72. Keeping Your Estimates Accurate With Julian Krishnan Nair

A quote generally takes 15 to 25 hours to do. Ultimately, if you're giving a client a quote that's not accurate in terms of the cost you're expecting to pay, you're already shaving off your margin. Do you even know, as a builder, the way that you work, really, when you start a project, you want to be saying, what's my profit margin going to be? And being able to stick by it. Having positive cash flow doesn't necessarily mean your business is going to thrive either. If you want to invest that time to grow your business and make millions and millions and millions, go ahead. You know, you can definitely use a system for that.

This is Professional Builder Secrets, the number one podcast to help you grow your building company safely and securely, brought to you by the association of Professional Builders. Join us every week as we talk to industry experts and your fellow professional builders on everything you need to know to generate more leads, more sales and higher margins, while improving the building experience for your clients.

We have another exciting episode from the Professional Builder Secrets podcast. Joining us today is Julian Krishnan, senior partner manager for BuildXact. Julian, thanks for being here today.

Thanks for having me, mate. Appreciate it.

Well, listen, let's start off by you telling me a little bit about BuildXact and your role with them and, you know, what does it do?

Yes, at BuildXact, we're an estimating and job management software. We're evolving to be more than that, which we'll come to a bit later on as we, as we chat. But yeah, buildxact, at its core, we're an estimating job management system for builders and trades. It's really targeted to that builder space, but we do have a bunch of trades that use us as well.

How did buildxact and you sort of get together and how did you get started?

BuildXact started as an estimating platform about 11, 12 years ago. I think now it's working out to be. And from my understanding, I wasn't here at the time, but was a heavy involvement for master builders. Victoria, because there wasn't really, you know, a system that builders very well. You know, there was a lot of software and apps and things like that that worked better for trades. But I always say this for every 10 plumbers, there's one builder. For every 10 sparkies, there's one builder. So the market isn't as big compared to the, the trade sort of system. So that's. Now we've built BuildXact, it's really taking off me personally, how I started. I was actually at MYOB 2018, I was a partner manager there, looked after bookkeepers, accountants, and I kind of got tapped on the shoulder to come over and look at the time. BuildXact, we were a startup business, really small, and I was just really excited by the kind of growth potential of the company. So I remember, I remember starting and, you know, compared to NYB and, you know, we had a team, I think I was number 19. When you sort of walk into an office, you can imagine the difference in terms of what NYB would do versus what BuildXact was doing. But I loved that. I love the kind of, you know, David, our CEO was just like next to me pretty much, and you could ask questions and things. That's how I got in there. And yeah, I was initially brought in to look after our partners. So that's really anyone, you know, bookkeeper, accountant, coaches, consultants, estimators, kind of all the way up the industry partners, industry association. So I've probably got the widest scope in terms of buildxact. I speak to the most different types of people that we have, which is great for me because I hear it from all different angles about direction of the business, how we're performing, etc.

Now, what are some of those key value propositions for BuildX? You talked a little bit about the fact that you're known to be the estimate side of things, but what else are some really key significant value propositions?

At its core, really, we're trying to help builders live a better life, and that's personal and professional in their business. And it really kind of comes down to some of the key things that builders struggle with at the moment. So we know for a fact builders spend way too long on their quotes. So 15 to 25 hours is what a quote takes a builder to complete. So we help them with 80% faster takeoffs, they can get that done a lot quicker, appearing more professional in terms of how they're quoting. Generally, the quotes aren't great that builders produce. And then when it comes into the job management side, you know, you're talking the whole scope of the job management process is communicating with the clients, scheduling your work, cost tracking against it. We've got live supplier integration now as well, which means that, you know, they can connect to their preferred supplier and get that live pricing from them. So there's a whole heap of things we do and, you know, at its core and end to end estimating and job management system, I think that's the biggest thing that sets us apart. They're. There are other softwares that they only do estimating or they only do job management. We're an end to end system.

You alluded to the fact that you help with time management when, when working with estimates. But how does buildxact make that positive impact for builders in their day to day business operations?

