Roofing Apps
The Complete Guide [Updated 2023]
Table of Contents
In the fast-paced world of roofing contracting, staying ahead requires more than just traditional roofing tools and methods. Enter roofing apps—a technological boon transforming the industry.
But what exactly is a roofing app and how can you use it to supercharge your sales?
We’ll unravel everything you need to know about roofing apps, including what they are, the different types of roofing apps, the benefits of using them, the essential features every roofing app should have, what to look for in all-inclusive roofing apps, and the current top 12 roofing apps.
What Is a Roofing App?
Before we can break down the ways roofing apps can help produce more sales for your business, let’s start by defining what roofing apps are and what they can do.
Software applications designed for use by roofing contractors—on a desktop or mobile device—are often referred to as roofing applications or roofing apps. Many roofing apps help roofers carry out their everyday tasks, such as capturing customer information and photos at a job site, ordering aerial measurement reports, creating an estimate, or communicating updates about a job from the field to the home office.
Companies are adopting roofing apps at a record rate because they help employees work smarter. With better organization and access to information, teams can collaborate more effectively and conduct their work in the most efficient manner. And when you have highly productive and effective teams, you ultimately see growth.
A roofing application—roofing app for short—is software designed for roofing contractors to use on their desktop or mobile devices. Roofing apps have features that help roofers manage their daily tasks better and work smarter. These apps also organize documents so roofing crews can work more efficiently and share information more easily.
Roofing apps like JobNimbus allow you to easily manage all your contacts, jobs, tasks, documents, and more.
Types of Roofing Apps
There are seven main types of roofing apps based on their function: operational, analytical, collaborative, cloud-based, on-premise, individual, and open AI. Let’s dive into what each of those are.
Operational Roofing App
An operational roofing app focuses on automating and streamlining workflows in your roofing pipeline. These apps tend to revolve around sales, marketing, and customer service to provide you with customer information and relationship management.
Analytical Roofing App
An analytical roofing app lets you mine and interpret customer data to improve your business processes. Key analytical roofing app features include reporting and dashboards to look at sales, financial, and marketing data.
Analytical roofing apps ultimately aim to increase your customer satisfaction and retention rates.
Collaborative Roofing App
Collaborative roofing apps promote teamwork and communication between your teams. This type of roofing app has communication tools such as instant messaging, social components, and email and file sharing. This app is handy when you have a team in the office and a team at the job site.
Cloud-based Roofing App
You and your team can access a cloud-based roofing software app from wherever and on whatever device. Since a third-party provider hosts these apps, you can typically access them on your web browser. They give you the power to work from anywhere and manage your projects wherever you are.
On-Premise Roofing App
On-premise roofing apps are less flexible and less common. You can only access these apps through your company’s server on specific, connected devices.
These apps have a strong connection and can work well if your whole team is centralized in one location.
Individual Roofing App
Individual project management systems are web-based and simple. These roofing apps offer light project management solutions. Individual programs don’t have as many features as other types but are very straightforward and easy to understand.
Open-API Roofing App
An open-API roofing app is a publicly available option that provides end-users with programmatic access to an already existing application. These apps give users more freedom to set up projects and adjust preferences to suit their specific business needs.
The Benefits of Using Roofing Apps
In today’s world, effective data management is crucial for company success. Without looking at job costs, roofers are left in the dark about job quality, speed, and expenses. Working blindly certainly isn’t a cost-effective or advantageous strategy.
Instead, when you use a roofing app like JobNimbus, you can track and update all your job costs to adjust strategies and make more money.
Here are several ways that using roofing apps can help your business succeed.
Keep Your Roofing Jobs on Track and Within Budget
A roofing app is a fantastic way to track your jobs.
Not only can you see if a project is staying on the right timeline and if you’re staying within your budget, but it also gives you the knowledge you need to accomplish your roofing goals.
By taking the time to determine all the actual and estimated costs for each project, you can understand how each project is performing and motivate your crew to stay focused on getting results.
Without knowing project results, there’s no way to improve and no incentive to work harder or faster.
Here’s how to track your roofing job costs in JobNimbus.
- Analyze your bid estimate.
- Plan monthly updates, including any approved changes to the project budget.
- Then track committed subcontracts, which are firm costs not subject to change. As the project proceeds, you should also track on-committed costs like labor, equipment, and materials.
- Determine how much more money, if any, you need for non-committed costs to complete the project.
- Put that estimate into the spreadsheet under Estimated Cost to Complete, and then the JobNimbus app will calculate the Estimated Final Cost.
- After adding up the Estimated Variance entries, you can see if you went over or under your initial budget.
