Detroit, MI
SMART HOME / AV ESTIMATING.

## Smart Home and AV Estimating Built for Detroit Integrators Detroit's market is not one job type. You're quoting gut-renovated lofts in Corktown, new construction in Rochester Hills, and commercial AV installs in Midtown office builds — sometimes in the same week. Each job has a different rack spec, a different cable run length, and a client with a different definition of "smart home." Generic spreadsheets do not handle that range well. Estimate.Pro does. ### Why AV Bids Go Wrong in Detroit Low-voltage work in Michigan sits in a regulatory gray zone that trips up integrators who move fast. Michigan requires a **Electrical Contractor License** for any work touching line-voltage control systems, and Wayne County inspectors have flagged unpermitted low-voltage installs in mixed-use rehabs. If your scope creeps from AV into lighting control at 120V, you need to know that before you submit the bid, not after the permit is pulled. Labor costs in the Detroit metro also run higher than most AV integrators from outside the region expect. Union halls in the Building Trades Council set wage expectations on commercial projects downtown, and even residential clients in Oakland County have become accustomed to professional installation at professional rates. Quoting light on labor to win a job is a fast path to margin loss on a multi-room Crestron or Control4 install. Detroit winters affect scheduling. HVAC and drywall subs run behind from November through March, which means your AV rough-in and trim-out windows compress unpredictably. Bids that do not account for return trips and remobilization costs get eaten alive in Q1. ### How Estimate.Pro Works for AV Integrators You walk the job with your phone. The AR measurement tool — powered by an on-device ONNX model on supported devices — captures room dimensions and flags structural elements that affect speaker placement, display mounts, and conduit runs. On older phones or from photos, measurements are marked as estimates so you never present a guess as a hard number. From the walkthrough, the AI generates a scope-of-work draft. For AV, that means line items covering: - **Equipment**: displays, projectors, amps, receivers, processors, hubs, and control hardware - **Cable and infrastructure**: HDMI, CAT6, speaker wire, conduit, wall plates, and rack components - **Labor**: pull, terminate, rack-build, program, and commission hours - **Subcontractor coordination**: electrical tie-in, drywall patching, network handoff You review, adjust quantities, and apply your saved material costs from your workspace. Median time from walkthrough start to a sendable bid is 8 minutes. ### Pricing and Platform Fees Estimate.Pro runs on a free forever tier — no credit card required to start. When you're ready to collect deposits or progress payments through Stripe Connect, the Pro plan is $39 per seat per month. Elite, at $79 per seat per month, adds invoice exports and 0% platform fees on payments. Crew is $399 per month flat for teams billing at volume. On the Free tier, Stripe Connect carries a 3% platform fee. On Pro+, that fee drops to 0%. ### Detroit AV Work Requires Specific Scope Discipline A Bloomfield Hills smart home is not the same scope as a Belle Isle-area condo conversion. Estimate.Pro's AI scope engine is trained across 25 trades, including AV, so it asks the right questions: distributed audio zones, motorized shading integration, access control tie-in, network infrastructure handoff. It does not generate a generic labor-and-materials list — it generates a scope that reflects what an AV integrator actually installs. You can lock in your preferred equipment brands and labor rates for the Detroit market, save them to your workspace, and pull them forward on every bid. When Lutron Caséta pricing changes, you update it once. Every future quote reflects the current number. ### Start Without Risk Create a free account, walk a job, and produce a bid before you decide whether to pay for anything. If the 8-minute draft target does not hold up on your first real job, you have lost nothing. Detroit integrators running multi-room AV, home theater, and commercial display installs have used that first free bid to see exactly where their current process wastes time. Your competition is quoting faster. The question is whether they are quoting accurately.