Yeah, so I mean a quote generally takes 15 to 25 hours to do and that's to get that back to the client. I was actually at an event the other night and you know, there was a guy actually in the audience and he said he did a $2.2 million home, got the quote out in two hours. So there's not one specific thing that we, we help with that makes that possible. It's a bunch of things. So that's, you know, getting your pricing into. You don't need to check on your pricing, whether that's in the form of a live integration or it's just a supplier loaded Excel sheet that you've put into the system. So it's getting that access, it's building out templates so you know how you work. So build a template based on that and what kind of items and you know, pricing that you, that you would normally put in there. Bennett's actually using our takeoff platform, which is really the thing that when people see that, that's the real buzz feature. When you see a plan on the screen and you know you're dot dot dot dot around and you've just worked out the floor plan square meter or you've done the interior walls or the roof and whatever it is, it's been able to do that all on screen and be able to go back and edit it really easily. That takes a hell of a lot of time to do manual takeoffs. And you know, a lot of these guys are sitting there at 7 8pm at night trying to do all that after a full days at work. You know, when they probably want to be sitting down and relaxing and spend time with their family. So we speed up all that process and then actually drawing the quote up, that takes a hell of a long time as well because most people use Microsoft Word. Now if I was putting a quote through on Microsoft Word for $400,000, not very easy to do. So all of those little things kind of aid, you know, they all shave off, you know, a few hours. Few hours, few hours. And then before you know it, I've just done a quote 10 times faster than the exact same business down the road who's doing it all manual now.

Why is it so important to have accurate estimates? You Talked about the time being saved, but let's talk about, you know, keeping the estimates a little bit more accurate.

What's.

Why is that so important for such a builder?

Well, it's you charging for your time and the materials that you're actually getting. It's a weird one with builders that they don't. A lot of them don't take this as seriously as they probably should because. And look, I think that's probably changing a little bit now because people know the pricing increases that we've seen in the industry over the last two years or so, I think some of them are stabilizing a little bit. But ultimately, if you're giving a client a quote that's not accurate in terms of the cost you're expecting to pay, you're already shaving off your margin. Now, most people don't price their jobs with enough margin in them anyway. Sometimes they'll drop the margin to win the work, which, you know, generally we want to try and avoid ever doing that. But once that happens, you know, let's just say your, your estimate isn't correct and you've just shaved. You've got, you've got a profit margin of, say, 15, 20%, maybe it's even less for some people, and you've just shaved 3% off because it's not an accurate estimate. That's down to 17, 12, 13, depending where you started. Then you've got some cost increases on the job, which can happen, or some mistakes. Whatever it is, you need to redo something, and before you know it, you're down in that sort of 8, 7% profit margin. And that's like really, really dangerous territory when you get there. So you're potentially running risks of you're not being able to complete the build because you're not. You haven't priced it correctly, which means when the money's coming in, the cash flow isn't in a positive balance. So you've got a whole heap of issues. But ultimately, you can start from anything from having issues paying that job to potentially closing your business down. And really, when you start a project, you want to be sort of saying, what's my profit margin going to be? And being able to stick by it, because otherwise, like, what's the point? If you're not making any money, what's the point of doing it? You know, being a builder is a. You know, I speak to some of these guys and they do way more hours than I do, and I just look at them and go, if you're not making money, like why would you want to do that?

Right.

Right.

Now, what can cause estimates to be inaccurate? You know, obviously you talked about the fact that you want it to be as accurate as possible. You're considering people with their time and their hourlies and the amount of energy they're doing. But what are some of the common things that causes those estimates to be inaccurate? And I'm assuming you have a few examples here.

