What’s new in Countfire? Enhanced price lists, plus some handy features in Takeoff

Our team works hard to release hundreds of platform enhancements each year, aiming to improve our customers’ experience and ensuring Countfire is ahead of the game.

This quarter, improvements to Estimate have included the addition of overhead and tax columns and price list enhancements. Plus, there are some handy new features in Takeoff too. 

Let’s take a look at the latest updates: 

Replacing PDF drawings and more advanced background control

Receiving revised PDF drawings and ever-changing information can be frustrating, especially when you’ve already started your takeoff. This is why we’ve added the ability to replace drawings within a takeoff. 

Now when you receive revisions, you have the option to individually swap out existing drawings for their new versions, while keeping all underlying work and the structure of your takeoff the same. 

We also updated the controls available to customise what gets classed as background in Takeoff. 

In the Countfire app, you have the ability to hide the background in PDF drawings to make it easier to view and count symbols. Previously, the colour grey would automatically be classed as ‘background’ by default which could prove a problem if you came across the odd grey symbol here and there.

To mitigate this, we have added the option to remove everything that is classed as a background (including defaults) and start from scratch. So for instance, you can remove grey as the default colour and add anything you want to be classed as a background. This allows you to be more in control of how Countfire processes your PDFs, and you’ll be able to start automatically counting with the reassurance that no symbols have been hidden from view. 

Smoother and more intuitive price lists

In Estimate, you have all the tools you need to complete your estimate in one place - Countfire can automatically link prices based on your uploaded price lists and your previous estimates. 

To make things even more efficient, Countfire now displays a note to show the current price list version in use and the version history. 

In addition to this, the extent of the changes between old and new versions is shown during the upload process so you can get a sense of what’s been added, removed and updated between price lists. 

We’ve also added nifty functionality when you upload a price list, where a number of new upload checks communicate whether there are any issues with the file’s data. For example, if a manufacturer and / or part code is missing on the price list, Countfire will not only tell you, but pinpoint the exact rows that need fixing via a downloadable error list so you’ll never work with incomplete files or data again. 

Adding overhead and tax, discounts and uplift 

One of our most requested features is also now live in Estimate - the overhead and tax functionality. It’s now possible to include these columns within your estimates - you can either set default values, set it individually on products or use smart views and filters to set them in bulk. 

Finally, it is also now possible to add discounts and uplift within your estimates too which offers increased flexibility when providing narrative to commercial estimating decisions.

Look out for next quarter’s update to see the latest roll-outs our team have been working on.

Work on the much anticipated visual compare function for revised drawings has begun, so fingers crossed we can share more on that next time!

Until then, sign up for your free trial of Countfire today to see how it can streamline your estimating process. 

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