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Estimating & Proposals

Estimating & Proposals · Built into RootControl

Estimates that write themselves

Describe the job in plain English (or drop a site photo) and RootControl returns a priced estimate in seconds. AI scrubs every draft for margin and coverage gaps before you hit send. Customers sign in their portal. It's the estimating engine built into RootControl's landscape CRM, so every lead in your pipeline turns into a proposal without the busywork. The week between "interested" and "started" goes away.

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CRM lead pipeline AI line generation Site-photo analysis Margin scrubber AI upsell Zone AI sketches In-portal e-sign

Pre-send confidence

Know an estimate is clean before it leaves the office

Before you hit send, the AI scrubber grades the whole draft, margin, coverage, and consistency, into a single confidence score. Green across the board means it's ready to go. A flag means take a second look first.

See everything the scrubber checks

AI Estimate Scrub Ready to send

Estimate health

Send-ready

Margin clears your 38% target with no coverage gaps flagged.

Key signals

Margin 42% · above target
Coverage No gaps found
Consistency Units & tax clean

Rationale

“Healthy margin, priced off a current catalog, with edging bundled to the mulch. Clean to send as is.”

Send proposal

Lands in the customer's Hub to sign

Why estimating is the bottleneck

The estimate is where deals live or die.

Three patterns repeat across every shop that hits a growth ceiling, and all three trace back to how long the estimate takes to write, how clean it is when it goes out, and how easy it is for the customer to say yes.

90 minutes per estimate

Every estimate is a manual relay:

Site visit, notes on a clipboard
Drive back, retype into the spreadsheet
Hunt for line items, build the PDF
Email it out

The owner does ten estimates a week. That's a day and a half lost before any work happens.

Margins that erode quietly

The crew leader who built the estimate didn't realize mulch jumped 18% last month. Or the line was priced from a stale catalog. By the time payroll runs, the job's underwater and nobody knows why.

The signature that never comes

You sent the proposal. They opened it. Then the e-signature email got buried. Three more emails, a phone call, a "let me check with my husband." The week goes by and the work never starts.

How it works

From description to signed proposal, in four steps

One workflow. The AI assists at every step, but you decide what goes out the door.

Describe the job: text, photo, or sketch

Start the way the job comes to you:

Text: a free-text description ("fall cleanup, leaf removal, two yards of mulch, prune three boxwoods")
Photo: upload a site photo and let the AI read the work off the image
Sketch: for larger jobs, draw the zones and Zone AI converts them into measurement-priced polygons mapped against your catalog

AI generates priced lines from your catalog

Line items, quantities, units, and rates pulled from your configured services. The AI matches your terminology and your pricing. It's not making up market rates. You edit anything you want before moving on.

AI scrubber flags issues before send

A pre-send pass over the whole draft:

Margin checks against your target bands
Coverage checks against typical service bundles for the property type
Consistency checks for duplicate or wrong-unit lines
AI upsell suggestions the customer would likely accept

Every flag is a suggestion: keep what you want, dismiss the rest.

Customer signs in their Hub, no separate e-sign app

The proposal lands in the customer's Client Hub via a no-login magic link:

SVG signature captured in-browser, OTP-verified
IP and timestamp packaged as the audit trail
Signed PDF flows back to your office automatically

And the job's ready to schedule.

Three ways to start an estimate

Match the input to the job

Some jobs you can describe in a sentence. Others want a photo. Big design jobs want a sketch. Use whichever fits; the output's the same.

Text

Plain-English description

Type the scope the way you'd say it on a site visit. The AI pulls matching line items from your catalog and quantifies what it can infer ("two cubic yards of mulch" → 2 yd of your configured mulch SKU at your rate).

Photo

Site-photo analysis

Drop a photo of the property: front yard, problem area, design plan. The AI reads visible work (overgrown beds, leaf coverage, lawn condition, design elements) and proposes priced lines you can accept or refine.

Sketch

Zone AI from sketches

Draw or upload a rough zone sketch: sod, beds, mulch, turf. Zone AI converts it to measurement-priced polygons against your area-rate catalog. The hour you'd spend in a CAD tool collapses to a couple of taps.

What's in the module

The pieces that build the estimate

Six tools, one workflow. Built to take the 90-minute estimate down to ten, without sacrificing margin or polish.

AI Line Generation

Free-text description in, priced line items out, pulled from your catalog at your rates.

Matches free-text scope against your service catalog
Infers quantities and units from natural language
Returns editable line items: not a black-box quote
Uses your prices, taxes, and service list, not market averages

Site-Photo Analysis

Drop a photo, get a draft. The AI reads visible work (bed condition, overgrowth, design features) and proposes lines to match.

Front-yard, back-yard, or problem-area photos
Identifies common services (cleanup, mulch, edging, pruning)
Suggests reasonable quantities based on visible area
Every suggestion is editable before send

Zone AI

Sketches and design files become measurement-priced zones. The AI does the polygon math; you keep the catalog rates.