Yeah, yeah. I mean pricing and accurate pricing is a big one. We are starting to see people being a little bit more cautious with that now because of we've had such an increase in prices that, you know, people lost a lot of money on those jobs because they signed fixed price contracts, which is, you know, very unavoidable at the time. But now people are a bit more cautious of it. But yeah, you're talking, you know, how accurate is your pricing from your supplier? Are you someone that goes and chases out very regularly or are you someone that just has an Excel sheet you've populated in there and it's six months old, but going in, getting it all from your suppliers and editing your Excel sheet and changing it all up, most people just kind of go, oh, you know, I'm going to do that at some point. And then they just never do it. So that's the first point there is just how accurate is the pricing that you've got from your suppliers or your suburb rates? Then it, it kind of just goes off in a million different ways of how, how it can be an issue. And you know, you're talking manual estimating human error straight away. And you're talking people working late at night doing this, you know how, how much issues they're going to be with. You know, you might have not not completed a takeoff correctly, you haven't done a measurement properly and then it's, do you even know as a builder the way that you work? You know, we see a lot of people that will just kind of say, oh yeah, to build that wall, whatever supply and install rates and they'll just put, just put a bulk rate and that'll be it. There's no way of breaking that rate down. Was it the labor that went over? Was the materials that went over? Do we even know that it went over? So are you aware of how you work and where you currently have issues? And the best way to do that is cost tracking. If you don't cost track, you're kind of in a situation where you started a job, you're halfway through it. How do you know how that job is performing? And Those findings will base how accurate your estimates are for future, future projects.

Now, you talked a little bit about sometimes if builders don't have time to update their rates or their subbies or their suppliers, things get sort of missed. Is there a way that BuildXact sort of prompts that or allows them to stay on top of that or stay updated? Because it sounds there's a little bit of updating that's required to keep your prices current.

Yeah, well, if you're doing things manual, it's a lot of time to do. Like after knowing how buildxact works, I don't know how they would do it manual. Probably a very, very expensive and very, very formula driven Excel sheet, maybe you could do it. But it's like, why would you put all that time to do it? So, yeah, I mean, ultimately with BuildXact, you've got really two options. You can either build your own pricing from suppliers that have sent you that. So let's just say I've got my supplier, they've given me an Excel sheet with the pricing, I load it into BuildXact. We use our kind of wizard to figure out which is, you know, which columns and things like that. And then from there you use that pricing and when you get, and maybe you just set a reminder of yourself to get one every month or something like that, you go get the new list, you upload, that buildxact will figure out, hey, these are the same items. What's the price? Has it changed? If it has changed updates. And anything that you use that price on will update. So if you use a timber item, for example, on, you've got templates for single story, new builds, double story, new builds, Renault's, whatever it is. And you've used that timber item once, you've updated that timber item update in every single area.

So it's almost like predictive in many ways too.

Yeah, it's automated. You just update it once through the upload and it will do it for you. And then if you've got a live integration that's even easy, you don't even need to do any of the updating itself because the supplier handles all of that.

Gotcha. So when it's updated on the supplier and then the software picks it up as well.

Exactly, yeah. So you just, all you need to do is use the item that you want from, you know, whether that's Bunnings or 10, whoever it is, you just use that item that they've given you in the price list, the catalog, and then when that updates from them it will update in order. Yes, the same thing happens. It's just you take out all that first part.

And I'm assuming BuildXact integrates with these different platforms as well, so it's easy to have that API integration to get the pricing updates.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we've got a bunch, we've got a bunch on our, on our platform. If you go into integrations, if you're using us in supplier integrations, there's heaps there. So there's, you know, you've got your big retailers and then you've got the smaller ones that are more, you know, locally based.

Okay, so let's talk a little bit about job costings and how it can impact overruns as well. And how does that accurate estimate and live supply pricing impact that estimating process as well?

