Flooring takeoff

Flooring takeoff software that reads the builder's plans

Squaro reads a builder's working drawings and selections sheet, works out which floor goes in which space, and measures every room from the dimensions printed on the plan. You get a takeoff where every figure shows where it came from, ready for your rules and your rates.

What a flooring takeoff involves

A takeoff is the list of quantities a quote is built on: how many square metres of each floor, in which rooms, plus the openings, stairs and allowances that change the order. For a flooring contractor working from builders' plans, it usually means an afternoon with a PDF, a scale ruler and a spreadsheet. Open the selections, work out which rooms get hybrid and which get carpet, find the floor plan pages with internal dimensions, then measure and add up room by room.

None of that is hard. It is slow, and it is easy to get one small thing wrong: a robe measured to the shelf, a passage nobody named, a stair counted from the wrong drawing. Squaro does the reading and measuring so the estimator's time goes into checking and pricing.

How Squaro does the takeoff

1. It reads the selections

Squaro finds the floor coverings in the selections or colour schedule: the hard floor, the carpet and any window treatments, with the range, colour and where each one goes. A line such as “throughout excluding wet areas” is understood as every room that is not a bathroom, ensuite, WC, laundry or other tiled space.

2. It classifies every space

Before anything is measured, each space on the plan is marked as hard floor, carpet, tiles by others, excluded (garage, alfresco, porch, balcony and outdoor areas) or unknown. Where the selections and the plan's own markings disagree, Squaro follows the plan marking and adds a note for you to check. Passages, halls and nooks that join floored rooms are included even when the selections do not name them, because they are floor you will have to supply.

3. It measures from the printed dimensions

Each floored room is measured from the dimension strings printed on the drawing, the same figures you would read off it yourself, never from the scale or the size of the drawing on screen. Rooms are taken widest by longest to the edge of sliding doors, and L-shaped spaces are split into rectangles so each part can be checked.

4. It lists the things that change the order

Alongside the rooms, Squaro lists the items your rules act on:

• Robes, each as its own space, floored to the sliding door line from the robe depth on the plan.
• Openings: every doorway, full-length window, sliding door and robe door, with its width and whether the floor changes across it.
• Cabinet runs in kitchens, laundries and studies, so the floor can run under to the kickboard.
• Recesses for the fridge, dishwasher and bar fridge, which are floored.
• Stairs, each flight with its finish, step width, step depth and number of steps, plus open-sided box steps.
• Windows that get blinds, with their width and drop where the plan gives them.

5. It shows its working

Every room carries the page it was read from and the exact dimension text it used, and a confidence. Anything Squaro was unsure about is flagged with what to check. A missing room costs a contractor more than an extra one, so when something is hard to read, Squaro still gives its best reading and tells you, rather than leaving the room out.

Why printed dimensions, not scaling

PDFs get resized, printed at the wrong scale and sent as scans. A measurement taken by scaling the drawing inherits every one of those errors, and you cannot tell from the result. A dimension string is the architect's own number. When Squaro reads 4200 and 3600 for a bedroom, you can look at the same place on the sheet and see the same two numbers. That makes the takeoff something you can check quickly, line by line, rather than something you have to trust.

What it reads

• PDF working drawings from volume and custom builders, with the floor plan pages that carry internal dimensions.
• The selections, colour schedule or addenda that says which finish goes where.
• Several files per quote, the same attachments the builder emailed you.

Clean digital PDFs read best. Scanned or photographed plans can be read but take longer to check. Plans dimensioned in millimetres or metres are supported today; feet and inch plans for the US and Canada are on the roadmap.

Reading runs in the background, so you can close the browser and come back to a finished draft.

From takeoff to quote

The takeoff feeds straight into your quote. Your doorway allowance, under-cabinet allowance, stair allowance, waste, pack size, trim pricing and rates are applied to the quantities, and each line on the quote shows the rooms and rules behind it. The flooring quoting software page covers the pricing side, and the carpet and blinds pages cover those trades.

You stay the estimator

Squaro does not send anything on its own. You can change any area, add or remove a room, or adjust an opening, and the quote recalculates. An edited figure keeps a note of what the plan said, so anyone checking later can see what changed. Each line is ticked off by the estimator, and if a line's amount changes after it was ticked, the tick goes stale so it is checked again.

Who it is for

Squaro is built for flooring contractors who quote from builders' plans: hard floors such as hybrid, laminate, vinyl plank and engineered timber, carpet, blinds and floor preparation. It came out of a working flooring contractor in Perth that quotes volume builder homes every week, and it follows the method their estimators use. Because it reads metric plans today, it suits contractors in Australia, New Zealand, the UK and Ireland first.

Your plans stay private

Builder plans and your rates stay private to your account and are never shown to other customers. To read plans, Squaro sends them to its AI provider, Anthropic, which processes them in the United States, keeps a copy for at most 90 days and does not use them to train its models under its commercial terms. The privacy page has the details.

Learn the method

The guides explain the takeoff method Squaro follows, with worked examples you can use whether or not you use Squaro: quoting from builder plans, robes, recesses and kickboards and measuring stairs.

Related reading

• How to quote flooring from builder plansThe full method, from the builder's pack to a priced quote, with a worked hybrid example.
• Robes, recesses and kitchen kickboards in a flooring takeoffMeasuring robes to the door line, flooring recesses, and allowing for the kickboard recess.
• How to measure stairs for hybrid flooringTreads, risers, nosing, landing steps and box steps, with a worked pricing example.
• Flooring quoting software that prices the way you doPricing builder plans with your own rules and rates, and checking every line before it is sent.
• How to do a vinyl plank takeoff from plansMeasuring LVP, perimeter trims, underlay and adhesive from a set of plans.
• Flooring takeoff vs measure-upWhen to quote from plans, when to measure on site, and how to word the quote.

Quote your next plan set with Squaro

Squaro is open to a small group of flooring contractors first. Tell us how you quote and we will set up your rules with you and run your first plan.

Request early access