I am building Roof Guru, an estimating and job tool for residential roofing contractors, with one Nashville roofer, Ron. It is on the bench: invite-only, and Ron is the only roofer using it. Everything below comes from building for his real workflow. It comes from one roofer's experience.
Roofers run their business out of spreadsheets, notebooks, and message threads. The field-service software aimed at them misses how claims work, how crews get paid, and how a job goes from estimate to close.
What a roofing estimate has to get right
Pitch, waste, labor, overhead and profit, and commissions, done the way the roofer already does them. If the software's math does not match the spreadsheet, the roofer will not trust it, and they are right not to.
Generic CRMs treat an estimate as a list of line items with prices. A roofing estimate is trade math. Area changes with pitch. Material needs a waste allowance on top of the measured area. Labor and the roofer's markups sit on top of that. Get one of those wrong and the whole estimate is off.
Roof Guru's estimator was built to match Ron's spreadsheet. Every roofer has a spreadsheet that works, and the only way to earn the switch is to match its numbers on day one, then make the next estimate take minutes instead of an evening.
It also refuses to hide problems. When pitch area is not covered, a price is $0, or a line is missing from the catalog, the estimator warns instead of folding the gap into the total.
What ACV and RCV mean for the job
They are the two values an insurance claim turns on: actual cash value and replacement cost value. Software for roofers who do insurance work has to keep the claim with the job instead of in an email thread.
Roughly, replacement cost value is what it costs to replace the roof, and actual cash value is that cost less depreciation. How and when each is paid depends on the policy and the carrier, so check the policy for the details.
What matters for software is that a claim is part of the job. In Roof Guru, insurance claims live on the job alongside the estimate, supplier orders, crew labor, and actual costs, so the claim and the work are in the same place.
From HOVER report to estimate
Start from the measurement report the roofer already orders, rather than typing measurements in again.
In Roof Guru, a roofer uploads the HOVER measurement PDF, and it is read into structures and pitches. The estimate is built from those, in the trade's own math. Owners, admins, and estimators work jobs and estimates in the browser, and quotes and supplier orders print from the page.
If you are looking at roofing software, ask what it does with the report you already pay for: does it read it, or does someone retype it?
Estimate against actual
An estimate is a guess until the job closes. The useful number is the profit-and-loss of what you estimated against what the job actually cost.
In Roof Guru, each estimate becomes a job with supplier orders, crew labor, and actual costs. The job moves through a status pipeline, and at the end it shows estimate against actual. That is how a roofer finds out whether the waste allowance, labor rates, and overhead in the spreadsheet are still right.
Supplier pricing is the next piece, and it is not built. Live pricing and ordering through supplier APIs is planned; nothing for it exists yet. Today supplier prices are kept in the roofer's own catalog.
What to ask before buying roofing software
Ask it to run one of your real jobs. A short list from building with Ron:
- Does its estimate match your spreadsheet on a job you have already priced, line for line?
- Can you set your own pitch and waste rules, labor rates, overhead and profit, and commissions?
- Does it read the measurement report you already order, or does someone retype it?
- Does it warn you about missing prices and uncovered area, or quietly total what it has?
- Can it carry the insurance claim on the job, along with orders, crew labor, and actual costs?
- Does it show estimate against actual when the job closes?
- Is your company's data kept separate, with its own roles and seats for your team?
If an off-the-shelf product answers yes to those for your company, use it. If it does not, that is the gap Roof Guru is being built for. It runs for one roofer today; next is a second company, and each one already gets its own roles, seats, and starter catalog. If your roofing company runs on a spreadsheet you trust, I would like to hear about it on the contact sheet.