Connect Claude or ChatGPT to estimating software that sees your folder

Why connect the AI to your tender folder?

Connect Claude or ChatGPT to Estimator+ and it works in your own tender folder, and that's the bit that makes it worth doing. An AI that can see the whole tender can actually help you run it.

Until now, estimating software could only see what you manually uploaded. But a tender's never just the drawings. It's a folder: plans and elevations, the spec, the door and finishes schedules, a geotech report, the contract and a couple of addenda that turned up on a Thursday arvo.

Software that sees the drawings alone misses the spec clause that changes a quantity, or the exclusion tucked away in the contract. So you either upload half the folder, or read the lot yourself and carry it around in your head until close.

That's the gap the Estimating Operating System closes. With MCP V4, our connector, Estimator+ connects to the tender folder on your computer, meaning the company-drive folder that's synced there, something like D:\Tenders\Riverbend Aged Care. Claude or ChatGPT works in that folder, and Estimator+ holds the sheets, the measurements and the estimate.

How do you set it up?

Four steps, and you won't go near a terminal.

1. Download the Claude desktop app or the ChatGPT desktop app. Claude runs Estimator+ in its Code tab, and ChatGPT runs it in Codex.
2. Add the Estimator+ connector and sign in.
3. Open your Tenders folder with the app's no-asking mode on, which is Bypass permissions in Claude and Full access in Codex. That way it works through a tender without stopping to ask you every few minutes.
4. Say "Set up Estimator+".

It checks the folder, then asks which tender you'd like to do first. From there you just ask for things in plain words.

What goes up, and what stays on your drive?

Say "Set up the Riverbend tender in Estimator+." The AI reads the tender documents in the folder, creates the tender in Estimator+, and uploads the measurable drawings (plans, elevations, sections and details) as sheets.

Everything else stays where it is.

The AI keeps reading the documents on your drive for context the whole way through, "without clogging your workspace". Estimator+ holds the sheet pictures, the measurements and the estimate. The only files it hosts beyond that are the ones you send out through Sendout, so each subbie can download their package.

Will it mess with my files?

No. The AI writes only inside the _Estimator+ folders it keeps in the tender folder. It never moves, renames or deletes your files.

That matters, because it's your company drive and the whole office relies on that folder being where they left it. Your folder structure stays the way your team set it up, and anything the AI writes sits in its own folder where you can see it.

What can you actually ask it?

Pretty much anything you'd ask on a tender, in plain words. A few examples:

• "Set up the Riverbend tender in Estimator+." It reads the folder, creates the tender and uploads the sheets.
• "Run the takeoff." AI Takeoff V5 reads the spec, schedules, notes, contract and addenda before it measures, and every quantity comes from a shape on the sheet and its printed scale. There's more in AI takeoff software.
• "Addendum 02 is in the folder." Drop it in somewhere like Addenda/Addendum 02 and tell the AI. It matches each new revision to its old drawing, uploads the new drawings and supersedes the old ones, so the takeoff and your subbies work off the current set. Tender addenda and revisions goes deeper.
• "Send out the trade packages." It maps the document packages by trade for your review, picks subcontractors from your address book and drafts each invite in your Outlook or Gmail, through Claude's or ChatGPT's own mail connector. You check them and press send, so every invite comes from your own email address. Estimator+ never sends mail itself.
• "Who's pricing Riverbend, and who needs chasing?" You'll get something like "Carpentry and Joinery have fewer than three pricing. Framewright Carpentry downloaded the drawings but hasn't said if they're quoting." Then it drafts the reminders.
• "Price the job." It drafts the rates, and each one names its basis: your own rates or files, or past tenders on Estimator+ with research. Every rate is indicative until you confirm it, and money's ex GST.

ChatGPT in the browser, or the desktop app?

Both work, but they don't do the same job. ChatGPT in a web browser has no folder, so it can work on the estimate, the quotes and the pricing, but it can't run the takeoff. The takeoff needs a desktop app, Claude's or ChatGPT's, with the tender folder open.

If you've been pasting drawings into a browser chat and asking for counts, can ChatGPT do a takeoff? explains why the desktop app with Estimator+ connected is a different story.

Who pays for the AI?

You do, on the plan you've already got. The AI runs on your own Claude or ChatGPT plan, so there's no AI bill from us.

Estimator+ itself is A$450 per seat per month, ex GST, billed monthly, and you can cancel any time with no contract. Every seat includes AI takeoff and the whole workflow, with unlimited tenders, drawings and exports. The full breakdown's on our pricing page.

There's no free trial, though. We'd rather run the takeoff on one of your own tenders, at your office or on Google Meet, so you see it on a job you know.

The honest catch

The takeoff needs a desktop app and your tender folder synced on that computer. If your tenders only live somewhere that computer can't open as a folder, sort that out first.

It reads drawings as PDFs, not CAD or BIM models. And you're still the estimator. You check the takeoff, you press send on every invite, and you own the price, the picks and the strategy. The AI sets up the tender, runs takeoffs, drafts rates and chases quotes, and you focus on margins, strategy and winning the job.

If you'd like to see it working in a folder like yours, book a demo and bring a tender along.