Moving from Fergus to EstiMate: a practical switch guide

Switching job software halfway through a busy spell sounds like a nightmare. It isn't, if you do it in the right order: start new work in EstiMate, finish live jobs in Fergus, and drop Fergus users as those jobs close. Most of it is an afternoon of setup and a month of running both.

Before you start, be clear why you're moving. If it's per-user pricing, contracts, CIS, or wanting the accounts in the same app as the jobs, EstiMate covers those. If you rely on Fergus's live Xero sync or its merchant price books, you'll lose them, so read "What you give up" further down before you cancel anything.

What lives where

Here's how the Fergus features you use day to day map across. The Fergus side is taken from its own pages: quoting, variations, invoicing, team management, the Fergus Go app, integrations and health and safety.

Prices checked October 2026: Fergus is from £39 (Essentials) or £45 (Pro) per full user a month (Fergus UK pricing). EstiMate is free, £15.99 or £39.99 a month per business (EstiMate pricing). We couldn't confirm whether Fergus's prices include VAT; EstiMate's are what you pay, with a VAT receipt.

Step 1: Pick a cut-over date

Pick the start of a month, or the day your Fergus bill goes out. Fergus says "no lock-in contracts, simply pay month-to-month per user" (Fergus scheduling), so there's no contract to wait out. You can drop users as their jobs finish. Contractor users are only charged on days they're active, so once a subbie stops logging in Fergus, they stop costing you.

Step 2: Sort your jobs into three piles

• Enquiries and unaccepted quotes: move these to EstiMate. Requote them there so the client accepts through the new link.
• Live jobs with progress invoices already raised: finish these in Fergus. Splitting a half-invoiced job across two systems is how stage payments go missing.
• Finished jobs: leave them in Fergus and your accounts package as your history.

Step 3: Export what you need from Fergus

Export your customer list, and your open quotes and price lists if Fergus lets you. We haven't confirmed what Fergus exports, so check its help centre for the current steps. If you sync Fergus with Xero, MYOB or QuickBooks, your invoices, contacts and payments are already in your accounts package, so there's no need to export them twice.

Save PDFs (or printouts) of your last 20 or 30 quotes, especially the big ones. You'll use them in step 5.

Step 4: Set up EstiMate

Start on the free plan. No card, no time limit. The client quote link, contracts, invoicing and card payments come with the £15.99 plan, so move up before you send live quotes. Then:

• Add your logo. Branded PDFs come with the £15.99 plan and up; free-plan PDFs are watermarked.
• Set your day rates and VAT. EstiMate handles 20%, 5% and 0%, and reverse-charge invoices carry the required wording.
• If you use CIS subbies, or work as one, make sure deductions are recorded so they land in the CIS register.
• Connect your own Stripe account so clients can pay invoices by card. The money goes to your Stripe account, not ours.
• Read the contract EstiMate generates from an accepted quote. It covers payment terms, delays, responsibilities, insurance, guarantee and dispute wording.

Step 5: Bring your prices across

This is the bit people dread, and it's where EstiMate Pro earns its keep. Pro can import old quotes, even paper quote books, with AI, and quote memory records every material price, labour package and margin you use after that. Feed it those Fergus quote PDFs and autocomplete starts suggesting your last price for each item. Pro comes with a free trial when you upgrade.

Check everything it brings in. It's your pricing, and a wrong rate on a loft conversion is an expensive typo.

Step 6: Bring your customers

Add active customers as you quote them. If you've got a long list, ask the in-app help assistant or email support@esti-mate.app for the quickest way to bring it across.

Step 7: Run both for a month

New enquiries go in EstiMate. Live jobs finish in Fergus. Every Friday, check two things: was anything invoiced in Fergus this week, and was a variation raised on a live job? When a job's final invoice is paid, drop that Fergus user.

Use the month to try what's new to you. Send a contract for e-signature on a new job, and put a variation through the one-tap client approval link. Our guide to pricing variations and getting paid is worth a read first.

Step 8: Brief the lads

On Pro, workers get a job by QR code or link through Site Crew and log time, expenses, photos and site diary entries without a full account. Show them once on site. That replaces their Fergus timesheet logins.

Step 9: Move the money side

The Accounts tab gives you P&L for any period, VAT return figures, the CIS register, aged debtors, bank statement CSV import and reconciliation, and year-end exports for your accountant. If your accountant lives in Xero or QuickBooks, export your costs in their format. That's a file export, not a live sync. EstiMate prepares the figures; it doesn't file VAT or CIS returns to HMRC, and many firms keep an accountant for that. More on construction accounting in EstiMate.

What you give up

Be honest with yourself about these before you cancel:

• The live accounts sync. Fergus syncs invoices, contacts and payments with Xero, MYOB or QuickBooks and pulls in supplier invoices. EstiMate exports files instead.
• Merchant price-book integrations. EstiMate Pro has supplier RFQs and AI merchant price comparison, which is useful but different.
• Fergus's scheduling, and GPS tracking, which Capterra lists on Fergus Pro (Capterra). EstiMate has a planner and programme, but it isn't a dispatch tool.

What you gain

• One price for the business, not per user, with one office login and the site team on Site Crew (Pro).
• Contracts with e-signature, and variations as signed addenda.
• CIS and reverse charge handled on the job.
• P&L and VAT figures without a second subscription.

If you're still deciding, our Fergus vs EstiMate comparison sets the two side by side.

What to do next

Open a free account tonight, put your next enquiry through it, and leave Fergus running until your live jobs are done. There's nothing to lose by trying it on one job first.

Start free, no card needed.