Build, price and issue a Bill of Quantities

Install & open

BillMate installs like any other desktop app on Windows, Mac and Linux — or opens straight in your browser on a phone or tablet. There is no account and no server either way.

On Windows, Mac or Linux

1. Download the installer for your system

   From the link in your purchase email or the download page — Windows, Mac or Linux. Each is a normal installer for that system, not a shared download.

2. Run it

   The same as installing any other desktop program: follow the prompts. Windows or macOS may show a first-run security notice for a new publisher — that's normal; allow it to continue.

3. Launch BillMate

   From the Start Menu (Windows), your Applications folder (Mac), or your application launcher (Linux) — it opens as its own window from here on, not inside a browser tab.

On a phone or tablet

1. Open BillMate in your browser

   Visit the link from your purchase email or the download page. On iPad or iPhone, Safari works best.

2. Add it to your home screen

   Safari: Share → Add to Home Screen. Chrome: ⋮ → Add to Home screen. It then launches full-screen with no browser chrome, which is the better way to work on site.

First-run setup

The first time you open BillMate it asks for your firm's defaults. Every new project inherits them, and you can override any of them per project later.

You can reopen this at any time from ⋮ → Region, currency & firm.

Your first bill

A complete run through, end to end. Ten minutes, using a real substructure as the worked example.

1. Name the project

   Press Edit on the project card. Fill in the project name, client, location and date. These print in the header of the issued bill.

2. Open a section

   Your new project already has sections from the template — Substructure, Superstructure, Roofing and so on. Click a section header to open it.

3. Add your first item

   Press Add item. Type the description the way it should read on the bill, choose the unit, then enter the quantity and rate.

   Worked example

   Description	Unit	Qty	Rate	Amount
   Excavate trench not exceeding 1.50m deep, wheel, deposit and level spoil on site	m³	120	4,500	540,000

4. Measure it properly instead of guessing

   Rather than typing 120, press the taking-off icon on the row, enter your dimensions, and cast the result into the quantity. You then have the working measure on file. See Taking-off.

5. Build the rate up instead of guessing

   Press the build-up icon and enter material, labour and plant per unit plus your overhead and profit percentages. BillMate calculates the all-in rate and remembers the breakdown. See Rate build-ups.

6. Keep the rate for next time

   Once the bill is priced, open ⋮ → Rate library and press Capture from this bill. Every rate you keyed is now available to price your next job in one click. See The rate library.

7. Set your percentages

   On the project card, set Preliminaries, Contingency and the tax rate. They apply across the whole bill — see Percentages & totals.

8. Issue it

   Export BOQ opens your browser's print dialog — choose Save as PDF. Export CSV gives you the same bill as a spreadsheet. See Exporting.

9. Back it up

   ⋮ → Backup all data. Do this at the end of every working session. See Backups & data safety.

The screen explained

The row tools

Every item row carries these, at the right on a computer and below the figures on a phone:

Projects

Click the project name in the top bar to open the project list. From there you can switch, rename, delete, or create a new project.

Each project carries its own currency, measurement system and tax settings, so you can price a job in Nigeria and another in the UAE from the same install without touching your defaults.

Sections

A section is an element or a trade — the level a client reads sub-totals at.

• Add — Add section / element at the bottom of the bill.
• Rename — click the section name and type. It saves when you click away.
• Reorder — the up and down arrows in the section header. The section keeps everything inside it.
• Collapse — click anywhere on the header. Collapse state is remembered, and exporting no longer disturbs it.
• Delete — Delete section inside the section. Asks first, then offers an undo.

Section templates

A new project starts from one of these. You can rename, add and delete sections afterwards, so treat the template as a starting point rather than a commitment.

Items

Each row is one measured item: a description, a unit, a quantity, a rate, and the amount BillMate calculates from them.

Keying items quickly

• Tab moves across the row and on to the next. Totals update as you type.
• Amounts, sub-totals, the section share bars and the grand total all recalculate live.
• A rate cell highlighted in amber means the item has a quantity but no rate. The count of those appears as a red badge on the section header, so nothing unpriced can hide inside a collapsed section.
• Duplicate copies the description, unit, quantity, dimension sheet and build-up — the fastest way to bill a family of similar items.
• Delete is immediate but offers Undo for eight seconds. There is no confirmation dialog, because deleting rows is something you do dozens of times a session.