For the best results, we recommend recording weekly job costs and sharing them with your crew. This information shows whether you need to shift production strategies to reach your goal.
Remember, it’s better to assess adjustments now so that you make money rather than lose money.
Generate High-Quality Leads
Roofing apps can improve roofing sales by generating higher-quality leads. The first step in the sales cycle is finding the right leads. A roofing app with CRM capabilities can help you collect leads from your target market. It features tools like lead scoring, categorization, and tracking to help you find and pursue potential customers.
This type of roofing app also helps you close more leads than ever by keeping track of what stage customers are in throughout the sales process. A CRM roofing app offers several features that make the sales process as easy as possible, allowing you to make the most of new leads.
Strengthen Communication
Roofing apps help your team communicate better with each other and your clients. Communication is vital for your roofing business to succeed, and your company needs a roofing app that enables strong communication.
A CRM roofing app makes communicating easier by tracking conversations and letting you share them with those who need access. That way, everyone working with a customer can view and update data as necessary and ensure no information gets left behind.
Thanks to a roofing app, you’ll have happier customers and a more collaborative work environment.
Improve Customer Experience
A solid roofing app improves customer communication, which ultimately improves customer relationships.
According to Gartner, 64% of people find customer experience more important than price when it comes to making a purchase. Companies that provide an excellent customer experience also show higher customer retention, satisfaction, and perceived company value.
Some roofing apps have analytic tools that help you get to know your customers and better meet their needs. Additionally, you can respond faster to customers through instant notifications, texting, and email capabilities. Overall, CRM roofing apps gather data and let you better engage with your clients to develop positive relationships.
Save Time and Money
Being more efficient with your time as a roofer means yielding higher profits. You shouldn’t have to deal with manual data entry, tedious spreadsheet analysis, or time-consuming reporting. Those things will cost you potential sales opportunities and revenue.
Roofing apps can automate tasks for you. These automations remove repetition from your workflow and reduce costly errors. Roofing apps will also decrease the time and money involved in closing a sale and targeting existing customers.
15 Essential Roofing App Features
- Photos
- Automation
- Estimates & Invoices
- Lead & Signature capture
- Appointment & Task management
- Job tracking
- Reporting
- Work orders
- Material orders
- Calendar scheduling
- Customization
- Mobile capabilities
- Notes
- Budgets
Take and Upload Photos to Your Roofing App
As a roofer, it’s crucial to document your job progress from beginning to end with pictures. But, it can be difficult to document and organize those photos without the help of a roofing app. Most roofing apps let you take and upload photos from your phone while you’re at the job site.
On the JobNimbus mobile app, you can capture photos of roofs, gutters, siding, and other exterior shots.
JobNimbus instantly uploads those job pictures to customer contacts so you can share them with customers, subcontractors, and insurance adjusters. The roofing app will store those photos, so they’re available whenever you need them.
Set Up Automation
Roofing apps let you set up workflow automations to cut unnecessary repetition out of your work and get things done faster. Automation ensures that nothing slips through the cracks, so it’s worth having roofing software to take care of that for you.
In the JobNimbus roofing app, you can automatically email customers, change customer statuses, create tasks, send reminders, and more. These time-based automations are quick, easy, and can be edited at any time.
Automate your workflow to set triggers when you want to accomplish something or receive notifications. Notifications will pop up instantly on new assignments and tasks due that day.
Prepare Estimates & Invoices
The ability to create, send, manage, and report on estimates and invoices is a key function of roofing apps.
With the JobNimbus roofing app, you can view live reports to track invoices as they change status and customers interact with them. This function helps you prepare and track finances as you execute a job.
Roofing apps also let you build professional-looking estimates and invoices with the customer at the job site. Save products and services, use templates, and pull from previously saved quotes to make those documents faster every time.
With JobNimbus, you can separate your estimates by trades for all your exterior jobs, email estimates with just a couple of taps, as well as collect payments and run reports.
Capture Leads and Signatures at the Door
You can use roofing mobile apps to increase sales by capturing leads and signatures right at the door. This ability will significantly increase your success by immediately collecting customers’ information and facilitating better engagement and long-lasting relationships.
Roofing apps will help you make sure no lead falls through the cracks. Additionally, you can sell faster and earn referrals by providing a better experience for your customers.
With the JobNimbus mobile roofing app, you can add new leads on your smartphone or tablet, and they’ll sync automatically. Quickly call, text, or email your clients to keep in contact.
