The scope documents arrived Thursday morning.
A floor plan PDF. Eight site photos from the walkthrough. A voice note from the client call where she described what she wanted in the primary bath. Three material spec sheets she had pulled off a supplier website.
The job was a kitchen and primary suite renovation — the kind of scope that, priced correctly, comes in around $140,000. The contractor had three other jobs active, a sub returning calls from last week, and a client follow-up that had slipped two days. He also had a proposal deadline of Monday.
The takeoff — pulling every line item from those four inputs, by trade, with quantities, priced against current supplier costs, with his markup applied — was going to take the better part of a Saturday.
That Saturday is what TIM replaces.
What You Send. What You Get Back.
Creating a takeoff in TIM starts by linking it to an existing deal, lead, or contact in your pipeline. You name it — or let TIM suggest a name based on the linked deal — and then you describe the scope.
"Describe" is the right word, because TIM accepts any form of scope information you have.
A floor plan in PDF or DWG format. Site photos in JPG or PNG. A scope-of-work document in Word or Excel. A voice memo from the client call recorded as an MP3. A text description typed directly into the field. Any combination of these, dropped together, processed together.
TIM reads everything you send and builds a takeoff draft.
The draft is a structured line-item table: every discrete cost component of the job, broken out by item description, quantity, unit of measure, and cost — split across Material, Fabrication, Labor, and Delivery columns. Each row represents one element of the scope. The table is the starting point for the proposal, not a rough sketch that still requires reconstruction.
What TIM Flags Right Away
TIM does not guess when it cannot confirm.
After building the draft, TIM surfaces the rows where something could not be determined from the source material. Not a general warning at the top of the document — a specific message: which rows, what is missing, and why. "Rows 4, 7, and 10 are missing cost data — quantities couldn't be confirmed from the floor plan."
Those rows stay in the takeoff with a visible flag rather than being filled with an assumption that looks like a confirmed number. The contractor reviews three specific items instead of re-reading the entire document to find what TIM may have guessed at.
The rows that are confirmed stay confirmed. The rows that are uncertain are marked as uncertain. That distinction matters when the takeoff becomes a proposal, and it matters more when the proposal becomes a project.
Your Product Library. Your Prices.
TIM matches every item in the takeoff draft against your saved product library.
For items that match — materials you have priced before, labor categories you have established rates for, equipment you use regularly — TIM pulls the saved cost and applies it automatically. No manual price lookup. No checking last month's supplier invoice. The item comes in at the rate you have already confirmed.
For items that are new — a material spec you have not used, a scope category not in your library — TIM flags them as new rather than assuming a price from an external source. You review the new items, confirm or adjust the cost, and they are added to your library for the next takeoff that includes them.
How the library builds over time:
Over time, the library becomes the institutional memory of what things actually cost in your operation. Not what a national pricing database says they cost. What you paid, at your suppliers, on jobs in your geography and quality tier. A business that processes twenty takeoffs per year through TIM has a product library that covers the vast majority of its common scope elements automatically by the end of the first year.
Markup That Matches How You Price
TIM applies your markup structure to every line item in the takeoff — column by column, category by category.
Materials carry your material markup. Labor carries your labor markup. Fabrication and delivery carry their own rates. Equipment is calculated at your depreciation rate per hour — not a generic rate, your rate: the mini excavator at $90 per hour, the box truck at $45, the scissor lift at $60.
These are set once in your workspace settings and applied to every takeoff from that point forward. Consistently, without exception, without the rounding decisions and informal adjustments that creep in when markup is applied manually under time pressure.
The result is that every takeoff produced in TIM reflects your actual pricing structure. Not a close approximation. Not "usually about right." Exactly your rates, every time.
You also set a minimum margin threshold. If a takeoff comes in below that floor — say, below 22% — TIM flags it before the proposal goes out. Not after the job is won and running. Before you send the number to the client.
Working the Takeoff with TIM
The draft TIM builds is not a finished document. It is a starting point for a conversation.
Every cell in the takeoff is editable directly. If the quantity on a line item is wrong, you change it. If a material spec needs to be updated based on the client's latest selection, you update it. The totals recalculate in real time as you work.
For more substantial questions — scope clarifications, drawing interpretations, sub-scope items that need to be broken out further — you work with TIM through the Comments tab. Same as you would with an estimator who built the first draft and is waiting for your review.
"Check the insulation quantity against the wall dimensions in the drawing." "The plumbing rough-in on this scope covers two bathrooms, not one — revise accordingly." TIM reads the comment, reviews the source files, and responds.
The takeoff is a live working document, not a PDF that gets passed back and forth and versioned into confusion. Every change is tracked. Every conversation is attached to the specific job.
From Takeoff to Client Quote
When the takeoff is complete, TIM drafts the client-facing proposal.