Units

Pick from the unit dropdown. The list covers metric, imperial and the units a surveyor meets outside the SI set:

Provisional & prime cost sums

Work that is genuinely required but cannot be measured yet — a statutory connection, a specialist sub-contract package, the prime cost of ironmongery.

1. Add an ordinary item and write the description

   For example, Statutory water authority connection and meter.

2. Open the unit dropdown and choose the sum type

   Below the measured units there is a Sums group with Prov. sum and PC sum.

3. Enter the sum in the rate column

   The quantity locks to 1, so the amount is the sum itself. The row is tinted and tagged so it cannot be mistaken for measured work.

On the issued bill the description is prefixed Provisional Sum — or Prime Cost Sum —, the unit prints as sum, and the bill summary gains a line reading — of which provisional & PC sums. Sums are part of the measured total; that line simply tells the client how much of the price covers work that has not been defined yet.

Taking-off

The dimension sheet behind a quantity — the working a QS is asked to produce when a figure is queried.

1. Open the sheet

   Press the taking-off icon on the item row.

2. Choose what you are measuring

   Linear (length), Area (length × width), Volume (length × width × depth) or Number (counted). The dimension fields change to match, and units follow the project's measurement system.

3. Enter each dimension set

   Times multiplies the set — enter 4 for four identical columns. Leave it blank for once. Label the row so the sheet still makes sense in six months: external walls grid A–D.

4. Deduct openings and voids

   Mark a row Ddt and it subtracts instead of adding. The row turns red and its result shows negative — the standard way to handle a door, window or void.

5. Cast it into the bill

   Cast to quantity writes the net total into the item's quantity and sets the unit to match what you measured. A small dot appears beside the quantity to show it came from a measure rather than a keystroke.

Rate build-ups

The constituents behind an all-in unit rate — what a client's QS will ask you to justify.

1. Open the build-up

   Press the build-up icon on the item row.

2. Enter the cost per unit

   Material delivered, including waste and laps. Labour as the gang cost per unit, from the local daily wage and a realistic output constant. Plant / equipment for hire, fuel and small tools — zero if the item is hand-worked.

3. Add overhead and profit

   Both are percentages. They default to 10% and 15% until you set your own.

4. Apply it

   Apply rate to item writes the calculated rate onto the bill and keeps the breakdown. The build-up icon turns solid to show there is working behind that rate, and reopening it shows your figures rather than a blank form.

How the rate is calculated

Net cost   = material + labour + plant
Overhead   = net cost × overhead %
Profit     = (net cost + overhead) × profit %
Unit rate  = net cost + overhead + profit

The rate library

Your own unit rates, held on this device and reused across every project. This is the single biggest time-saver in BillMate, and it is available on the free plan.Free

Open it from ⋮ → Rate library.

Importing your rates

You almost certainly have a priced schedule in a spreadsheet already. Bring it in once.

1. Press Import rates
2. Give it your data

   Either Choose a CSV file… (up to 8 MB), or select the cells in Excel or Google Sheets, copy, and paste into the box. A pasted block arrives tab-separated and is read the same way. Comma files, semicolon files and quoted descriptions containing commas are all handled.

3. Match your columns

   BillMate reads your header row and pre-fills the mapping — and it knows that a column headed Unit Rate is the rate, not the unit. Correct anything wrong with the dropdowns above each column. Description and Rate are required; unit, currency, region and note are optional. Untick First row is a header if your file has no headings.

4. Set the currency

   Any row without its own currency column takes the currency you choose here. This matters — a rate is only ever applied to a bill in the same currency.

5. Import

   The button tells you exactly how many rates will land, and the summary tells you how many rows were skipped for having no description or no rate — so trade headings and blank spacer rows never disappear silently.

The minimum your spreadsheet needs

Description,Unit,Rate
Excavate trench not exceeding 1.50m deep,cum,4500
150mm solid blockwork in walls,sqm,"8,200.00"
Reinforcement, high yield bars,kg,1450

Column order does not matter — you map them. Numbers may carry thousands separators, currency symbols and decimal commas.

