How a lumber yard owner uses LumberSet: set up once, quote every plan set

If you are a lumber yard owner, you already know where quoting breaks. A builder drops off a set of drawings, and it joins the pile on the one desk that can turn drawings into a priced package. When that person is on holiday, on the phone, or gone to a competitor, the quotes wait and the builder calls someone else. LumberSet is built so the counting no longer sits on one desk. This article walks through how an owner sets a yard up, once, and what quoting looks like after that.

Sign up in the browser, no sales call

You sign up on desktop, tablet or phone, in the browser, with nothing to install and nobody to phone first. Signing up creates your yard's workspace: the private place that holds your customers, projects, catalog and estimating standards. Nothing in it is visible to any other yard. Your first released takeoff is free, so you can put through drawings you have already quoted by hand and compare the two before you spend anything. Pricing fits on one page: $200 per released takeoff, no monthly fee, no seat licenses, no contract.

Set your estimating standards

Estimating standards are the framing and ordering conventions that turn a building model into quantities. Sensible defaults exist from the first day, so you can quote before you have touched them, and you tighten them as you go. Each one is a choice your yard already makes, usually inside an estimator's head:

• Stud spacing defaults, used where the drawings do not say: 16 inches on center for most walls, 24 where your framers build it.
• Plate layers: a single bottom plate and a double top plate, or whatever your market builds.
• Header rules: what goes over an opening when the schedule is silent, for example two-ply 2x10 up to six feet.
• Waste factors by material: say 7 percent on studs, 10 percent on sheathing, none on an LVL beam.
• Precut studs: 92-5/8 inches for 8-foot walls and 104-5/8 for 9-foot, or the 92-1/4 your market stocks.
• Stock lengths: the lengths you actually rack in each material, 8 through 20 feet, so joists and headers are packed into sticks you can ship.

Every takeoff line is computed from these standards and shows its arithmetic, so the choice is visible on the line, not buried in a total. Standards are versioned: each takeoff records the version that produced it, so a quote from March still reads the way it was priced in March. For the reasoning behind two of the defaults, see how to count studs and stock length packing.

Load the catalog and invite the team

The catalog is your own sellable products: a SKU, a unit (piece, sheet, linear foot) and your price for each. A takeoff line describes its material independently of any catalog, for example "2x6 Douglas Fir No.2, 92-5/8 precut", and you match that material to the catalog item that fulfils it. Load the items you sell most first; the rest can be added as lines call for them.

Then invite the people who quote. There are no seat licenses, so everyone at the counter can have a login. Members have one of three roles: owner, manager or estimator. Finally, choose how review fits your day. Every takeoff is checked by a LumberSet reviewer, an estimator on our staff, who records each correction with a reason and the sheet it came from. In gated mode a takeoff waits for that review before it is released to you. In audit mode it is released at once and reviewed afterwards, which suits a yard that wants the number on the counter first and the check behind it.

Quote the first plan set

1. Create a project for the customer and upload the drawings as PDF. Every sheet is read, not only the floor plan, because the framing plan, the sections and the schedules carry the sizes.
2. Open the takeoff. Each element carries a confidence, so check the low-confidence ones first. Click a wall or a header and its evidence shows the sheet it was read from.
3. Correct anything the drawings left unclear. Change a wall height, a stud spacing or a header size and every affected line recomputes at once, arithmetic included.
4. Match the lines to your catalog and price them with your margin. Net quantity and order quantity are both shown, so you see what the drawings need and what the truck will carry.
5. Send the quote as a branded link and a PDF. When the builder calls back, re-price and re-send. That costs nothing.

A priced line looks like this. In this example the takeoff asks for 412 precut 2x6 studs. The matching catalog item costs your yard $6.40 each, and you price at a 20 percent margin on the selling price: $6.40 / 0.80 = $8.00 per stud, so the quote line is 412 x $8.00 = $3,296.00. The margin is yours to set, and the arithmetic behind the 412 stays with the line for anyone who asks.

What it costs, and what is free

A takeoff is billed once, when it is released to you. Everything after that is free: edits, corrections, recomputes, re-pricing, re-sending, re-exporting. Say you release 12 takeoffs in your first month. The first is free, the other 11 cost $2,200, and a month with no drawings costs nothing.

When a builder sends revised drawings after release, the revision runs as a change order: its own takeoff, numbered within the project, that shows what changed against the released one (lines added, lines removed, quantities changed). A change order carries a lower change order fee of $100, set by the platform.

Credits and coupons live in Settings, under Billing. Credits are bought as credit packs, and they never expire; a credit is used up before the per-takeoff fee is charged. A coupon is redeemed once per workspace and takes money off the next fees or adds credits. Every charge, credit and refund lands on your yard's ledger, so whoever does the books can see what was billed and why.

What a lumber yard owner gets

• Quoting capacity that is no longer capped by one desk. Anyone with a login can take drawings from upload to quote, and the counting is done to the same standards whoever does it.
• Consistent quotes. Two people quoting the same drawings get the same quantities, because the quantities come from your standards, not from who was at the counter.
• Your yard's knowledge, written down and kept. The header rule your best estimator carries in their head becomes a standard, versioned, that the next estimator inherits.

What it does not do: it does not price the job for you, and it does not remove the need for someone at your yard to look at the low-confidence elements and stand behind the quote. When you get stuck, the Help Center has articles, a help assistant, tickets and call requests, and hello@lumberset.com reaches a person.