Chalkline: Contractor Quotes

Chalkline is the paperwork side of a small contracting business, built to be used with gloves on and one hand free.

QUOTE ON SITE
Measure, price and total a job before you leave the driveway. Pull lines straight from the calculators or from your own price book, set a deposit and a tax rate, and share a clean PDF with your logo on it. When a customer goes elsewhere, record why in one tap — six months of those answers is the only honest account of where the work is going.

THE MATH YOU ARGUE ABOUT
Eleven calculators for the questions that come up on every job:
• Stud and joist layout — counts, centres and the first pencil mark
• Squaring — diagonals and which corner to push
• Stair stringer — risers, run and a code check
• Rafters — common, hip and valley, ridge deducted
• Siding coverage — squares, courses and trim
• Concrete — slabs, footings, piers and bags
• Roofing — squares, bundles and the pitch factor
• Decking — boards, rows, joists and screws
• Drywall — sheets, compound, tape and screws
• Paint — gallons by coats and coverage
• Flooring — boxes, waste and what is left over

Every answer comes out in the units the yard sells in, and any of them can be dropped onto a quote with the numbers that produced it still attached.

GET PAID
Turn a quote into an invoice, or bill the deposit on its own. Record cash and cheques as they come in. What you are owed sits at the top of the screen and anything late is in red, so you can see where you stand without doing sums in your head.

Customers can pay online through your own Stripe, Square or PayPal account, or by bank transfer. You connect the account, the money goes to you, and Chalkline never holds it. Each one takes a few minutes to set up and the web portal walks you through it step by step.

CREW AND HOURS
Your crew clock in and out on their own phones. Chalkline records hours, not locations — nobody can see where anyone was, only how long they worked. Crew see the week, the address and the job. They do not see pricing, invoices, or what anyone is paid.

THERE IS A WEB PORTAL TOO
The same sign-in opens chalkline.ainovations.net on any computer, where you set up crew accounts, your logo, the price book, expenses, timesheets and exports.

WHO IT IS FOR
Framing, siding, decking, roofing and general residential contractors — the ones running a crew of two to ten and quoting off the tailgate.

Calculator results follow IRC residential baselines where code is referenced. Local amendments exist — always confirm against your own jurisdiction.

—