About BuildEstimate

BuildEstimate is a quoting and invoicing app for UK trades. Describe a job in plain English, or upload the drawings, and it builds a priced line-item quote that you edit, your client approves and signs online, and that turns into the invoice once the work's done.

Who builds it

Laurentiu Niculescu, a software engineer at Alpha IT Solutions Ltd in Dagenham, east London, builds and runs it. He writes the guides on this site too, working from the primary sources they link to: HMRC and gov.uk guidance, the HSE, and the legislation itself. The app went live on the web first, then on the App Store at the end of June 2026 and on Google Play in early July.

Why it exists

Pricing a job properly takes hours, and for most small firms those hours come out of the evening. The sums aren't hard. They're just easy to get wrong when you're tired, whether that's a markup quietly treated as a margin, VAT added twice, a CIS deduction forgotten, or the preliminaries left off because the job looked simple.

BuildEstimate does that arithmetic the same way every time. It keeps the quote, the client's approval and the invoice together, so nothing lives in a notebook in the van. The AI gives you a first draft.

You still decide the price.

What it does, and what it doesn't

It prices jobs at UK material and labour rates, reads uploaded drawings, puts VAT, CIS deductions and the domestic reverse charge on your invoices, and tracks expenses and profit per job. A job's location sets its currency and tax rules, for the UK and ten other European countries.

It doesn't schedule jobs or run staff timesheets. If you're running a big team and need full job management, another tool will suit you better. We've compared BuildEstimate with Tradify and Powered Now, including the places it falls short.

The company

BuildEstimate is a product of Alpha IT Solutions Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 15837037, registered office Tallow Close, Dagenham, RM9 6EF. The Companies House record is public, and the easiest way to reach us is hello@build-estimate.app. More ways to get in touch are on the contact page.