Read a Repair Estimate Like a Work Order
A repair estimate reads like a number, but it's a set of claims: what's broken, what it costs in parts, what it costs in labour, and what they're not telling you. This reads the line items, flags the lines worth questioning, and prints the exact questions to ask before you sign. Local only; your estimate never leaves the tab.
- Reading
- Line items scanned for labour, parts, and red-flag wording
- local
- What it replaces
- A contractor's 'trust me' on a number
- $0.00
- Input
- The estimate text, line by line
- no card
- Output
- Flagged lines plus the questions to ask
- recomputed
What you pay otherwise
| Route | What you get | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Second opinion (contractor) | A competing quote, if you wait a week | time + trust |
| Signing it as-is | Whatever the padding and the gaps were | $100s |
| General 'how to negotiate' advice | No questions mapped to your actual lines | useless |
| This page | Your lines, flagged, with the questions to ask | $0 |
The workflow
Paste the estimate exactly as written
Copy the line items and the total, word for word. The tool reads the wording — 'diagnostic fee', 'labour', 'parts', 'not to exceed' — so the copy matters more than you'd think.
Read the flags as a map, not an accusation
A flagged line means the wording or the price pattern is worth a question — not that the contractor is cheating. The flags are where you spend your questions, and questions are cheap.
Ask the labour-vs-parts question first
The single highest-value question: 'How much is parts and how much is labour?' A parts-heavy quote is checkable online; a labour-heavy quote is checkable by the hour. Almost everything else follows from that split.
Get the answer in writing before you approve
Permits, warranty, and the 'not to exceed' cap belong in writing on the quote, not in a phone call. The sheet's negotiation points name exactly what to write in.
Worked example
Sample: a 5-line plumbing estimate Lines 5 Flagged 2 (labour lumped, no permit line) Questions 6 (parts vs labour, permit, warranty, cap) Negotiation 1 (get the parts/labour split before approving) Uploaded nothing — read in the tab
Numbers above are sample data produced by the tool's own pre-loaded example, run in the browser — not averages or measured benchmarks.
What breaks this
Pasting only the total gives the tool nothing to read — paste the line items. Treating a flag as proof of overcharging is wrong; it's proof you should ask. Approving on a handshake after a good conversation undoes the whole point — the answers belong on the quote. A line item that can't be explained is the one to challenge.
Try it now
A five-line plumbing estimate is loaded and flagged. Paste your own estimate and watch the questions rebuild from its wording.
Open the estimate reader →Go deeper: the comparison sheet
The questions are free forever. The $4 one-time tier adds:
- Comparison sheet — two estimates side by side, line against line — estimate: ~25 min saved versus diffing two PDFs by eye.
- Saved estimate shelf — keep estimates for one project together — estimate: ~10 min saved per repair.
- Approved-quote copy — the questions and your notes as a clean sheet to bring back — estimate: ~12 min saved.