Yeah, well, obviously the more, the more live pricing you're getting is going to set you on the right track. But, you know, even still, you know, labor rates and things like that, you know, that's still going to come down to how accurate is your predictions based on the labor. There's, there's, you know, it's very hard to say that something's going to take certain amount of hours because, you know, someone calls in sick or someone isn't available or they just work a bit slower that day or you've got someone more inexperienced. So those things are always going to be a little bit more difficult to predict than material prices if they're coming in live. But ultimately, the more accurate you can get going into that process will hopefully set you on, you know, a positive, you know, flow in terms of managing that project. But really what you want to be doing is as you're starting to receive and bills and pay for things, is sort of looking at it and going, hey, we thought we were going to spend 10 grand on this. We actually spent 12 grand on this. And what does that show us? Well, it shows us we've gone over budget by 20%. What does that do? And the problem is most people can't tell you down to a line item. Now, you don't necessarily have to tell you for a line item, but if you could roll up and sort of say, well, look, I want to, for a particular component of the build, maybe I want to see how my labor tracked on that component or maybe my material costs. So, you know, if you're building a brick wall, your most expensive components are going to be, you know, your bricks and your labor. You know, if you're building a frame, it's going to be your timber and your, your labor as well. So if you can at least cost track those areas and know kind of how you're tracking good or bad against it. And ideally, as it's happening, it's only going to set you, you know, off in the right direction. Because what a lot of people do is they just get these bills in, they pay the bills, they've got cash coming in, they get a progress payment from a bank or from, from the client money coming in. So in their mind they're thinking, well, whoopty doo, I'm, I'm great, I've got cash in the bank constantly. But just because you've got positive cash flow, it doesn't mean you're actually making money. Because when those payments slow down for a reason or you have a break or something, that's when it all catches up. So the ability to job cost and job track as you're going is really important because you can manage that as it's happening the earlier you know it right now.

Let's talk about the unspoken dialogue with builders. What should every builder know about the estimate process and what you guys offer? And also, why aren't more builders using this? Is it a hesitance? Is it a fear of automation and technology? Is it just the fact that they're stuck in a rut? Like, where do you think the challenges are with resistance comes from?

Do you know what? I think what's happened was that there's been estimating software in the past and the companies that were around and promoting their products, you know, strong five, 10, 15 years ago, I think they made a software that was really difficult to understand. So what you needed was people to come and implement it. You needed hours and hours and hours and hours and hours of training. Took you ages to get your head around it. And I think that's caused a bit of a fear to go into it and also a full sense of I don't need software unless I'm really big. Like the amount of people that I speak to that say that and be like, oh, you know, I only build two or three homes a year, I don't need software, or I'm not big enough for software. It's like, you're absolutely big enough for software. That's, that's literally our target market. We, you build one home a year, you can use us and you'll be able to figure us out very, very quickly. So I think that's the thing I would probably kind of always touch on is, you know, we've gone past that early adopter stage of the product. So all those people that are really forward thinking, tech savvy, those people are already using software. We're now in that stage where it's most people know they need to use software. It's just kind of, you know, giving a bit of a kick to go and use it. And generally that's done by someone in the business or someone at home is giving the builder a bit of a push to do it. But what I would say is don't stress too much if you think, you know, I'm not good at computer. I spoke to someone yesterday who said the same thing and I spoke to his wife today on the phone just to, you know, talk to her about how to use a system. And you know, I think she said something like he doesn't even know where certain keys are on the keyboard and things like that. You don't need to know and be really tech Savvy to use BuildXact because it's free training. It's a really, really simple tool to use. You know, I, I didn't have any training when I first started. You know, we didn't have a training program or anything when I started. I just watched the videos and I, I know how to use it. So that's one of the things I would say, don't worry about it.

Now you talked a little bit about the fact that some people have this thing about it could be a blind spot. You know, we're building one to two homes, we don't need software. What are some of the other blind spots that you encounter with builders and what you hear from the front lines and what are some of the things that, that builders need to be aware of, that it is actually a blind spot?