Pricing a bill from the library

All at once

Apply to this bill matches every item and shows you a preview before anything changes. Each proposal is labelled:

• Exact — the same item, allowing for wording and punctuation.
• Similar — close enough to offer, worth a glance.
• Stale — the library rate is over a year old.

Unpriced items are ticked by default and items you have already priced are not, so the safe action is the default one. Only unpriced, Select all and Select none adjust the selection, and the whole operation has a single undo.

One row at a time

The library icon on a row turns green when your library covers that item. Press it to search your library and pick a rate. Applying one sets the rate and the unit together.

Automatically, on AI-generated items

When the AI generates items for a section, any that match your library are priced from it immediately, and a message tells you how many.

Capturing rates you have already keyed

Capture from this bill adds every priced item on the open project to your library. Rates for the same item and unit are updated rather than duplicated.

Two things are deliberately excluded: AI-estimated rates, because taking those in would launder a guess into your own price list, and provisional and PC sums, because they are job-specific.

How matching works

Worth understanding, because it decides what lands on your bill:

Managing and moving the library

• Search — filter by description, unit or region.
• Edit a rate — type a new figure straight into the list. It re-dates to today.
• Delete — the bin on the row, with an undo.
• Export as CSV — the whole library as a spreadsheet, ready to share with a colleague or import on another device.
• Clear library — asks first, and offers an undo. Export a copy before you do this.

Your library also travels inside every backup file, and restoring a backup merges rates rather than replacing them — so restoring a colleague's backup will not wipe the price list you already hold.

Keeping rates current

A schedule priced eighteen months ago is not slightly wrong. It is wrong by whatever inflation and exchange movement has done since — and it is far easier to trust by mistake than an AI rate.

Age is always visible

Every rate in the library shows its real age: priced this month, 14 months old, 2 years old. Anything over 12 months is flagged stale in the library, in the apply preview, and — the part that matters — on the printed bill, where the basis of estimate records how many priced items rely on ageing rates.

Uplifting a schedule

This is the annual job every surveyor does by hand in Excel.

1. Press Uplift rates

   Either from the stale-rate banner or from the buttons under the list.

2. Enter the percentage

   How much prices have moved since these rates were set. Negative values reduce.

3. Choose what it applies to

   All rates, Only rates over 12 months old, or Only rates in your project's currency. Add a text filter to narrow further — concrete, blockwork, Lagos.

4. Check the preview, then apply

   You see real before-and-after figures on actual rates. Applying re-dates them to today, so they stop being flagged stale, and the whole operation has one undo.

AI assistancePro

Useful for drafting scope and wording items quickly. Treat its rates as a starting point, never as a price you can issue.

Connecting a key

The AI features need a free Groq API key. BillMate has no server of its own, so the key is yours and the request goes straight from your device to Groq.

1. Create a free account at console.groq.com
2. Create an API key and copy it

   It begins gsk_.

3. Paste it into BillMate

   ⋮ → Groq API key for AI, paste, and Save key. It is stored on this device only.

Full BOQ generator

Drafts an entire bill from a description of the works. Reach it from AI Full BOQ Generator at the bottom of the bill.

The three rate modes

Generating items for one section

Generate items inside a section drafts 6–14 properly worded measured items for the element you describe. It never returns rates — you get descriptions, units and quantities, then tick the ones you want. Anything your library covers is priced automatically.

Suggesting a build-up

Inside the rate build-up dialog, ✦ Suggest a build-up with AI fills in material, labour, plant, overhead and profit for that one item, and reports the local anchor prices and output constant it used. Your library rates are included in the brief, so the suggestion stays consistent with your own price level. Check it before applying.

Knowing which rates to trust

Every rate carries its origin, shown as a line under the rate cell:

Typing over a rate clears the marking immediately, because a rate you have keyed is your rate. The counts also print on the bill and appear in the CSV's Rate source column, so provenance survives the document leaving the app.

If AI calls stop working

Groq retires models on a schedule. If that happens you will get a clear message naming the model. Open ⋮ → Groq API key for AI, and put a current model name in the AI model field — the list is at console.groq.com. Leave the field blank to return to the default.

