Does Portravo work outside Sacramento?
Indexed and labeled; not the same as direct.
The takeoff works anywhere, because reading a plan set does not care what county it is in, but the pricing is only direct in the Sacramento metro and every other metro is a cost index applied to that benchmark and labelled as indexed on the line.
What direct means here
The Sacramento benchmark in the product covers 124 material SKUs across lumber and sheet goods, electrical, plumbing, drywall, insulation, fasteners, concrete, roofing and paint, carried as 173 benchmark price rows so a SKU can show more than one channel. Each row carries a source, a location and an as-of date, and that provenance prints on the estimate.
It is a benchmark, not a live feed. It is the number to bid from and the number to check against your supplier, in that order.
What indexed means
Five other metros are seeded with a cost index against Sacramento: SF Bay Area at 1.28, Los Angeles at 1.15, Fresno at 0.93, Phoenix at 0.90 and Dallas-Fort Worth at 0.88. A material line in those metros is the Sacramento benchmark figure multiplied by that factor, and the line tells you it was indexed.
That is the same basic method a national cost book uses, applied from a closer starting point. It is a reasonable budget number and it is weaker than a direct figure. If you are bidding in Phoenix, treat the material side as a starting point and confirm the big lines with your yard.
Labor travels better than materials
Labor comes off the rate card you enter yourself, so it is accurate in any market as soon as you put your own loaded rates in. Onboarding seeds a Sacramento default rate card and you should replace those numbers with yours on day one regardless of where you work.
Which means outside Sacramento the honest description is: your labor, indexed materials, and a line-level label telling you which is which.
Bidding an indexed metro
If your metro is not Sacramento, do these four things.
- 01Replace the seeded rate card with your own loaded hourly rates before your first real bid.
- 02Read the line labels. Indexed material lines are marked, and they are estimates of an estimate.
- 03Pull written supplier quotes for the top cost lines and edit those unit prices in.
- 04Treat the indexed total as a budget, and do not hand it to a customer as a firm number without the quotes behind it.
Signing up loads a sample duplex project and one estimate credit, granted when you finish onboarding. No card until you buy a second estimate.
Start with the free estimate- Which metros does Portravo cover?
- Sacramento prices directly from the Portravo benchmark. SF Bay Area, Los Angeles, Fresno, Phoenix and Dallas-Fort Worth price through a regional cost index against that benchmark, and those lines are labelled indexed in the estimate.
- Can I use Portravo outside California?
- Yes, with the same caveat. The takeoff works on any plan set and labor uses your own rate card, but materials outside Sacramento are indexed rather than direct until the data earns direct coverage there.