Yeah. I think how you interact with your customer is really important because often in the business a builder is a silo. They don't often let anyone else kind of into the business in terms of managing things because everything has to go through them where it's phone calls, text messages, invoices, quoting, everything kind of runs through them. Whereas with the software you can kind of really allow other people or automation to do a lot of the work that you're doing currently. So, you know, I know a guy in Victoria and he basically has his team doing all his takeoffs for him and he just goes in and just checks it really quickly because he's taught them how to do it. Much easier to do on a computer than doing it all manual and managing estimating processes. Then. Yeah, client interaction is, you know, I call people and they're answering the phone when they're on the roof. And you know that the professionalism side to how they send emails, quotes and things like that maybe can leave a bit to be desired. So we help them with that using a customer portal. They can load pictures and, you know, really just kind of bridging the gap between some of those really big builders. Like, I know if I go to a big builder, I know I'm probably going to get this really cool tool and I can go and send pictures and I can get updated and things like that. My maybe hesitation is, with a really small builder is, yeah, you might get that personal touch. But also if that builder becomes really busy or gets sick or something like that, it's like, I know the product probably stops. So that's one of the hesitations for me is that maybe for other people as well is how's that communication going to be? And we've all heard horror stories and stuff and you always want to hope for the best. But I think client interaction in terms of how you communicate is. Yeah, I think a lot of people are starting to get on and understand that we live in a different age now with Instagram and social media and adverts and things like that. It's getting harder for bigger builders, sorry, smaller builders to keep up with the bigger ones.

Now, what are some of the best practices when it comes to estimates as well? You talked a little bit about, you know, considering the client journey and that interaction and experience, but what, what are some tips that you or BuildXact likes to give builders when they are using BuildXact?

Yeah, I mean, ultimately what you want to get to is to be as accurate with the, with the items you're using in an estimate. So you don't really want to be quoting jobs forever and sort of rolling all in numbers up to one and sort of saying, oh, this is just a supply and install rate that I have for this. Ideally, you want to be in a situation where you can be as accurate as possible. Now, that doesn't mean, you know, going in and adding every screw, nut, bolt, because that would just be ridiculous. But, you know, maybe for those kind of things, you've got a miscellaneous section under each category for, you know, your brickwork, your timber, your cabinetry, whatever it is. And then you've got, you know, real prices for the bigger items and, you know, they're the ones. If you got 15% over on your screws, it's not going to, you know, no one cares. But if you go 15 20% over your timber price, then that's a real big issue. So everyone's going to be different on this. But try and get as detailed as you possibly can. That's relevant for you and your business. I mean, you go too detailed, it's a bit of diminishing returns on that. But I would say start off, definitely get all the training and support that you can from build exact, it's free training from there. Start off simple. So, you know, maybe, as I said, maybe not what I said not to do, maybe start doing that at the start just to get your head around how to do it. So let me figure it all out. Let me get how it works. Okay, now I've got supply and install rate, 150 bucks a square meter or something. Maybe now I'll break it down into materials and labor and fast track against that. And then break your materials further down and just take yourself on that journey slowly and don't try too hard to put every single little thing in there. And as you learn the software, you'll probably change how you do things anyway. Because a lot of people come from how I do it in Excel sheets, how I'm going to do it in build. Exactly. That's not necessarily the case when it.

Comes to the actual building industry. How do you feel like it's evolving? Because it sounds like there's a lot more technology now. There's a lot more sort of embracing the future of automation. Do you think that the B building industry is behind or do you feel like there's things that are progressing?

It, it's progressing. I mean, efficiency will always drive what actions, you know, happen. Some industries are a bit slower to adopt that. And a lot of the times the efficiencies are there, just people just are slow to adopt it. And that's kind of the, that's the issue with, you know, trades and construction in general. Like, it's, it's been an industry where technology has been slower to adopt. But we're in that stage now where I think people are understanding, hey, if this is going to save me 5, 10 and 20, 30 hours a week, you know, a subscription cost is, you know, peanuts compared to that. So, you know, we're seeing people more open to having that. And what we're seeing is not just the individual business owners, we're seeing other people outside of that. So like suppliers wanting to, to come in. So we're going to start seeing more automation, more efficiency creation by dealing with a bunch of people through the platform. So that's where eventually we're going to get to where I think, you know, if you say to me in, you know, 20 years time, where we're going to be, we're probably going to have, you know, brands, manufacturers, tons of suppliers, all using build Exact. You're probably going to have trades and subbies and stuff, all using BuildXact through the builder and things like that, so. And the customers as well. That's, that's where we're going to get to it. It's going to have more people communicating and working together through a platform like ours. So, yeah, I mean, it's really exciting to see it happening. Just, just people need to, you know, all the efficiencies are there, you just got to get up and go for it.

