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For roofers: squares, bundles and the deposit on one quote

A tear-off and a new roof, a repair after a storm, a leak round a vent: a roof is measured in squares and bought in bundles. TailGateBid puts both on a quote your customer signs on their phone, with the shingle choices as options, a deposit due on approval, and whatever turns up under the old roof approved before you fix it.

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The work

In the federal handbook of occupations, roofers replace, repair, and install the roofs of buildings, using a variety of materials, including shingles, bitumen, and metal (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook Handbook: Roofers). It sorts roofs into two kinds, low slope and steep slope, and says steep-slope roofs are typical on single-family homes, where roofers commonly install asphalt shingles and may also lay tile, solar shingles, metal shingles, slate or shakes. Two of the duties it lists are what this page is about: measuring roofs to calculate the quantities of materials needed, and removing existing roof systems.

This page is about measuring and quoting a roof, not about working on one. For a license, a permit or an inspection, the ones to ask are your state's licensing board and the local building department.

How a roof is measured

  1. The unit is the square. Owens Corning's glossary gives it as a unit of roof measure covering 100 square feet.
  2. Measure each plane of the roof, its length times its width up the slope, and add the planes together. The roof is bigger than the house under it: a page on GAF's site says that because of pitch, eaves and other features, a roof is usually larger than the footprint of the home.
  3. From the ground, a plane's width up the slope is its flat run, eave to ridge, times a factor that comes from the slope. The same glossary gives slope as the inches of rise in every 12 inches of run. A rise of 5 in 12 makes 13 inches of roof for every 12 of run, so the factor is 13 divided by 12.
  4. The square feet divided by 100 are the squares.
  5. Shingles are bought in bundles. The glossary says there are typically 3, 4 or 5 bundles to a square; GAF's page says three for most standard asphalt shingles, to check each package for the area it covers, and to add 10% to 15% to the materials for trim and waste.
  6. The same page says roofing contractors use squares to price their materials and their labor as well. So the square is the unit on the quote too.

An example with made-up numbers, not a going rate

Say the house has a gable roof: 2 planes, each 40 feet along the eave, with a flat run of 15 feet from the eave to the ridge, at a slope of 5 in 12. The factor is 1.083, so each plane is 16.25 feet up the slope and 650 square feet. The roof is 1,300 square feet: 13 squares. Say you add 10% for waste: 14.3 squares. At 3 bundles to a square, that is 43 bundles to order.

A reroof, worked through

Sample

Sample Roofing Co.

Tear off and reshingle, 13 squares

  • Old shingles torn off and hauled away, by the squareQty 13$1,235.00
  • Labor to lay underlayment and shingles, by the squareQty 13$3,380.00
  • Architectural shingles, by the bundleQty 43$1,978.00
  • Underlayment, nails and the other materials, by the squareQty 13$546.00
  • Ridge vent and cap, along the ridgeQty 40 feet$380.00
Subtotal
$7,519.00
Sales tax (7.25%)
$210.54
Total
$7,729.54

Deposit due on approval: $772.95

Before you ask for a deposit on work at a home, check what your state or province allows.

Only you see this part. Your customer never does.

What it costs you
$4,862.00
What is left for you
$2,657.00

You keep about $35 of every $100

A sample with made-up prices. It is not a going rate for a square or for anything else, because TailGateBid has no price data. The tear-off, the labor and the small materials are charged by the square, 13 of them, and the shingles by the bundle, 43, with the waste in the count. The ridge is charged by the foot, 40 feet of it. The three material lines are the ones ticked as taxed: 7.25% of $2,904.00 is $210.54. A 10% deposit of $772.95 is due on approval. Nothing here is for the wood under the old roof, because nobody has seen it yet. With the made-up costs beside them, the lines leave $2,657.00 of the $7,519.00: about $35 of every $100.

What TailGateBid does for a roofer

  • Three shingles, one quote

    Put each shingle you sell on the quote as an option with its own price, up to 4 of them, and flag your pick. They start out named Good, Better and Best. New gutters or a skylight can be add-ons your customer ticks or leaves. They pick, and sign with a finger on their own phone. How quotes work.

  • A deposit when they approve

    If you order the bundles before the job starts, a deposit can cover them: a percent or a fixed amount, due when your customer approves, with its invoice made for you. Before you ask for one on a home, check what your state allows. The deposit and sales tax calculator works the amount out and quotes two states' regulators in their own words. What was paid comes off the final invoice.

  • What is under the old roof

    Replacing damaged or rotting plywood is on the handbook's list of a roofer's duties, and how much of it there is shows only once the old roof is off. Keep your price for a sheet in your price book. When you find some, photograph it and put the sheets on a change order: your customer approves it by link before the new wood goes down, and it is added to the final invoice. On paper for now? The free change order form prints the same change for a signature.

  • The day, and the weather

    The handbook also says roofers usually do not work during inclement weather. When the day has to move, give the job its new one on the schedule. A reminder goes to your customer by email the day before the visit, and "I am on my way" tells them the crew is coming. On the Crew and Shop plans each person's day sits side by side: what a crew gets.

  • A draft from photos taken on the ground

    From the ground, take a few photos of the roof and say in a sentence or two what the customer wants. Bid Partner, the AI tool in TailGateBid, drafts the quote and prices it from your rates. Any price Bid Partner had to supply itself is marked "Typical"; type yours over it and yours is used from then on. Check its quantities against your own measure, and press Send when the quote is right. Until you do, nothing goes out.

  • A roofing website

    Looking for a roofing website? One comes with your account, hosted at no extra cost: the roofs you do, in your own words; a before and after of a roof, shown once that customer has agreed; the reviews you approve; and a form where a visitor asks for a quote and can add photos. What is on the website.

What it is not

  • Bid Partner is not a safety inspection and not a roof inspection. Whether a roof can be walked, and what is wrong with it, are yours to judge.
  • It makes mistakes. Check every quantity on a draft against your own tape before you send it.
  • TailGateBid orders no materials and has no supplier catalog, no price data and no financing. It has no dispatch board and no GPS, it does not handle insurance claims, and the permit is not its job.

Pricing the square

TailGateBid will not tell you what a square sells for: it has no figure to give. The job price calculator starts from the other end, with your crew's hours, the cost of one of those hours and your materials, and lays out what five different prices would leave. The hour calculator works out the hour.

A crew that works in Spanish and a customer who reads English? GAF's own page in Spanish calls a square "un cuadrado de techo" and a bundle "un paquete". Each person uses TailGateBid in their own language, and a quote goes out in the language you set for that customer: how the two languages work.

Quote sent a week ago, and silence? Copy a follow-up from the free message writer and send it from your own phone. The layout of an estimate, top to bottom, is in the guide, with one filled in.

This page is about one trade. TailGateBid works the same way for any other, and Bid Partner is built to price a job in any of them: how it works for your trade.

Sources

Related

Measure the next roof from the ground and send the quote the same day.

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