Boston, MA
SMART HOME / AV ESTIMATING.

## AV Estimating in Boston Is Not a Generic Problem Boston's housing stock runs from pre-war triple-deckers in Dorchester to gut-renovated brownstones on Beacon Hill to new construction in the Seaport. Every one of those building types presents a different wire-routing problem, a different conduit situation, and a different conversation with the general contractor. Your bid has to reflect that reality — not a national average pulled from a spreadsheet template. Estimate.Pro is built for AV integrators who work in that kind of environment. You walk the job, the app builds the scope, and you have a sendable bid in 8 minutes. --- ## What Makes AV Estimating Hard in Boston **Existing construction dominates.** The median Boston home was built before 1960. Running speaker wire, low-voltage cabling, and structured media enclosures through plaster walls and balloon-frame construction adds labor hours that a flat per-room rate will not cover. You need line-item visibility on rough-in labor versus trim-out labor before you sign a contract. **Multi-unit work requires separate scope.** A landlord converting a South End rowhouse into condos wants whole-home audio on three floors with independent control zones. That is not one job — it is three jobs with shared infrastructure. Estimate.Pro lets you segment scope by unit or zone inside a single project file. **Historical districts add coordination time.** Work in the Back Bay Architectural Conservation District or on a Cambridge Historic Commission-reviewed property means you may not be able to surface-mount anything visible. That is a labor cost, not a materials cost, and it needs to show up in your estimate before the client sees a number. **Electrical coordination is a constant.** Massachusetts requires a licensed electrician to pull the electrical permit. On AV jobs with integrated lighting control (Lutron, Control4, Crestron), you are coordinating scope with an EC who has their own schedule and their own permit. Estimate.Pro lets you flag items as "EC-furnished" or "AV-furnished" so your scope letter does not create a change-order fight later. --- ## How Estimate.Pro Works for AV Integrators **Walkthrough → AI scope → priced estimate.** You do a room-by-room walkthrough on your phone. The app's AR measurement tool (ONNX-assisted on supported devices) captures room dimensions. Camera and photo measurements are flagged as estimates. The AI drafts a scope of work — distributed audio zones, video distribution, network infrastructure, lighting control, motorized shading, security integration — based on what you captured. **Your material costs, not ours.** You load your own dealer pricing for Control4, Sonos, Lutron, Snap One, or whatever you actually buy. The saved material cost workspace holds your prices so every estimate starts from your real margins, not a placeholder. **Line-item labor with trade-specific tasks.** AV labor entries distinguish between low-voltage rough-in, device installation, programming hours, and commissioning. Programming and commissioning are often where Boston integrators lose money because they were buried in a lump-sum install price. Estimate.Pro surfaces them as separate line items. **Send it fast.** The median time from walkthrough to sendable bid on Estimate.Pro is 8 minutes. For a competitive Boston residential job where three integrators are bidding, getting your proposal out the same day you walk the site matters. --- ## Pricing That Fits a Small Integration Shop Estimate.Pro has a free forever tier — no credit card required. When your volume grows, Pro is $39 per seat per month. Elite is $79 per seat per month and adds Stripe Connect invoicing with 0% platform fee and invoice exports. Crew is $399 per month flat for teams. For integrators doing 10 to 30 residential jobs a year in Greater Boston, Pro handles everything you need. --- ## Start Without Risk Create a free account, walk your next job, and see the estimate before you decide anything. No credit card. No commitment. If the 8-minute target is off on your first job, adjust your templates and run it again.