What should builders be ready for long term? I mean, it sounds like we're at the precipice of change, but what do you think that the builders really need to be prepared for coming up?

I mean, I think competition is going to be harder, especially in the next. I think maybe the last couple of years has kind of maybe warped people's perception a bit that work's always going to be there. And I touched on this before about the cash flow issue in that people generally, the idea is that if you've got bad cash flow, your business is going to close. And whilst that's true, having positive cash flow doesn't necessarily mean your business is going to thrive either, because what we've often had is, you know, I've just paid this, these bills, cool, no problem. I've got a progress payment coming in, so in my bank, I've always got 50, 60 grand sitting there and everything looks all hunky dory and rosy. But that's because I've got so many jobs on at the same time. You have a few months off where it becomes a little bit harder for you to get work. You haven't necessarily cared about the cost tracking and how accurate your estimates are. Right. So when that work slows down a bit, which, like, I don't think, I don't really believe this argument that, you know, works just going to, you know, completely crash. I don't believe that for a second. But if it does slow down, you know, and that might mean a 10% decrease in the amount of projects you have, it might only be as much as that to really, really put some businesses into strife. So I would just say make sure your numbers are accurate, be ready for that potentially happen, you know, and if that's, you know, having your having a bit more cash in the bank ready to go or, you know, I had a chat with someone recently who's just sort of said try and you know, get as money, as much money as you can ready if you've got slow payments on bills, just to make sure your business is safeguarded. So that'd be my recommendation.

Now you, you talked a lot about, you know, paying attention to that prospect or that client experience. What do you think clients today are expecting from the builders and the building process as well?

Yeah, well, I think, I think a lot of builders, especially the ones that really run off of word of mouth, I think and especially that are dealing with maybe older people, the mentality that those people had is different to what younger people have now. Obviously it's quite hard for young people to build and own homes anyway, but that's going to change and we're in that sort of generation now where you've got like, I'm 34, you've got 25, 26, you know, even 30 year olds that had most of their childhood on social media. So social media is becoming a thing that people like. It seems like most of us kind of think our social media is just something that we adjusted to when we were, you know, a young adult or an, or an early adult or whatever, you know, but now there's people that all they know is social media. All they know is that way of interacting. They need communication instantly and that's kind of what they expect. They don't expect the, you know, if I, I'm gonna email you and you get back to me four days. That's not an expectation that most people, you know, are happy with now Normally it's, you know, I expect 24 hours a turn around. So how you communicate with your clients and that's from, you know, quoting, it's your brand presence, website, social media, all those kind of things really matter now to people. And you know, as people in the Probably, I'll say five, six years generation below me, you know, in the next 10 years those guys are going to be in positions where they're buying homes and you know, potentially for the builders are building on that sort of, maybe the cheaper and they're not in the high, high end homes. You need to have a really good process in terms of how you're reaching these people. And I think that's why some of the big, big builders do well in that market because social media adverts, all that kind of stuff. So how you communicate with the clients when you end up speaking to them, how you attract them, all those Kind of things can be way more important in the next few years.

How, how are builders that are on board with BuildXact embracing automation? Do they have handle it for the ones that, you know, have trouble using the keyboard? Do they delegate to other people, you know, who's, and who are the people that generally end up working with BuildXact in the building company space?