Create & Manage Appointments and Tasks
Managing appointments and tasks is one roofing app feature you’ll use daily. Advanced roofing app tools make managing your many roofing tasks easier. It also reminds you of important meetings with clients along with the specifics of a job you’re working on that day.
The JobNimbus roofing app lets you track your appointments, to-dos, work, and follow-ups as you sell jobs and move towards completion. With shared calendars, JobNimbus gives you full control to keep your life and business organized.
Track Your Jobs and Manage Your Production
As you track the jobs you’re working on, you can assess what areas may need some improvement or change of direction. Your roofing app will provide information to help you plan for future jobs and see better results.
Roofing apps also allow you to easily view, track, and update all your current roofing jobs and individually manage work order and due dates.
A roofing app lets you manage job statuses, track notes and emails, and upload attachments and photos.
Create Reports for Everything
When running a roofing business, you need to know how your business is performing. Roofing apps let you create and customize reports on data from estimates and material orders to job performance and more. These reports give insight into what’s happening in different parts of your business and help you reach your business goals.
In the JobNimbus roofing app, you can report on anything you do, including your sales pipeline, activity, time logs, payments, and more. JobNimbus has a live reporting tool where you can get updates in real time, so you always see the most up-to-date information.
Assign Work Orders to Your Team or Subs
You can adjust and distribute assignments to team members with roofing apps. This feature helps you see how a project is moving along and how employees are spending their time working. By viewing your team’s work orders, you can evaluate priorities and manage your work all in one place.
With roofing apps, you can divide your work orders out for roofing, gutters, siding, and other exterior trades. The JobNimbus roofing app lets you track statuses, assign tasks, and view your work orders on interactive boards to keep your production moving.
See Everyone’s Schedules and Coordinate Work
Roofing apps let your team share their work tasks so everyone can get on the same page and contribute to a project. This visibility increases productivity while you and your team work together to check off priorities.
Use roofing apps to keep customers and insurance adjusters in the know and share details with subcontractors. You can also get information from your crew on parts of a job that need improvement. Then, you can get back on track and plan for success.
The JobNimbus roofing app lets you see everyone’s tasks on a map and what’s getting done. You can use JobNimbus to dispatch your team, mention team members in notes, and ensure everyone knows what they need to do in the office or the field.
Submit Material Orders to Suppliers in an Instant
A huge part of roofing is ordering materials from suppliers so your crew has what they need to start a project. You must follow strict deadlines to stay on track with your work.
Roofing apps make submitting material orders easy. You can directly email the supplier, save them as a related contact, and make a template to make the process even faster.
When you build your own contracts and proposals, JobNimbus will auto-fill contact and job details. In the JobNimbus roofing app, creating material orders is easy.
You can build material orders from your estimates in one click, edit them, and then email them to suppliers. You’ll get all the materials you need without the hassle of creating new orders or picking up the phone.
Customize Your Processes
One of the great things about roofing apps is the ability to customize your workflow, or just about anything, to your liking. With roofing apps, you can digitize your existing workflow and become more efficient.
Test what works for you and use what you’ve learned to perfect future workflows. You can customize types, statuses, and more with a roofing app like JobNimbus.
Sync Everything from Anywhere
Because roofing apps are usually cloud-based, you can access your work from anywhere, at any time, and from any device. You don’t need the internet to save and sync your work.
Plus, you can enter information from your device whether you’re in the office or out in the field. Your roofing app follows where you go.
Build Strong Relationships with Emails
Nothing’s worse than not knowing what’s going on in your business. Roofing apps let you communicate better with your crew, customers, and others through email.
In JobNimbus, everything, including emails and text messages, is recorded. That way, you know job statuses and what still has to get done.
You can email directly from your JobNimbus roofing app, and replies will appear automatically. You can also forward them with a simple click to ensure that no email or attachment is left out of the conversation.
Take Notes
Roofing contractors know that taking notes is an integral part of the job, but keeping notes is another story. Imagine keeping contact information or specific details for a job in a notebook, then losing your notebook.
It’d be a major setback for your business.
An effective roofing app will keep and organize notes you take from meetings with customers and team members.
The JobNimbus roofing software has a feature where you can use notes for communication and collaboration. Jot down notes from a call or save an important email. You can also record the work you do each day to track progress.
Note-taking will help you concentrate on doing the best job possible and fixing all the client’s pressing issues.
Build Budgets
As a roofing business, it’s essential to create a budget and keep track of your job expenses. Roofing software can help you set limits and track commissions.
Put your budget and actual costs into your roofing app, where you can track job costs for the duration of your project. You should regularly track and share your job costs to understand how your project is performing and if you’re staying within budget.
