The enquiry lands shaped
A quote request form on your own website asks the right questions — property, scope, timeline, budget — or paste the email, the RFP or the tender brief straight in. Nothing retyped.
Construction proposal software
Proposals that win the job.
Change orders that get signed.
For general contractors, remodelers and fit-out builders who win work on paper before they win it on site. Chalmsy drafts the construction proposal from the client's brief — in your words, priced from your own rates and materials — then carries the signature, the change orders, and the deposit and stage invoices that follow.
Proposals and invoicing from $59 a month · Priced on the page, not behind a sales call
The part everyone else treats as a module
Change orders your client actually signs.
Every job changes. The money is lost in the gap between "sure, we can do that" on site and a signature nobody ever chased. Chalmsy treats the change order as what it is — a new version of the agreement — not a tracking row in a project-management suite. The full discipline — what to include, how to price it, what to do when the client stalls — is in the change-order guide.
- Versioned, not overwritten — the revision becomes v2 of the signed proposal, with the original intact. Signing v2 is never mistaken for signing v3.
- E-signed with identity — acceptance sends a code to the client's own inbox, so the signature is tied to the person, not to whoever held the link.
- Discussed on the document — the client comments on the exact line they mean, with photos if a picture says it faster. No more "per my last email".
- Priced before it's promised — the extra work goes in as costed lines from your own rates, so the yes you get is a yes to a number.
- Invoiced without retyping — raise the next stage invoice from the approved change order in one click, the revised figures carried across.
Bathroom refit — change order
Version 2 of the signed proposal · original locked
| Original scope — as signed 4 Aug | $18,650 |
| Add: heated floor, 95 sq ft | $2,340 |
| Add: wiring for the revised outlet plan | $780 |
Revised total
$21,770
v2 signed · code verified
Stage invoice raised from v2
Illustrative data
Bid to final balance
The contractor's paperwork, run end to end.
The proposal drafts itself first
A complete construction proposal in your words — scope, exclusions, price, terms — learned from bids you've already written and costed from your own rates. You shape it; it never sends without you.
Say the survey out loud
Record a voice note as you walk the job — what needs doing, what worries you about the subfloor — and it comes back written up with the actions pulled out, ready to drop into the quote.
Deposit, stages, balance
Split the contract the way the job runs — deposit to book, stages as the work lands, balance at completion. Each stage is its own invoice with its own due date, born from the signed proposal.
Sent from your own email
Proposals and invoices go out from your address, not a software company's no-reply inbox. Replies land in your inbox, and the thread sits beside the job.
The books follow the job
Photograph the merchant's receipt in the van and it files against the job. A categorised ledger tied to each job, live profit and loss per trading entity, period locking, and QuickBooks Online sync for your accountant.
Some of these follow the plan: quote request forms join at Studio, bookkeeping at Practice — the pricing grid has every line.
Said plainly, before you compare
This is not estimating or takeoff software.
Chalmsy doesn't measure plans, hold a national cost database, or level sub bids. It prices from your rates, your materials and your multipliers, and it makes the winning, signing and invoicing side of the job light work. If you run takeoff software for the measuring, keep it — Chalmsy sits alongside it and handles everything the client sees. And if the document itself is the sticking point, how to write a construction proposal walks the structure section by section.
Priced on the page
$59 a month. Not "book a demo to find out."
The big construction suites start north of $150 a month and several won't print a price at all. If what you actually need is the proposal-to-invoice half — won cleanly, signed properly, billed in stages — Chalmsy's Studio plan is $59 a month for three seats, with no per-user billing. If you'd rather try before you commit, Starter is $15 a month and free for 21 days. Every plan, every line, on one page.
Contractors ask
Asked from site, answered straight.
What's the difference between an estimate, a bid, a quote and a proposal?
An estimate is your best read of the cost before the detail is settled. A quote fixes the price. A bid is a quote in competition. A proposal wraps any of them in the argument — scope, exclusions, approach, terms — that wins the work. Chalmsy produces the itemised numbers from your own rates and drafts the argument around them in your words.
Are e-signatures legally binding on construction proposals and change orders?
In the US, federal ESIGN and state UETA laws give electronic signatures legal standing for most business agreements, and Chalmsy adds email-code identity verification and a locked, versioned record of exactly what was agreed and when. For anything unusual — deeds, documents that need a notary — ask your attorney; for the everyday run of proposals and change orders, e-sign is how the industry now works.
Does it integrate with QuickBooks?
Yes — QuickBooks Online sync per trading entity is included from the Practice plan, alongside Chalmsy's own receipts-to-P&L bookkeeping. Your accountant gets a clean set of numbers either way.
Can AI really write a construction proposal?
The free generators produce generic text and invent numbers — which is exactly why contractors don't trust them. Chalmsy's AI drafts from proposals you've already written, prices only from your own rates and materials, cannot alter a figure you've entered by hand, and nothing sends until you've read it. The AI does the typing; the pricing and the send button are yours.
Do I need takeoff or estimating software as well?
If you measure quantities off plans, yes — keep it, Chalmsy doesn't do takeoff and doesn't pretend to. Many remodelers and fit-out builders price from experience, rates and supplier quotes instead, and for them Chalmsy covers the whole paper trail on its own.
Do I need a Google account?
Yes — Chalmsy runs on one. It's how your proposals and invoices go out from your own address rather than a no-reply robot, how your enquiry threads sit beside the job, and why there's no Chalmsy password for anyone to steal. A Gmail or Google Workspace address is all it takes. If your business email lives on Microsoft or elsewhere, Chalmsy isn't for you yet — we'd rather say so now than after you've moved.
Stay calmsy
Bid one job the new way.
Start free, paste one brief, and send a proposal that looks like it took the evening — before the site visit's out of your head.