K
Kevin Pineda
(Applying to Invoicing / Payments / Field Services - LevelUp Launch)
Currently, HighLevel’s Field Services and Invoicing features are fantastic for flat-rate, hourly, or retail-priced services (mowing, service calls, diagnostic fees). However, we are severely limited when trying to migrate larger trade, outdoor living, pool, and specialty contractors over from ERPs like LMN, ServiceTitan, or Aspire.
I think to win the design-build and complex contracting markets, we need a cost-based estimating engine that calculates pricing from the bottom up based on Wholesale Costs and Overhead/Net Margin rules. I only say this because I have a pool builder client who uses LMN and this feature is why they use it. everything else is high level.
What is needed:
  1. Wholesale Cost vs. Retail Pricing in Product Catalog:
  • Allow us to define "Wholesale/Unit Cost" for Materials, Labor (crew hour burdens), Subcontractors, and Equipment in the product settings.
  • Currently, you can only set a retail price. Businesses need to track what they pay for an item vs. what they charge.
  1. Dynamic Margin and Overhead Markups:
  • When building an estimate, instead of guessing a retail rate, we want to specify a "Target Net Margin" (e.g., 35%) or "Markups" by category.
  • HighLevel should calculate the customer's price using this formula:Client Price = Wholesale Cost / (1 - Target Margin %)
  • Provide the ability to apply Global Overhead Recovery and Net Profit Margin presets to estimate templates.
  1. Production Rates & Estimation Formulas:
  • Ability to connect item quantities to formulas (e.g., if a user inputs "500 sq ft" of pavers, allow us to specify that it requires X tons of base, Y bags of sand, and Z labor hours, with the system automatically calculating and multiplying the supplier unit costs).
  1. Margin Protection Guardrails (In-Estimate View):
  • Inside the HL Estimate/Proposal builder, give back-office estimators a "Live Financial Summary" sidebar.
  • This should show them Estimated Total Cost, Estimated Overhead, Markup/Margin Amount, and the Blended Net Margin % of the bid before it's sent to a client. (The client, of course, would only see the final retail pricing).
Without this, trade and landscape/hardscape businesses must run all takeoff calculations, supply-chain material rates, and crew burden rates in external spreadsheets or expensive specialized ERPs (like LMN) before manually copy-pasting a flat price into HL.
If HighLevel can calculate wholesale cost-plus margin automatically, it will make HL an unstoppable, all-in-one system for businesses of all sizes, allowing us, the agencies, to displace heavyweight industry-specific software overnight.