With the help of a roofing app, you can adjust your budget to ensure you’re earning money, not losing it.
What to Look for in All-Inclusive Roofing Apps
CRM Roofing Apps
Roofing apps with a CRM focus are all about customer relationships. You’ll want features that optimize your customer management capabilities from lead to end of job. Here are the features we recommend most in a CRM roofing app.
- Lead tracking with customizable statuses and workflows. Log notes for leads and track follow-up tasks.
- Contact management that lets you add, edit, and call contacts directly from the app.
- Email notifications to let your team know about daily tasks and assigned contacts.
- Offline mode: Continue to use the app’s full functionality for adding contacts, jobs, tasks, notes, and photos when offline.
Project Management Roofing Apps
- Tasklist to give you a better view of what’s overdue, due now, and upcoming.
- Scheduling to coordinate appointments, tasks, and meetings for yourself and others.
- Photo uploads directly to a task, job, or contact.
- Digital file folders for each of your projects where you can attach documents, notes, and related tasks.
- Document management for contracts, estimates, invoices, and more.
Top 12 Roofing Apps for 2024
JobNimbus
by JobNimbus
JobNimbus is the highest-rated all-in-one roofing app. It combines marketing, sales, production, billing, and communication features to help contractors with every aspect of their roofing business.
Create proposals, take and annotate photos, send and receive text messages, manage your workflow with boards, and so much more. With detailed reporting and employee management tools, JobNimbus simplifies your work.
Roof Hub
by SRS Distribution
Roof Hub gives you 24/7 access to the most up-to-date and accurate ordering information to keep your business running. Easily order materials through templates. Search through the catalog and look at personalized recommendations to find the right fit for the job. Enjoy live pricing and real-time inventory statuses for a great MO experience.
Beacon PRO+
by Beacon Building Products
Skip a trip to a Beacon branch. Beacon PRO+ lets Beacon Roofing Supply customers place orders, manage their account, find a location, pay their bill, and much more, all from their mobile device.
Acculynx Field
by Acculynx
AccuLynx is an all-in-one business management software designed exclusively for roofing contractors. This roofing app manages and streamlines every aspect of a roofing business.
CompanyCam
by CompanyCam, Inc
CompanyCam lets you snap photos in the field that automatically connect to the right project (using GPS) and instantly sync back to your home office. Easily find photos when you need them—no more emailing images, texting pictures, and organizing folders. Plus, the real-time project feed enables your team to see the progress at each job site, no matter where they are.
Leap, formerly JobProgress
by Leap LLC
The Leap mobile app, originally the JobProgress app, is a tool that lets you make digital estimates and contracts on the go. Leap also allows you to have your customers review and sign their documents right on the spot. Additionally, you can use the Leap roofing app to schedule your team.
SalesRabbit
by Sales Rabbit, Inc.
SalesRabbit is a roofing salesperson’s dream. It’s a lead and canvassing app that optimizes every stage of your sales process. Turn your leads into customers on the go.
EagleView
by EagleView Technologies, Inc.
EagleView uses aerial imagery, satellite images, and other technologies to create aerial measurements and reports. The EagleView roofing app will help you get specific details about any location from anywhere.
RoofSnap
by RoofSnap, LLC
RoofSnap is the roofing app that provides fast and accurate roofing measurements, compelling reports and documents, and professional estimates designed to offer your customers options.
HOVER - Measurements in 3D
by HOVER Inc.
Get detailed, accurate exterior measurements to the inch for the roof and all elevations from just eight smartphone photos. Use the HOVER roofing app to provide accurate and transparent estimates, eliminate extra trips to the job site, and remove human error.
Spotio
by Spotio Inc
The Spotio roofing app is a sales tracking solution for lead capturing, resource tracking, sales pipeline management, and more. It's great for businesses that do door-to-door canvassing or need a mobile-based solution to manage field sales teams.
GAF QuickMeasure
by GAF Corp.
GAF QuickMeasure™ delivers a complete roof measurement report guaranteed in under 1 hour for single-family homes and under 24 hours for commercial and multi-family properties! Reports start at only $18. Use the GAF roofing app to figure out measurements for everything from roof area, pitch, ridges, eaves, and rakes to valleys, hips, and flashing.
Find the Right Roofing App for Your Company
There are a lot of ways to figure out what roofing apps you need and are best for you. Make sure to schedule demos with any company you’re looking at, check out reviews, and talk to others who are using roofing software.
Great news: roofing apps have a lot of amazing tools to take your company to the next level. If you’re ready to explore the JobNimbus roofing app and how it can elevate your roofing business, get a free JobNimbus demo today!
