Quick Estimate: Describe a Job in Plain English
What it is
Quick estimate is the fastest way to a priced T&M headcount estimate. Describe the job in plain English — crews, headcounts, schedule, and dates — and CrewMix's AI turns it into a real, editable estimate in seconds. It's the same estimate you'd build by hand, just started from a sentence instead of a blank grid. You can even run it before you set up any rates at all.
Run a quick estimate
- In the sidebar, open Estimates and click Quick estimate (the lightning button). It's also linked from the Getting started checklist.
- Describe the job in the box — for example, "6 laborers and 2 foremen for a 3-week turnaround, 5×10s with Saturday OT, starting mid-August." The more specific you are about crews, counts, schedule, and dates, the better the result.
- Choose what to price against in the composer footer (see below), then press the lightning button.
- A few seconds later you land on a full estimate — the headcount grid with hours and dollars split by straight time, overtime, and double time — that you can edit like any other.
With or without a rate library
The composer works two ways, depending on whether you've built your rates:
- You have a rate library. Pick the rate build-up (LRBU) and schedule to price against. The AI maps each crew you describe onto your craft rate classes, and the engine prices every line from your snapshotted rates.
- You don't have rates yet. Enter a single blended $/hr and pick a schedule (5×8, 4×10, 5×10, or 6×10). Every crew prices at that composite rate — straight time at the rate, overtime and double time scaled from it. It's a quick ballpark, not a real union Schedule A, and the estimate says so.
How the numbers stay trustworthy
The AI only translates your words into structured inputs — which crafts, how many, what schedule, which dates. It never invents a wage or a dollar figure. Every rate comes from your library (or the blended rate you typed), and every dollar is computed server-side by the same engine that prices a hand-built estimate — down to the cent.
If the AI can't confidently match a crew to one of your crafts, it doesn't guess silently and it never leaves you with a blank estimate: it picks the closest craft in your chosen build-up and flags that line as assumed — a badge on the grid plus a banner on the estimate. Open the flagged line's menu to verify or swap the craft; the badge clears once you do.
Review what the AI inferred
The first time you open a quick estimate, a one-time review panel lists two things: the assumptions it made (which crew became which craft, the schedule and dates it read) and anything it couldn't map — crews it wasn't sure about, which you can add by hand. The panel shows once; the assumed-line badges and the verify banner stay until you resolve each flagged line.
Good to know
- The result is a normal estimate: edit the headcount grid, split it into phases, export it, share the proposal — everything a hand-built estimate can do.
- Quick estimates have their own small trial allowance; paid plans are effectively unlimited. Plug in your own AI key under Settings → AI to run without limits.
- Want full control from the very first line instead? Build one by hand — see Build a T&M Headcount Estimate.