Hand-drawn or uploaded sketches converted to polygons
Per-zone area calculation against your area-rate catalog
Plants, beds, and notes extracted from uploaded design files
Ready for the office-side Property Service Map on commit

AI Estimate Scrubber

Every draft gets reviewed before send. Margin gaps, coverage gaps, consistency issues, and upsell candidates: flagged but never auto-applied.

Margin badges: Good / Low / Negative per line and per estimate
Coverage suggestions ("you priced mulch but not pre-emergent")
Consistency checks for duplicates, wrong units, mismatched tax
Plain-English reason on every flag: you decide what to keep

AI Upsell Suggestions

Customer-friendly add-ons surfaced from property history and seasonal patterns, the ones likely to land, not generic upsells.

Property-aware ("their last visit logged crabgrass, suggest pre-emergent")
Seasonal ("November mulch refresh on every fall cleanup")
One-click add to the estimate; one-click dismiss
Tracked: which upsells land, which don't

In-Portal Customer E-Sign

No separate e-sign app, no email chain. Proposals land in the customer's Hub and get signed in-browser with a full audit trail.

SVG signature captured in-browser, no plugin required
OTP verification to the email or phone on file
IP, device and browser info, and timestamp packaged with the document
Signed PDF flows back to the office automatically

Want the scrubber to grade one of your recent estimates? Book a demo.

What the scrubber checks

The pre-send review you'd never have time to do yourself

Every estimate gets a pass before it goes out. The scrubber surfaces issues, ranks them, and explains each one in plain English. Nothing is auto-applied. Every flag is a suggestion you accept or dismiss.

What every draft is scanned for

Margin bands: lines priced below your target margin get a Low or Negative badge, with the cost-vs-price math behind it.
Coverage gaps: services that typically bundle with what you've quoted ("you priced mulch without edging") get surfaced as optional add-ons.
Consistency issues: duplicate lines, mismatched units, tax-rate mismatches against the customer's profile.
Property-aware upsells: "last visit's crew note flagged crabgrass, add pre-emergent?" surfaced from the actual property history, not a generic list.
Seasonal patterns: "mulch refresh on every fall cleanup this year" surfaced when the season fits.
Catalog freshness: lines using rates last updated more than your configured staleness window get a heads-up so you don't quote off a six-month-old price.
Customer history signals: if the customer's previous estimates clustered in a price range and this one's outside it, you'll see the comparison.
One-click accept or dismiss: every flag is a suggestion. You stay in control of what goes out.

The scrubber augments judgement; it doesn't replace it. Owners and senior estimators keep the final call on every line that goes to a customer.

Questions we hear

Estimating & Proposals FAQ

How does AI line generation actually work?

You give the AI a description of the job (free-text like "fall cleanup, leaf removal, two cubic yards of mulch, prune three boxwoods") or you drop a site photo and let it read the work off the image.

It returns priced line items pulled from your service catalog, with quantities, units, and your configured rates.
You edit anything you want before sending.
Nothing leaves the office until you approve it.

What does the AI estimate scrubber check for?

Before you hit send, the scrubber reviews the draft and flags:

Margin issues: lines priced below cost or below your target margin band.
Coverage gaps: services commonly bundled with what you've quoted but missing from this estimate.
Consistency issues: duplicate lines, wrong units, mismatched tax.
Upsell candidates the customer would likely accept based on the property history.

Every flag is a suggestion: you decide what to keep.

What is Zone AI?

Zone AI converts a site sketch or property photo into measurement-priced estimate zones. You draw or upload the rough shape; the AI converts it to area-priced polygons mapped against your catalog. This is how shops handle landscape design jobs where the proposal needs to show "sod, beds, and turf zones with sq-ft pricing" without spending an hour in a CAD tool.

Can customers sign proposals without creating an account?

Yes. Proposals are delivered to the customer's Client Hub via a no-login magic link.

They sign with an SVG signature in-browser, verified by a one-time passcode sent to the email or phone on file.
We capture the IP address, device and browser info, and timestamp as the signing audit trail.
The signed PDF flows back into your office side automatically.

What's a reusable estimate package?

Estimate packages are reusable bundles (like "Spring Cleanup Standard" or "Mulch Refresh + Pre-Emergent") that drop a full set of priced lines into a draft in one click. Tweak the package once and every future estimate using it inherits the change. Packages are available on Professional and Enterprise plans.

Is RootControl a CRM too, or just estimating?

Both. Estimating sits inside RootControl's landscape CRM, so an estimate is never the first step, it's where a tracked lead ends up.

Every lead is captured and AI-scored 0 to 100 so you know which ones to chase first.
A 25-stage sales pipeline moves each lead from new to won, with the property, notes, and history attached.
When a lead is ready, the estimate builds from that same record, no re-keying the customer or address.
Signed proposals flow straight into scheduling, invoicing, and the Client Hub, all in one system.

Related capabilities

Explore more of RootControl

Get Started

See an estimate come together live

30-minute walkthrough. Bring a recent property and a real description. We'll build the estimate live and show you what the scrubber would have caught.