Turn a walkthrough video into a priced estimate

Walk the space with your phone, talking as you go. Contrax watches the footage, writes the scope stage by stage, and prices every line against your own rate card. A full bathroom that takes about two hours of manual takeoff comes back in roughly two minutes.

You read it, adjust what needs adjusting, and send it. That review step is not a formality — it is the point. What you get back is a fast, complete first draft, not a quote to send blind.

How it actually works

Four steps, and only one of them is yours.

• You record. A normal phone video of the space, narrating as you would to a foreman
• It reads the footage. Room dimensions, fixtures, surfaces, condition, and what you said out loud
• It writes the scope. Stage by stage in the order the work happens — protection and demo, rough-in, waterproofing, finishes — as separate line items with quantities
• It prices from your rate card. The one you set once, so the estimate comes out at your numbers rather than a generic average

That last part matters more than the video. Because pricing comes from a rate card you control, two people quoting the same job land on the same figure. The video removes the takeoff; the rate card removes the guessing.

What to record, and what to say

The quality of the estimate follows the quality of the walkthrough, and the fix is mostly about slowing down.

• Move slowly. Blurred footage reads badly. Walk it at the pace you would show a client, not the pace you would check a job
• Cover every surface in scope. Floor, walls, ceiling, and anything being removed
• Say what the camera cannot see. That the plumbing is staying put. That the client wants the wall out. That the subfloor felt soft by the tub. Spoken detail is used alongside the visual
• Name the finishes if you know them. "Large format tile to the ceiling in the shower" produces a very different line than "tile the shower"
• Call out the unknowns. Saying "I don't know what's behind this wall" gets it flagged as an assumption rather than silently priced

What it gets right, and what it doesn't

Being straight about this is more useful than a claim.

It is reliable at: identifying the stages of work, catching things easy to forget on a manual takeoff (protection, disposal, the second coat, the transitions), applying your rates consistently, and producing a document structured the same way every time.

It is weak at: anything hidden. What is behind a wall, the state of a subfloor under lino, whether a wall is load-bearing, whether the panel has space. It cannot see rot, knob-and-tube, or a slab that needs breaking.

Which is why every estimate is a draft until you have read it. That is stated in our terms as well as here — a quote you sent without checking is on you, and no software changes that.

Why this isn't photo takeoff

Photo measurement tools have existed for years. They measure a surface and hand you a number. Useful, but it is the small half of the job.

The slow part of estimating was never measuring. It is knowing that a shower conversion means waterproofing, a curb, a niche, a bench, pot lights, a fan upgrade and a threshold — and then pricing fourteen lines against your own rates without missing three of them. That is scope construction, and it is what takes the evening.

Who it suits

It fits renovation and trades companies of roughly one to twenty-five people, doing project work rather than recurring service calls, where the owner is often the estimator and the estimating happens after supper.

It is a weaker fit if you build new homes from repeatable plans, where the takeoff comes off drawings rather than a walkthrough, or if your work is commercial with formal RFI and submittal processes. Those are different problems and there is better software for them.