Every contractor has lost money on a job that looked profitable on paper. Usually it's not one big miss — it's a handful of small, repeatable mistakes that compound across every bid. Here are the five we see most often, and how to stop them.
1. Forgetting indirect costs
Material and labor are easy to remember. Fuel, equipment wear, dump fees, permits, and supervision are not — yet they can add 8–15% to a job. Build them into your assemblies so they're never left off.
2. Stale pricing
A price book that's six months old is a liability. Lumber, steel, and fuel move fast. If your numbers don't update when costs change, you're bidding yesterday's market.
A live price book turns a 30-minute re-pricing chore into a one-click refresh.
3. Underestimating labor hours
Optimism is expensive. Track actual hours against your estimates so your labor factors reflect reality, not hope.
4. No markup discipline
Overhead, contingency, and profit aren't optional. Decide your markup policy once, apply it everywhere, and stop negotiating against yourself mid-bid.
5. Re-keying numbers between tools
Every time a quantity is copied from a takeoff into a spreadsheet into a proposal, there's a chance to fat-finger it. Keep takeoff → estimate → proposal in one flow and the errors disappear.
Fix these five and most contractors find a few points of margin they didn't know they were leaving on the table. That's what BidPhi is built to protect.