# AI Budget Estimate from a Bill of Quantities > Turn a bill of quantities into a priced budget in minutes. AI prices every position from your own contracts and past offers, falls back to regional market prices, and shows its assumptions — then export it as CSV, XLSX, or GAEB. Before you send a bill of quantities to suppliers, you want a number: what should this cost? Building that budget by hand means digging through old contracts, past quotes, and half-remembered prices — and it goes stale the moment the next project starts. Streckenheld builds the budget for you. From an analyzed bill of quantities it produces an internal offer — a priced estimate with one net unit price per position — sourced first from your own agreed prices and, where those run out, from current regional market prices. Every number comes with a note on where it came from. ## Key features - **One priced line per position** — quantity, unit, net unit price, line total, and a one-line source note for every item in the BOQ - **Prices from your own data first** — the AI reads your framework contracts, previously received supplier offers, and past budgets before looking anywhere else - **Regional market fallback** — where you have no internal price, it estimates current DACH/EU market prices, grounded with web search, and says so - **Transparent assumptions** — a clear list of the price basis, date, region, and exclusions behind the estimate, plus a summary of which numbers came from history versus market - **Critique mode** — if the BOQ already carries unit prices, the AI switches from estimating to reviewing: it validates each figure against history and market, flags outliers, and checks for missing accessories, transport, disposal, or scaffolding - **Editable line items** — adjust any price, quantity, or description; add or soft-delete rows, with totals recalculated live - **Export as CSV, XLSX, or GAEB** — download the final budget table for your ERP, a spreadsheet, or a priced GAEB (DA 84) file - **Pricing instructions you control** — a company-wide brief plus a note on the individual document tell the AI how you want positions priced: which surcharges belong in a unit price, which region to use, what to leave out - **Pinned reference documents** — name the past budgets or offers that should serve as the pricing basis, instead of letting the AI pick from your recent estimates ## How it works 1. **Start from an analyzed BOQ.** Once your [bill of quantities is analyzed](https://www.streckenheld.com/guides/boq-analysis.md), open the budget estimate panel. 2. **The AI agent works through the positions.** It lists your available pricing sources — framework contracts, past offers, previous budgets — reads the relevant ones, and searches your recent estimates for similar work. 3. **It prices every line.** Each position gets a net unit price with a source note; where no internal price exists, it uses a grounded market estimate. 4. **Review the assumptions and summary.** Check the grand total, the per-section breakdown, and which prices came from your history versus the market — then edit any line you disagree with. 5. **Export or send.** Download the budget as CSV, XLSX, or GAEB, or move on to [sending the request for quotation to suppliers](https://www.streckenheld.com/guides/rfq-preparation.md) and compare their offers against this budget. ## Steering the calculation Two things change how the AI prices a bill of quantities. **Instructions.** A company-wide pricing brief applies to every budget your team runs; a second note saved on the individual document covers what is specific to that project. The two are combined, company-wide first, so a standing rule — always include delivery to site, never include scaffolding — holds while the per-document note handles the exception. **Reference documents.** By default the AI searches your recent budget calculations for comparable work. If you pin specific documents as the reference instead — a budget for a similar building, a supplier offer you consider representative — those *replace* the automatic search rather than adding to it. That is deliberate: once you have named the right comparison, an unrelated recent estimate should not dilute it. Pin nothing and the automatic search comes back. The [GAEB export](https://www.streckenheld.com/knowledge/gaeb.md) is a full GAEB DA XML 3.2 file (DIN SPEC 91365) in the DA 84 flavor, and it carries your BOQ's own position numbers through unchanged — so the priced budget still maps back onto the document it came from. ## Who it's for The budget estimate is for estimators, procurement leads, and commercial managers who need a defensible number early — to set a target, sanity-check a supplier quote, or decide whether a project is worth pursuing. It turns your accumulated pricing history and [framework contracts](https://www.streckenheld.com/guides/ai-procurement.md) into an instant, itemized budget instead of a spreadsheet you rebuild every time. ## Read next - [Bill of Quantities (BOQ) Analysis with AI](https://www.streckenheld.com/guides/boq-analysis.md): Upload a bill of quantities and let AI extract every position, summarize each section, and flag gaps, risks, and change-order traps before you send it out. Turn a BOQ into a ready-to-send request for quotation in one step. - [Prepare an RFQ and Split It Across Suppliers](https://www.streckenheld.com/guides/rfq-preparation.md): Turn a bill of quantities into a request for quotation and send each supplier only the positions you want quoted. Suppliers submit prices or a PDF through a link — no account needed — and every offer lands in one comparison. - [GAEB: formats, exchange phases and practice in construction](https://www.streckenheld.com/knowledge/gaeb.md): GAEB explained: GAEB 90, GAEB 2000 and GAEB DA XML, the exchange phases X81 to X86, and how bills of quantities flow between planner, contractor and supplier. --- Source: https://www.streckenheld.com/guides/budget-estimate Other languages: [Deutsch](https://www.streckenheld.com/ratgeber/budgetschaetzung-lv.md) Streckenheld: https://www.streckenheld.com/llms.txt · Contact: https://www.streckenheld.com/contact · hello@streckenheld.com