step By Step.
Cons: Can't print the bid price detail, or I don't know where to print it.
"Project Manager"
Overall: Turbo bid estimating software has forces myself and my employees to be more organized and most importantly profitable! What a difference! It's cut my time spent on estimates to a fraction of the time it used to take and has won us more bid by being so complete.
"Great Software "
Overall: I love the flexibility in templating the process from start to finish. It's not just a pricing software but a complete package.
Pros: Templates, ease of use. design.
Cons: You have to buy a 3rd party software to take off directly from digital plans.
"Turbo Bid free Trial"
Overall: My first impression of Turbo Bid is excellent. As I said, I'm still in the trial phase but the estimating program is easy to learn and the customer support has been great.
Vendor Response
"From Guesstamator To Estimator"
Pros: It's user-friendly, with videos to guide you step by step. The owner is approachable and knowledgeable about his product and estimating. I also like how professional my bid packages are and how you are in control of your estimating software.
Cons: That I did not purchase this estimating software years ago.
"Used for personal construction/remodeling cost estimation"
Overall: Very helpful in some personal construction remodeling projects I was comparing bids on.
Pros: Very user friendly, that it can be used for estimating all types of work (residential, commercial, industrial, new construction, remodeling, service work, flat rate pricing) and that it produces a far superior bid package than other estimating programs.
Cons: Like everything, there is a price attached but it can save you money overall if a large project or multiple projects
"Good program for quick bids."
Pros: It gives you start ups that are easily customizable to your scope of work, making unlimited assemblies for everything.
Cons: It can be a resource hog; having good processing power is a plus.
"Best Estimating Software I've used"
Pros: We are absolutely glad that we found Turbo Bid, It's been very helpful, it's very user-friendly and has a lot of information for estimating.
Cons: Customer Service is very friendly and useful, but they need to work on assessing customers problems a bit faster.