Quick start — first ten minutes

1. Install the app and open it. BidRite works fully offline — nothing needs an account or signal to start bidding.
2. Set up your shop in More → Settings. Enter your company profile (it appears on every estimate and invoice), your monthly overhead lines, and a realistic billable-hours target. Overhead ÷ billed hours is what turns "gross profit" into your true operating number.
3. Choose your trade & load a starter catalog in More → Price Book → Load starter catalog. HVAC ships with 373 real flat-rate tasks; plumbing and electrical have starter catalogs too — or build your own from scratch. Edit every price; they're yours.
4. Add a customer in More → Customers → New. The "Same as billing" pill copies the billing address to the job site in one tap.
5. Price your first job on the Bid tab — and check the margin before you say the number out loud.

The Bid tab — know your number

Pick the bid type at the top:

• Install / Change-out — bill hourly or as a flat bid. The install markup slider shows markup and margin at once (95% markup = 48.7% margin — BidRite never confuses the two).
• Time & Material — set the sell price and material markup; labor hours and rates drive the rest.

The live readout below is the point of the whole app: total cost (COGS), gross profit, overhead allocated to this job, and operating profit (EBITDA), plus effective $/hr rates. If the number's wrong, fix the bid — not the invoice.

Price Book

More → Price Book. Flat-rate tasks bill exactly at their price; parts carry your cost plus your markup. Search spans the whole catalog by name, code, or category; category pills narrow the list when you're browsing. Add your own items with New, or edit anything from the starter catalog — the prices are yours.

Tickets — repair work and getting paid

1. On Tickets, tap New ticket, give it a title, and link the customer.
2. Tap Add from Price Book, search, and tap items — the subtotal, tax, and total build as you go. Add line covers one-off items.
3. Save the ticket, then take payment right on it: cash, check, card, or Square — a payment link / QR code the customer scans, or a tap on your Square reader. BidRite never touches the money; it goes to your own Square account.
4. A paid ticket automatically flips its linked appointment to Done on the schedule.

Estimates & customer approval

Save a bid as an estimate, then close it on the spot. From History, open the estimate and tap Get approval: the customer sees the job total, types their name, and signs right on your phone. Tap Approve & create invoice and BidRite turns that signed estimate into an invoice automatically — same pricing, no re-typing — ready to take payment. (There's a Customer declined option too, so your history stays honest.)

Maintenance agreements — recurring revenue on autopilot

More → Maintenance. Set up a plan for a customer once — pick a frequency (monthly, quarterly, twice a year, or yearly), a start date, and an optional price per visit. BidRite then auto-books the visits onto your schedule as they come due (it also generates any that are due whenever you open the Schedule tab). Fill the slow season without keeping a stack of "call them in spring" sticky notes.

Schedule — a calendar that knows about parts

Three views: Month (call-count badges per day), Week, and Agenda (your day in order). New appointments take a title, a date and time you tap in on a real calendar — pick the day on the month grid, tap the hour and minutes, done, no typing — plus a duration, the customer, and a status: Scheduled, En route, On site, Waiting on parts, Done, or Canceled.

Waiting on parts is the one that saves callbacks: set it and BidRite schedules a phone reminder (default 24 hours, adjustable in Settings → Reminders) so the job doesn't die in the pile. Ticket-linked appointments also show a Paid / Unpaid badge right on the calendar.

Jobsite photos

Attach photos to tickets and sites — nameplates, readings, before-and-after. Camera shots go in one at a time; picking from the library supports multi-select. Photos sync to your account and are there when the callback comes six months later.

History & Dashboard

History holds every saved bid, estimate, invoice, and ticket — reopen one to regenerate its PDF (itemized, on your letterhead) and share it, or tap Schedule visit to put it on the calendar. More → Dashboard rolls your jobs up into period EBITDA and utilization so you can see the month, not just the job.

Accounting — one-tap QuickBooks export

More → Settings → Accounting export. Pick a range (this month or all time) and tap Export invoices (CSV). BidRite writes a CSV — one row per line item, at your sell prices — that imports straight into QuickBooks Online (Import → Invoices) or opens in any spreadsheet. Your books stay current without re-keying a single invoice. Amounts are pre-tax so QuickBooks applies your tax code on import.

Security & sync

• Offline-first: everything lives encrypted on your phone; zero bars in a basement changes nothing.
• App lock: biometric / PIN lock with an auto-lock timer, in Settings → Security. Screenshot blocking is on by default.
• Automatic sync: turn on Auto-sync in Settings → Sync and BidRite syncs on its own — when you open the app and periodically in the background — so you never have to remember to hit a button. Point it at your BidRite server and your shop's account only ever sees its own data.

Get BidRite — $49/mo