Yeah, I mean really at its core because we look after smaller builders. We probably wouldn't have, let's say, wouldn't have we. On average, we are one man band, husband, wife, team, small people, small groups of, you know, people in the business. So you probably get up to about 10. That's sort of where we start, kind of where we stop servicing as well. So in some businesses, yeah, that's, you know, admin people, it's people managing the project, it's maybe bookkeepers doing the invoicing and the cost tracking, you know, against the purchase orders and bills that come in. So those people 100%. We see a lot of partners really, really heavily involved in the business. And often, like I said earlier on, it's the partners that are generally giving the builder a bit of a kick to make use of efficiency. And often that's, that's the wife that's at home that wants to spend more time with her partner and is basically saying, hey, look, you're spending way too long on the computer or not on the computer, doing things manually. So the people that are embracing automation, you know, that's chilling out with your family, it's maybe working in your business more, it's maybe doing the things that you want to do, sports, whatever it is, less stress, you know, I mean, look, if someone said to me, I can do a quote in two hours versus 25 hours, you know, 25 hours. When we put it down to it, for most of us, that's, you know, the best part of three days, you know, of, of work. So that's a lot of time and that's you not even potentially winning the work. That's just you putting that in front of a customer who may have been just price matching you against someone else. So you may be not even the first person they're going to go. I just want to say, I just want to make sure this other builder isn't, you know, kind of, you know, get an extra ten grand out of me. So the people that are, you know, embracing automation, they're running better businesses. We see that businesses do grow and they use BuildX app from when they start to where they finish, you know, A couple of years later. So yeah, it really becomes what the individual builder wants to get out of it. If they just want to say, look, I don't want to grow my business, I'm happy doing two or three homes a year. Cool. Use us. Get the efficiency, get your life back. If you want to invest that time to grow your business and you know, make millions and millions and millions, go ahead. You know, you can definitely use a system for that.

Now, what are some of those exciting features and you know, what can, can our builders expect to get from BuildXact in the future? What, what are some of those things that they should be aware of?

Well, have you ever worked with anyone in product roles? They don't tend to like to tell people that are in more sales sort of focus roles what's coming because when they do that, people like me go out and promise it to the world. But what, what you will start to see with buildxact is more us working with more and more different types of people. So, and businesses. So you know, at some point, and again, this isn't me saying it, but at some point you can imagine we're going to have a whole ecosystem of people that we work with. Whether that's, you know, more will be more suppliers, like 100%. That's definitely happening anyway currently. And then you look at some point I would say you're probably going to see, you know, trades using it in somehow shape or form. We already have that to some degree with requests or quoting process. You'll probably see things like selections in buildxact you'll see deep, more detailed reporting. All those kind of things are things that we're pretty open on that you know, eventually will be in the software at some point. It'll just depend on when some of that will happen. So yeah, there's a heap of things coming again. It's one of those things. I don't necessarily want to give too much away because I get in trouble if we decide we're not doing it. But that's one of the things that you will. Because it's an online platform, we're constantly updating and making bug fixes and changes and you know, little things like that. So there'll be tons of little features that will come and then there'll be bigger features that happen as they, as.

They happen now for our listeners out there, can they try the product? Is there a trial at all for them to review?

Yeah, yeah. So it's a two week free trial. My recommendation is get the demo as soon as you possibly can, maybe even before you do the trial. The demo for me is the best way to learn the system through someone else. So that's you know, half an hour, 40 minutes, 45 minutes, depending how many questions you might have. That'll give you a really good understanding of how buildings that will work for your business. From there, I would say go and play around with the software. Now the benefit of BuildXact is a month to month subscription. So if you start it, for whatever reason you don't like it, you can always cancel. I mean we, we know fairly well that once people actually start using us and put a bit of time in, they very rarely cancel. So you know, there's no risk to our side. Generally once we get you up and running, it's like it, it really is a game changer for people. So yeah, trial, just make sure you, when you click through say Association Professional Builders because you'll get 10% discount on the, on the, on the plan as well that you use.

Awesome. Well, it's been a pleasure speaking to you and thank you for taking me into the world of the estimates out there and I'm sure we'll speak to you in the future as well, Julian.

Yeah, no problem. Thanks Bosco. Appreciate you having me on.

Thanks so much.

Thank you for listening. Remember to subscribe to Professional Builder Secrets on your favorite podcast platform and leave a review. To learn more about how the systems at the association of Professional Builders can help you grow your building company, visit associationofprofessionalbuilders.com See you next time.