From a takeoff to a priced Bill of Quantities
Published on 4 August 2026
In short: a takeoff gives you quantities. A bill gives someone something to price. Three things have to be added in between: a description written to a measurement rule set, the correct unit, and a place in the right work section. All three can be done in a spreadsheet, and this guide shows how, along with the point at which a spreadsheet starts costing you more than it saves.
Why this comes up
The pattern is familiar to anyone pricing subcontract work. The enquiry arrives as a set of PDF drawings, often with no written scope, and the return date is a week away. You measure what you can see, and then you have a page of dimensions that nobody else can read and nothing you can send out. The gap between those dimensions and a document a client will accept is where most of the evening goes.
What a bill has that a takeoff does not
A takeoff is a private record. A bill is a public one, and it has to stand on its own when someone else opens it. Four things separate them:
- A description that tells the reader what the rate has to cover.
- A unit that follows the measurement rules rather than personal habit, so linear metres, square metres, cubic metres, number and item all mean the same thing to everyone.
- A place in the structure, so partitions sit with partitions and drainage with drainage.
- A trace back to the drawing, so that when a query comes back you can show where the number came from.
In the UK that rule set is normally NRM2, the RICS New Rules of Measurement. If it is new to you, start with what an NRM2 Bill of Quantities is.
The two dead ends
Ask around and you get two answers, neither of which fits a small firm. The first is to buy a full estimating suite, which is priced for a main contractor: Causeway Estimating publishes £2,400 per named user per year, excluding VAT, on the government's G-Cloud framework, and it is not the most expensive on that list. What the rest of the market charges is covered in how much takeoff software costs. The second answer is to build your own spreadsheet, which works until it does not. The rest of this guide is the middle option.
Step 1: keep the dimensions, not just the totals
When you measure, record the dimensions that produced each quantity, not only the answer. Three lengths and a height are recoverable; a lone figure of 42.75 is not. Put them in their own columns so the quantity is a formula rather than a typed number. This is the single habit that decides whether a re-measure takes minutes or means starting again, and it is the one most often skipped under time pressure.
Step 2: group by work section as you go
Tag each line with its work section while you are measuring, rather than sorting it all out afterwards. NRM2 runs to 41 sections and they follow roughly the order the job gets built, so tagging as you go means the bill assembles itself later. The full list is in the NRM2 work sections.
Step 3: write the description before you price
A quantity with a vague description invites a defensive rate. Write what the rule set requires: the material, the size, the finish, anything that changes the cost of doing the work. "Partitions, 15.50m" leaves the pricer guessing. "Metal stud partition; 2.70m high; 75mm studs; one layer plasterboard each side" does not. Descriptions are also what let two returned tenders be compared like for like.
Step 4: let the spreadsheet do the arithmetic
Set out the columns as a bill: reference, description, unit, quantity, rate, amount. Make the amount column a formula multiplying quantity by rate, and make each section total a sum of its lines. Type no number you could calculate. Once the structure holds, pricing becomes filling in one column, and changing a rate updates everything below it.
One line, start to finish
A wall measured on the drawing as three runs of 6.20m, 5.10m and 4.20m becomes a single bill line, with the height carried in the description because the item is measured in metres:
| Ref | Description | Unit | Qty | Rate £ | Amount £ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Section 20: Proprietary linings and partitions | |||||
| A | Metal stud partition; 2.70m high; 75mm studs; one layer plasterboard each side | m | 15.50 | 130.00 | 2,015.00 |
| B | Extra over item A for forming door opening; 926 x 2040mm | nr | 2 | 48.00 | 96.00 |
| Extract subtotal | 2,111.00 | ||||
A longer worked bill, with the columns explained, is in the NRM2 bill of quantities example, and the full assembly process is in how to produce an NRM2 Bill of Quantities.
Where a spreadsheet stops working
A spreadsheet handles the arithmetic well. What it cannot do is hold the link between a number and the drawing it came from. When a revised sheet lands, nothing in the file tells you which lines are now wrong, so you either re-measure everything or trust your memory. The same gap shows up when a client queries a quantity months later and the marked-up print has gone. This is not an argument against Excel, which is where a priced bill usually has to end up anyway. It is an argument against Excel being the only place the measurement lives.
Getting the bill out without the reformatting
Most of the work between a takeoff and a bill is not judgement, it is transcription: copying quantities across, formatting columns, keeping the coding straight. We built Kestrel™ to remove that step. It is made by a working UK estimating firm and used on live jobs. You measure on the PDF, the measurements stay attached to the drawing they came from, and Kestrel exports an NRM2 Bill of Quantities to Excel with the codes, descriptions, units and live formulas already in place, ready for your rates. It runs on Windows, with a 14-day free trial. You can also download Kestrel and try it on the next enquiry that comes in.