Boston, MA
LOCKSMITH / ACCESS CONTROL ESTIMATING.

## Locksmith Estimating in Boston Moves Fast — Your Bids Need To Match Boston runs on old buildings. Triple-deckers in Dorchester, brownstones on Beacon Hill, commercial lofts in the Seaport, and university housing across Cambridge and Allston. Every one of those properties has a different door hardware spec, a different keying history, and a different owner with a different budget. Writing an accurate bid by hand costs you time you do not have. Estimate.Pro puts a sendable, priced estimate in front of your customer in 8 minutes from the moment you finish the walkthrough. --- ### What Makes Locksmith Estimating Different in Boston **Older door frames and non-standard hardware.** Pre-war masonry in Back Bay and the South End means you regularly encounter non-standard bore patterns, antique mortise locks, and frames that require custom strike plates. Your estimate has to account for discovery time, not just hardware cost. Estimate.Pro lets you build line items for exploratory labor separately from installation labor so the customer sees exactly what they are paying for. **Access control in dense multi-unit buildings.** Boston's multifamily density is among the highest in the country. A property manager in Jamaica Plain replacing a traditional master key system with a cloud-based access control panel needs a scope-of-work that covers every credential, every reader, every door controller, and the low-voltage wiring that connects them. The AI scope generator in Estimate.Pro builds that line-item list from your walkthrough notes — you verify and adjust, you do not start from a blank page. **University and institutional accounts.** Boston College, Northeastern, Tufts Medical, BU, MIT, Harvard — the city's institutional sector is enormous. These clients run competitive bidding and expect ANSI/BHMA graded hardware callouts in your proposal. Estimate.Pro supports hardware spec fields so you can reference ANSI A156.30 high-security cylinders or BHMA Grade 1 exit devices directly in the estimate document. **Permit and inspection coordination.** Low-voltage access control installations in Boston commercial buildings fall under the jurisdiction of the Boston Inspectional Services Department (ISD). Wiring that connects to fire alarm or egress systems also touches the Boston Fire Department for plan review. Your estimate should reflect permit fees as a real line item, not an afterthought. --- ### How Estimate.Pro Works for Locksmiths 1. **Do the walkthrough.** Use the AR measurement tool on supported devices to capture door counts, frame conditions, and hardware notes. Camera and photo measurements are flagged as estimates so you know what to verify on site. 2. **Generate the scope.** The AI reads your walkthrough and produces a draft scope of work — rekey quantities, new hardware specs, access control components, low-voltage rough-in, programming time. 3. **Price it.** Your saved material cost workspace holds your hardware pricing from your preferred distributors. Labor rates are yours to set. No platform-imposed markups. 4. **Send it.** The estimate goes to the customer as a professional document in minutes, not the next morning. --- ### Payments and Invoicing On the Free tier, Stripe Connect payments carry a 3% platform fee. Upgrade to Pro+ and that fee drops to 0%. Pro is $39 per seat per month. Elite is $79 per seat per month and adds invoice exports and full Stripe Connect workflows. If you run a crew, the flat $399 per month Crew plan covers the whole team. The Free tier requires no credit card. You can build and send your first estimate before you spend a dollar. --- ### Built for 25 Trades, Including Yours Estimate.Pro supports 25 trades under one login. If you also handle door installation, intercom systems, or light electrical for access control panels, those scopes are covered without switching tools. --- ### Start Before Your Next Job You have a service call in Brookline tomorrow and a commercial access control walk in the Financial District next week. Both need accurate bids. Set up your material cost workspace tonight — it takes less time than building a template in a spreadsheet — and run your next estimate through Estimate.Pro. The 8-minute target is real.