The format matches your specifications exactly. If you present quotes as lump sums by section — never showing individual line-item costs — TIM formats accordingly. If you include a 30-day validity clause, it is included. If your company name is "Apex Outdoor Living," the quote goes out under that name.
TIM has seen your past quotes. You can upload examples directly in settings, and TIM uses them as the format reference for every quote it generates going forward. The output is not a generic template with your logo dropped in. It is a document that looks like it came from your office, because the structure and language came from your past work.
The quote goes to the client. The deal closes.
After the Deal Closes: Scope Is Locked
This is where most businesses lose margin quietly.
A client requests a change in week four. A material gets upgraded. A scope boundary that was assumed gets negotiated upward. In a business without a structured process, these changes accumulate through the project and surface at the final invoice as a conversation about charges the client was not expecting.
TIM tracks scope against the original takeoff from the moment the deal is signed.
When a change affects the project scope — materials, quantities, labor categories, any line item that moves the cost — TIM flags it immediately. Not at final billing. When the change happens. The contractor sees the delta: what the scope was, what it is now, and what the cost difference is. A documented change order is generated while the context is current and the conversation is natural.
The margin that was priced into the original takeoff does not erode silently through the project. The changes that affect it are visible, documented, and addressed at the moment they occur.
From Quote to Project
The takeoff that produced the proposal also structures the project.
Once the deal is signed, TIM uses the line items from the takeoff to build the project framework. Labor days become scheduled tasks. Material items become procurement entries with quantities confirmed and suppliers already attached from the product library. Equipment line items carry the scheduling and cost data needed to track utilization against the estimate.
The work that went into pricing the job does not disappear once the proposal is accepted. It becomes the operational foundation for executing the job and tracking whether the margin that was estimated is the margin being delivered.
This is the connection that most businesses have never had between the estimating function and the project management function — the two systems that should share the same data but almost never do.
What This Replaces
A full takeoff from a complex scope document — multiple trades, multiple source files, current supplier pricing, markup applied correctly — takes an experienced estimator four to six hours. More if the source materials are incomplete or inconsistent.
TIM produces a first draft in the time it takes to upload the files.
That draft is not finished. It requires review, flag resolution, and the decisions that only the contractor can make. But the time between scope documents and a reviewable takeoff — the part that used to cost a Saturday — is the part that TIM handles.
The contractor who used to spend his weekend building takeoffs from scratch is spending that time reviewing a draft, resolving the flagged items, and sending a quote on Monday morning that his business priced correctly.
Why the walkthrough-to-estimate gap creates errors before the takeoff starts
The quality of any takeoff depends on the quality of the scope information it receives. This post covers what gets lost between the site visit and the estimate.
You Walked the Site on Tuesday. You're Writing the Estimate on Sunday. →Related
Frequently asked questions
What file types can you use to create a construction takeoff in TIM?
TIM accepts PDF, DWG, JPG, PNG, XLSX, MP3, and TXT files as inputs for takeoff creation — as well as a free-text scope description typed directly into the intake field. You can upload multiple files simultaneously: a floor plan PDF, site photos, and a voice memo from the client call can all be submitted together, and TIM processes them as a combined source to build the takeoff draft.
How does TIM handle items it cannot price from the source material?
TIM flags incomplete rows explicitly rather than filling them with assumptions. After building the takeoff draft, TIM identifies which specific rows are missing cost data and explains why — typically because a quantity could not be confirmed from the drawings or because a material specification was not present in the source files. These rows remain in the takeoff as flagged items for contractor review, rather than appearing as confirmed line items with assumed values.
How does TIM apply markup to a construction takeoff?
Markup is configured once in the workspace settings and applied automatically to every takeoff. Each cost column carries its own rate: materials, fabrication, labor, and delivery are marked up independently according to the rates you set. Equipment is calculated at your specific hourly depreciation rates. A minimum margin threshold can also be set — if a completed takeoff falls below that floor, TIM flags it before the proposal is generated.
What is a product library in TIM's takeoff system?
The product library is TIM's database of materials, labor rates, and cost items that your business has used and confirmed across previous takeoffs. When TIM builds a new takeoff draft, it matches each line item against the product library. Items that match are priced automatically at the confirmed rate. Items that are new to the library are flagged for review and added once confirmed. Over time, the library expands to cover the majority of line items in your typical scope work, reducing the manual pricing work required on each new takeoff.
How does TIM protect project margin after a deal is signed?
TIM tracks the approved takeoff as the locked scope baseline for the project. When changes occur during the project — client-requested material changes, scope expansions, quantity revisions — TIM flags the change against the original takeoff and surfaces the cost delta immediately. This creates a documented scope change record at the moment the change occurs, rather than allowing changes to accumulate through the project and surface as unexpected charges at final billing.