Percentages & totals

The three percentage boxes on the project card apply across the whole bill. They compound in the order shown:

Measured work    = sum of every section (including sums)
Preliminaries    = measured × prelim %
Contingency      = (measured + preliminaries) × contingency %
Sub-total        = measured + preliminaries + contingency
Tax              = sub-total × tax %
Grand total      = sub-total + tax

Every figure is rounded at the point it is produced, to the precision of the project's currency. That is why printed line amounts always add up to the printed sub-total exactly, and why Kuwaiti dinar shows three decimals while Japanese yen would show none.

ExportingPro

The client-ready BOQ

1. Press Export BOQ

   Every section opens and your browser's print dialog appears. Your collapse state is restored afterwards.

2. Choose Save as PDF

   Chrome and Edge: Destination → Save as PDF. Safari: the PDF dropdown → Save as PDF. Firefox: Print to File.

3. Check the first page

   Confirm the letterhead is your firm name and the header carries the right client, location and date.

The printed document differs from the screen in ways that matter:

The spreadsheet

Export CSV downloads the bill for Excel, Google Sheets or LibreOffice, with these columns:

Above the table sits a metadata block — project, client, location, date, currency, method of measurement. Below it are the section sub-totals, the full bill summary and your basis of estimate.

The file is written as UTF-8 with a byte-order mark, so m², ₦, accented and Arabic descriptions all open correctly in Excel. Descriptions beginning with =, +, - or @ are neutralised so a spreadsheet cannot execute them.

Backups & data safety

Read this section. Everything lives on your device, which is a feature — and it means a backup file is the only copy nobody else can delete for you.

Making a backup

⋮ → Backup all data downloads a single JSON file named for today's date. It contains every project — sections, items, dimension sheets, build-ups — and your whole rate library. Keep it in your cloud drive.

Restoring

⋮ → Restore from backup, then pick the file. It asks first, because restoring replaces your current projects. Your rate library is treated differently: rates are merged, so restoring a colleague's backup adds their rates to yours instead of wiping them.

Moving to a new device

1. Back up on the old device
2. Get the backup file onto the new one

   Email it to yourself, or put it in your cloud drive — it's the one file you need to carry over.

3. Install BillMate on the new device (or open it in the browser on a phone or tablet), then restore

   Your licence key activates fresh there too — see Free vs Pro for how many devices your plan covers.

The backup reminder

Once a bill has real work in it, a quiet banner appears if you have never backed up or your last backup is more than a fortnight old. It is dismissible and it is not an error — it is a countdown you can see while everything is still fine. The menu also shows how long ago you last backed up, and how much space BillMate is using on the device.

Languages

Tap the globe in the top bar, or ⋮ → Language. Available: English, العربية (Arabic), Français, Español, हिन्दी (Hindi) and தமிழ் (Tamil). Arabic switches the entire layout right-to-left.

By default, professional terms of art — BOQ, Preliminaries, Contingency, Taking-off, Rate build-up, unit symbols, VAT and GST, and the names of the methods of measurement — stay in English, because most surveyors read those as fixed terminology whatever language they work in. Turn on Translate technical terms in settings if you would rather have them localised.

Numbers, dates and currency always follow the project's own locale, so amounts render correctly no matter which interface language you are reading.

Free vs Pro

Unlocking

1. Buy a licence

   Open ⋮ → Unlock Pro and press Buy a licence. Gumroad emails you a licence key — a string like XXXXXXXX-XXXXXXXX-XXXXXXXX-XXXXXXXX.

2. Paste it in and verify

   Paste the key into Gumroad licence key and press Verify & unlock. This one step needs an internet connection — BillMate checks the key against Gumroad the first time it sees it on this device. Once verified, Pro keeps working offline exactly like the rest of the app.

Troubleshooting

Quick reference

Limits and defaults

Everyday flows

Good practice

• Set your firm name and a specific locality before your first export.
• Import your own rate schedule once — it pays for itself on the first job.
• Capture rates from every bill you price. The library compounds.
• Uplift or re-check your library annually so nothing quietly goes stale.
• Measure with the dimension sheet rather than typing quantities. It is the audit trail.
• Never issue a bill with amber rates still on it.
• Back up at the end of every session.