How to Make a Construction Estimation App in Knack

Now the next template that we’re gonna dive into really quick is the new application that we’re gonna make from a sample app. You can see right here, go there again, and we’re gonna type construction another time. And we’re going to do the construction estimate app.

This one is going to essentially give you the ability to streamline your construction project budgeting with this comprehensive app designed to accurately calculate both direct costs and work wages and indirect expenses like equipment depreciation and office salaries.

Exploring Estimate App Features

Clicking through this same process will get you to make the next template in a moment. Then clicking through here, there is a smaller number of tables. However, it doesn’t mean it’s any less powerful. It’s custom built with a myriad of different formulas, as you can see from that symbol for the resources, projects, and line items used to calculate different costs.

It incorporates real-time data on costs and materials and empowers businesses to create competitive and precise bids. The accuracy and efficiency here is really important to note.

Logging into the Estimate App

When we go to the live app, you’ll have a similar experience in the front end, and you’ll notice there are a couple different views that you can choose from, whether you’re a client, project manager, or vendor. So let’s pretend we’re a project manager here and we would log in.

All of our templates usually come with these test usernames and passwords in order for you to get a look at what the interactive experience is like for that app. So let’s do that.

Reviewing Project and Vendor Data

You’ll see we have a project, vendor, and resources view. So Larry Jonas inside of here can see that the total cost for the new hospital is $2.3 million. That’s a lot of cheese. Then there are the projects.

Then there’s the vendors view on top of the projects as well. It showcases how many resources there are, and you can view the details by clicking inside of them. Then there’s also the resources themselves showcasing the cost of those individually. And there are sub-tabs for material, labor, and equipment.

Introducing the Field Service Manager Template

Now the last template that we’re going to showcase is the Field Service Manager template. So once again, just go into the sample app and we’re going to click on the Field Service Manager one right here.

This is essentially for supervisors so they can access this app to stay updated with what’s happening in the project. Keeping track of their tasks and jobs to be complete is really important in construction and field service management.

Tracking Jobs, Tasks, and Customers

Having this central hub for the project management side of things is really important. You’ll see there’s a table for jobs, tasks, and different customers. All three of those can coincide really well together, especially with keeping track of the date and time, explaining the tasks, and having a status for whether they have been completed.

And obviously the different customers those tasks are related to. From a user role standpoint, we’re obviously gonna have one for supervisors and one for employees.

Inside of the live app, there is going to be an employee and a supervisor dashboard depending on who is logged in. It just showcases the different job names and what employees are assigned to those tasks.

Why These Templates Matter

Now you might be asking—what are some of the different reasons we necessarily have these templates? What are the use cases that make these templates so great?

Consolidating Bidding Data

First of all, there’s the use case of consolidating estimates and bidding data. Imagine having all your estimates, bids, wins, and losses in one place—easily accessible and analyzable. Knack enables just that, providing a unified platform for tracking and analyzing your bidding activities, helping you refine your strategies over time.

We’re about to walk through how to consolidate your bidding data within Knack, giving you the insights you need to enhance your bidding success rate.

Creating Bidding Tables and Forms

So firstly, what you would do is go to the data section. You can create a new table called “Estimates and Bidding” and then from there add different fields like quantity, a short description of the estimate or bid, and number properties for the unit material and unit subcontract.

The total material can be put in there as well in a dollar sign format. Then you can mark down fields for other aspects of the estimates and bidding like total labor, total general costs, unit material, and unit subcontract. Then you can make a form on a vendor’s page that associates to it.

For example, we can make a new view that is a form for one of the pages where we essentially take all those different fields and add the form with those fields in it. Then someone on the front end who interacts with this would be able to put down the details of the bid, and it would consolidate all the information and send it to the backend.

As you can see here, once we press preview and log in again, this field is easily fill-outable by someone on the front end.

Once submission is inputted, it shows up in the Knack backend tables.

Tracking Equipment with Knack

Another great option is to track equipment inside of Knack. You can actually make a table for equipment tracking inside of Knack.

This helps not just manage your resources more effectively, but efficiently manage project timelines and budgets by tracking key details like the equipment name, type, PPR, location, and availability status.

Creating Equipment Tracking Views

Once your fields are complete, you can add another view—similar to what we did earlier—that showcases this information. Once that’s done, we can even create a view of that data in the front end as well, but that’s completely up to your choice.

So in this case, if we were to go into that page, we can see the name, type, PPR, location, and availability status when clicking into one of those equipment tracking entities.