Estimates & Invoices

Estimates & Invoices is a SolidifyAI skill ($19/month) that turns a job into a quote, gets it approved online, bills it, and helps you get paid. Describe the work and your AI employee drafts the line items from your price book — you review, send, and collect.

Enable it from the Billing page under Skills. The optional Estimating Pro add-on unlocks the cost engine.

Your price book

The price book is your catalog of services, labor, materials, and fees. It's what the AI draws from when it drafts an estimate, so a few minutes setting it up pays off every time you quote.

Flat pricing — type a sold price per item. This is the default and all you need to get going.
AI starter catalog — describe your trade and region and the AI drafts a set of priced items to review and import. Use Add more to keep growing it without duplicates, and Comprehensive for a bigger catalog.
Adjustments — one-tap presets (for example commercial +15%, after-hours +50%, access surcharge, member discount) that drop a computed surcharge or discount line onto an estimate.
Sales tax — choose how tax applies (tax materials only, tax everything, or don't charge tax) and set a default rate. Blended items are taxed on their material portion, and every line can be overridden.

Manage it under Settings → Price Book.

Drafting an estimate

There are a few ways to start one:

From a job — open the job and choose Create estimate. The job's Products/Services flow straight in.
Standalone — go to Estimates → New estimate. You can attach a job with the Job picker and pull its line items in.
Draft with AI — click Draft with AI (or Estimate this photo) and describe the work or attach a jobsite photo. Your AI employee drafts the line items, grounded in your price book. If something is unclear it asks first, and it flags quantities to confirm on site.

Line items & tax

Each line has a description, a type (service, materials, labor, fee, or discount), quantity, unit, and price. The Type selector drives the default tax treatment, and each line has a tax control:

Taxable — the whole line is taxed.
Materials only — for a blended catalog item, only the material portion is taxed (great for states where labor is separately stated and exempt).
Exempt — no tax on that line.

Start typing a description to search your price book — pick an item and it fills the price, unit, and tax for you.

Sending & getting approved

Send an estimate by email or text. The customer opens a clean, branded page and approves it online — their name, the time, and a snapshot of what they agreed to are captured. You can also download or share a branded PDF. Approved estimates flow back into the job, ready to invoice.

Deposits, progress & change orders

Deposit invoice — bill a percentage up front before you start.
Progress / milestone billing — bill a slice of the contract as the work proceeds. Every invoice reconciles to the contract total to the cent.
Change orders — send a change order for added scope. The customer approves it the same way, and approved change orders raise the contract and fold into the final invoice.

Invoices & payments

Turn an approved estimate into an invoice, create one from a job, or start a standalone invoice and attach a job/customer afterward. Send it by email or text, and the customer can view and pay on a hosted page.

Online payments — connect Stripe under Settings → Online payments so customers can pay by card straight from the invoice. Payments are pass-through: you are the merchant of record and there is no platform fee on top of Stripe's.

Estimating Pro — the cost engine ($15/month add-on)

Estimating Pro adds cost-based pricing and job costing on top of Estimates & Invoices. It requires the base skill, and you turn it on from the Billing page.

Build from cost — price an item from labor hours × rate plus material × markup instead of a flat number. Set your base labor rate and material markup once under Settings → Price Book → Advanced pricing.
Reprice your whole catalog — change a base rate and every computed item reprices at once, so you never edit prices line by line again.
Cost-plus / time & materials — track a job's expenses (materials, labor, subcontractors) and bill them as a cost-plus invoice with your markup applied automatically.
Job costing — the job's Expenses tab shows actual cost against quoted value and your margin, so you can see how each job really performed.

Tips

Spend a few minutes on your price book first — the better it is, the better every AI-drafted estimate.
Set your sales tax treatment and default rate once so new estimates default correctly for your state.
On a jobsite, use Estimate this photo from the estimate — snap the space and let the AI draft the lines.
Attach every estimate and invoice to its job so they show on the job and count toward its margin.