Instant Metal Quote v2.0 is live today at quotes.ersroof.com. It is the largest update to the platform since we opened it to contractors, and it lands in five places: a redesigned interface, integrated pricing with county-specific tax rates, improved project search, stronger data security, and a new set of admin tools for the person who owns the account.
Existing accounts carry over. Your quotes, your orders and your project history are all there. Log in with the credentials you already have and you are on v2.
What follows is the release note. It is written for the people who use the tool every day, so it is specific about what changed and equally specific about what did not.
A redesigned interface
The original IMQ was built to prove a point: that a contractor could price a standing seam or 5V roof themselves, in minutes, instead of waiting days for a supplier to call back. It proved it. It also grew, and the layout that worked for a handful of panels started to creak once the catalog, the trim options and the add-ons all had to fit on the same screen.
v2.0 is a ground-up redesign of that interface. The quoting flow is laid out around the order you actually work in - panel, roof, material and finish, location, then trim and options - rather than around how the underlying data happens to be organized. Screens are tighter on a phone, which matters because plenty of quotes get built standing in a driveway rather than sitting at a desk.
Nothing was removed to make it look cleaner. Every field that was in the old flow is in the new one.
Integrated pricing with county-specific tax rates
This is the change with the most direct effect on a bid.
Pricing is now integrated into the quote rather than assembled around it, and the tax line is calculated for the county the job is in. Florida sales tax is not one number statewide. On top of the state rate, individual counties may impose a discretionary sales surtax. The Department of Revenue puts the current surtax range at 0.5 percent to 1.5 percent, and some counties impose none at all. A roof in Duval and the same roof in Lee do not carry the same tax on the material.
Contractors have been handling that by hand, which means either padding the number or eating the difference. Neither is good. In v2.0 you enter the job location and the quote applies the rate for that county.
Two honest caveats. First, rates change; the platform is maintained against the current published rates, and if you are doing something unusual - an exemption, a resale certificate, a multi-county project - that is a conversation with your accountant, not a setting in a quoting tool. Second, this is a material quote, so the tax shown is on the material we are selling you. It is not a bid-wide tax calculation and we are not going to pretend it is.
Project search that finds the job
Quote volume is a good problem that becomes a real one. Once a company has a few hundred quotes on the dashboard, finding the one from last quarter that the customer just called about is its own small chore.
Project search in v2.0 is rebuilt and considerably faster to get to a specific job. If your company runs multiple estimators, this is probably the change you notice second, right after the redesign.
Stronger data security
Your quote history is competitive information. It is your pricing, your customers, your pipeline, and the fact that it lives on our platform makes protecting it our job.
v2.0 ships with strengthened data security across the platform. We are not going to publish an itemized description of our security posture in a blog post, for the obvious reason. If you have a specific security or data handling question - and larger contractors and builders often do, especially when a GC's own compliance team asks - contact us and we will answer it directly.
New admin tools
The other addition in v2.0 is a set of admin tools for whoever owns the company account.
IMQ has always been a company platform rather than a personal one, with a shared dashboard where quotes, orders and projects live. What was thin was the control layer over that shared space. The new admin tools give the account owner more direct management of their company's IMQ account, which is what growing contractors have been asking for as they add estimators.
If you are a one-truck operation, this changes very little for you. If you have four people quoting, it changes your week.
What did not change
Three things are exactly as they were, and they should be.
IMQ still produces a material quote. It prices panels, trim, fasteners, closures, sealants and underlayment, fabricated and delivered. It does not price your labor unless you add turnkey installation through ERS Installations, and it never priced your overhead or your margin. Those are yours.
IMQ still does not measure your roof. It prices the dimensions you enter. Because panels are fabricated to exact length, a bad dimension is a reorder, not a trim cut - that is the tradeoff you accept for a roof with no end laps and far less scrap. Field measurement verification remains an add-on inside the quote, and we still recommend it on any roof you did not personally measure. A slicker interface does not change the tape measure.
Panel eligibility is still a code question, not a pricing question. Miami-Dade and Broward are the High Velocity Hurricane Zone, and inside it a panel either holds HVHZ and Miami-Dade approval or it is not an option at any price. SL100, SL150, NS150, M100 and M150 are HVHZ and Miami-Dade approved. NS100 and 5V crimp are not, and belong on jobs outside the zone. Approval revisions change, so verify the current revision at floridabuilding.org before submittal. Our product approval and installation instructions page carries the documents that travel with the permit application.
Why we built it this way
A note on philosophy, since a release is a reasonable moment for one.
Almost every instant quote tool in roofing is pointed at homeowners. They take an address, ask a few questions, and produce an installed price range, which is a lead form with a calculator attached. The tools pointed at contractors are mostly general estimating software for building a proposal, which is useful but is not a supplier telling you what the material costs. And the supplier tools that do exist are usually forms with a multi-day turnaround, or a closed portal you can only reach if you already have an account.
IMQ is the missing one: a Florida supplier's own material quote, generated by the contractor, in minutes. That was the idea in the first version and it is still the idea in v2.0. Everything in this release is in service of it. If you want the longer version of how the platform fits into a bid, we wrote that up in Instant Metal Quote: a supplier quote you generate yourself.
Getting on v2.0
If you have an IMQ account, you are already on it. Log in and the new interface is there.
If you do not, IMQ access is offered to select ERS Metals contractor clients. The fastest way in is to contact sales or book a call, and we will get your company set up and walk your estimators through the first quote. If you want to see what the platform prices before you ask for access, start with standing seam and the IMQ overview.
Found something in v2.0 that is wrong or awkward? Tell us. The list of things that changed in this release started as a list of complaints from contractors, and the next one will too.
