Birmingham, AL
DOORS ESTIMATING.

## Door Estimating in Birmingham Is Not a One-Size-Fits-All Job Birmingham's housing stock runs the gamut — post-war bungalows in Avondale, new construction in Hoover, commercial retrofits in the Lakeview District, and industrial installs out near Bessemer. Each job type carries different door specifications, different labor demands, and different permit requirements. A flat-rate estimating spreadsheet fails on all of them. Estimate.Pro is built for door contractors who work across that full range. Whether you're hanging hollow-core interior slabs on a rental flip or spec'ing steel fire-rated units for a Jefferson County commercial build, the app keeps your scope clean and your bid defensible. ## What Slows Down Door Bids in Birmingham Most door contractors in the Birmingham metro waste time in three places: 1. **Measuring and re-measuring** rough openings on-site, then translating those numbers back at the office 2. **Rebuilding material line items** from scratch every bid — jambs, thresholds, hardware sets, weatherstripping 3. **Chasing down labor rates** that shift with fuel costs and crew availability in the metro Estimate.Pro addresses all three. AR-assisted measurement on supported devices captures rough opening dimensions during the walkthrough. Your saved material cost workspace holds your Birmingham supplier pricing — lumber yards off U.S. 280, door distributors near the I-65 corridor — so you're not re-entering numbers for every job. And the 8-minute median time from walkthrough to sendable bid is the target the app is built around. ## Scope of Work That Matches the Job The AI scope-of-work generator in Estimate.Pro reads your walkthrough notes and measurement inputs, then produces line-by-line scope: door unit, frame type, hinge count, lockset spec, threshold, casing, and any required fire-rating notation. For commercial work in Jefferson County, that matters — inspectors want to see door assemblies called out correctly, not bundled into a vague "door installation" line. For residential work, the scope captures the details that protect you: who supplies the unit, whether the existing frame is being reused, and what the contract includes for shim and trim work. Clear scope prevents the callback conversation. ## Birmingham Permitting Reality The City of Birmingham requires a building permit for exterior door replacements that alter the opening size or structural header. Like-for-like replacements on existing openings in single-family residential typically do not require a permit, but Jefferson County has its own requirements for unincorporated areas, and municipalities like Homewood and Mountain Brook maintain separate building departments with their own fee schedules. Knowing which jurisdiction a job falls under before you price it affects your bid. Estimate.Pro lets you add permit cost as a line item with notes — so the homeowner in Vestavia Hills sees that $75–$150 permit fee as a separate, explained charge, not a mystery markup. ## Pricing That Fits Where You Are Estimate.Pro runs on a free forever tier with no credit card required. If your volume grows, Pro is $39 per seat per month. Elite at $79 per seat per month adds Stripe Connect invoicing with 0% platform fee and invoice exports — useful when you're running multiple crews across the Birmingham metro and need clean financial records at the end of the month. Crew pricing at $399 flat per month covers teams where seat-by-seat counting doesn't make sense. ## Built for Door Contractors, Not Generic Contractors Estimate.Pro supports 25 trades. Doors is one of them — not an afterthought, not a renamed carpentry template. The material categories, the labor task structure, and the scope language are specific to door work. That means your bid looks like it came from someone who does doors for a living, because the software does too. Birmingham door contractors face real competition — from big-box install programs, from general contractors who self-perform, and from other specialty shops. A faster, cleaner bid that arrives the same day as the walkthrough wins jobs that a two-day turnaround loses.