How Pricing Works

BuildOrder uses AI to generate estimates, proposals, and contracts. Here's exactly where the numbers come from, how accurate they are, and how to make them more accurate over time.

📈 Where prices come from

Every line item in a BuildOrder document is priced using a three-source hierarchy. The AI always uses the most accurate source available and falls back to the next when data isn't there yet.

1

Your Rate Library Most accurate

If you've saved a price in your Rate Library — like "$95/sq for GAF Timberline HDZ" or "$85/hr labor" — the AI uses that exact number. No estimation. No averaging. Your price.

2

Location-adjusted AI estimates Good baseline

When an item isn't in your Rate Library, the AI estimates based on the job location (city + state). It knows that labor in San Francisco costs more than in rural Mississippi, and it adjusts accordingly. Your markup percentage is applied on top of material costs if you've set one.

3

National average fallback Rough estimate

If no location is provided, the AI falls back to national averages from its training data. These are reasonable ballpark numbers — a good starting point — but you should always review and adjust before sending.

🔨 Material costs specifically

Material prices fluctuate constantly — lumber, copper, shingles, drywall — and vary by supplier and region. The AI knows typical price ranges from its training data, but it can't know your supplier's current pricing.

Best practice: Add your most common materials to the Rate Library with the prices you actually pay (or charge). Even a handful of entries — shingles, LVP flooring, drywall, paint — will make a meaningful difference in accuracy. The AI uses your price for those items and estimates everything else.

If you've set a material markup %, that's applied on top of whatever the AI estimates for materials — so your margin is preserved even when the AI is filling in the blanks.

📄 About the legal terms & conditions

Contracts and proposals include state-specific terms and conditions generated by AI. The AI knows general contractor law by state — payment terms, lien rights, change order requirements, warranty standards — and incorporates those into the language.

These are solid starting points, written in plain contractor language. They cover the most common scenarios: scope changes, payment disputes, weather delays, site access, and warranty periods.

BuildOrder.ai is not a law firm and these documents are not legal advice. For high-value jobs or anything unusual, have an attorney review before signing.

❓ Common questions
For most common residential work — roofing, painting, drywall, flooring — the AI is usually within 10–20% of real market rates in your area. That's close enough to be a credible starting point, but not close enough to send without reviewing. For specialty work, custom materials, or highly competitive markets, the variance can be larger. Always review line items before sending.
The AI was trained on a large body of contractor data, pricing guides, and regional cost indexes. It has a general understanding of regional labor markets and cost-of-living differences. It isn't pulling from a live pricing database — it's using what it learned during training — but that knowledge is broadly accurate for major cost-of-living differences between states.
Every AI document you generate after that — estimates, proposals, Quick Quotes — will use your exact prices for those items. If you add "GAF Timberline HDZ: $95/sq" and then generate a roofing estimate, the AI will use $95/sq for that shingle, not its own estimate. Your other rates (labor, markup) apply to everything else the AI fills in.
Not directly in the editor — but you can copy the document, paste it anywhere (Word, Google Docs, Notes), edit it, and use that version. You can also regenerate with a more detailed description if the first result needs significant changes. The Rate Library is the best way to reduce the need for manual editing over time.
Your Rate Library is included in the prompt sent to the AI when you generate a document — that's how the AI knows your prices. Anthropic (who makes the AI) does not train on API request data from BuildOrder. Your pricing stays private to you. See our Privacy Policy for full details.

Set up your Rate Library once. Every estimate gets better.

Add your labor rate, markup %, and your most common materials in Settings. Takes 5 minutes and improves every document you generate from that point on.

⚙ Open Rate Library in Settings