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NEC Article 220 load calc
Demand-factor tiers applied the way the code states them — 3,000 VA at 100%, the next 117,000 at 35%, the remainder at 25% — with the heating/cooling worst-case taken automatically.
FOR ELECTRICAL & SPECIALTY TRADES
Electrical estimating that doesn’t stop at the estimate.
Most estimating tools hand you a number and stop. The bid then gets retyped into a proposal, the proposal into an invoice, and the install paperwork into a third place — and somewhere in that chain the totals stop agreeing. BidGlory runs the whole path on one pricing engine, with the electrical engineering built in rather than bolted on.
Free and open source to self-host for companies under $1M/yr in sales. Managed hosting from $299/month, priced on bid volume and never per user. Those are the actual numbers — not “contact us for pricing”.
The electrical work, inside the bid
These are not integrations or add-ons. They are fields and calculations in the bid itself.
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Panel schedules
Multi-slot panels with three-phase circuit assignment, built in the bid rather than rebuilt afterwards in a spreadsheet.
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Three-phase balance
Every panel reports Empty, Balanced, Soft imbalance or Hard imbalance against 20% and 35% thresholds — so you catch an unbalanced panel before the electrician on site does.
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Electrical fields on the catalog
Amp rating, UL listing, wire gauge, wire run length, lumens, colour temperature, CRI and beam angle live on the product record, not in a note field.
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One pricing engine
Discounts, taxes, design fees and surtax are computed once. The number on the proposal cover is the number in the grid, because it is literally the same calculation.
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Phased labor, the way you bid it
Rough-in, trim and finish are preset phases with their own hour columns on every product, so labor totals build themselves as you add material. Add your own phases — service and panel, temp power, fixtures, final — reorder them, and set a difficulty factor that adjusts one phase without touching the rest.
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Two estimators, one bid
Real-time multi-user editing with per-row version tokens. No last-save-wins, no rebuilding an afternoon of takeoff someone else overwrote.
Where this is the wrong tool
Worth saying plainly, because finding out three weeks into an evaluation wastes your time and ours.
- You need deep assemblies-based takeoff at industrial scale. Accubid, ConEst and McCormick have decades of assembly libraries and labour units behind them. If that library is your estimating process, moving here is a downgrade and we would rather tell you now.
- You need a stamped engineering deliverable. The Article 220 calculation and panel schedules are bidding and design aids. They are not a substitute for a licensed engineer signing the drawings.
- You want a finished product with a long track record. BidGlory is in Technology Preview. That is on the pricing page too. Some shops want that and some very much do not.
Common questions
How much does electrical estimating software cost?
Most established vendors in this category quote on request rather than publishing a price, so compare carefully and ask what a seat actually costs you at your headcount. BidGlory publishes its own: free and open source to self-host for companies under $1M/yr in sales. Managed hosting starts at $299/month and is priced on bid volume, never per user — there is no per-seat fee on any plan, and that is stated in the licence itself rather than only in marketing.
Is there free electrical estimating software?
BidGlory is free to self-host under the terms above, which means running it on your own server and maintaining it yourself. That is a real cost in time, and it is the honest trade: you pay in administration instead of licence fees. If you would rather not run a server, managed hosting exists and starts at $299/month.
Does it do NEC load calculations?
Yes. BidGlory applies NEC Article 220 demand factors — 3,000 VA at 100%, the next 117,000 VA at 35%, the remainder at 25% — and takes the heating or cooling load at worst case. It produces panel schedules with three-phase circuit assignment and flags imbalance at 20% and 35% thresholds. It is a bidding and design aid, not a substitute for a licensed engineer's stamped calculation.
Is this a replacement for Accubid or ConEst?
For a large industrial contractor running assemblies-based takeoff at scale, no — those tools have decades of assembly libraries and labour units behind them, and this would be a downgrade. BidGlory is aimed at contractors whose real problem is that the bid, the proposal, the customer approval and the install paperwork live in four different places. If your estimating is fine but everything after it is a spreadsheet and a Word template, that is the gap this fills.
Can I bid by phase — rough-in, trim and finish?
Yes. Three phases ship as presets and every product carries its own hours for each, so the labor total builds itself as you add material rather than being estimated separately at the end. You can add more phases — service and panel, temp power, fixtures, final inspection — rename and reorder them, and apply a difficulty factor that adjusts one phase without touching the others. Reports summarise hours sold per phase. Note the presets are named Prewire, Trim and Finish, which is the low-voltage vocabulary; Prewire is what you would call rough-in.
Does it work for low voltage and AV as well as electrical?
Yes, and that is the original design. BidGlory was built for AV integrators, electricians and project-based specialty trades working from one catalog and one pricing engine, which matters on jobs where the same bid carries devices, cabling, labour and the electrical work that feeds them.
★ FREE 30-MINUTE DEMO
Bring a panel schedule you already fought with.
A free 30-minute demo. Bring a recent electrical bid — the messy one — and we build it in front of you instead of showing a canned deck.