HOW IT WORKS

> IN 30 SECONDS

1. Sign up with your email through your player tile — Builder, Architect/Designer, or Client/Homeowner. First run is free once approved.
2. Buy credits via Stripe when you need more — pricing depends on your portal (see below).
3. Drop in your architectural plans (PDF). Engineering & selections are optional but help accuracy.
4. Pick a Build Type, Finish Level, and Site Steepness (each is a 1–5 tier). These are mandatory and shape the cost output.
5. Add notes if anything’s unusual about the build.
6. Click Generate Estimate. Wait 10–25 minutes (chuckle at the rotating one-liners). The on-screen countdown adapts to your plan size.
7. Download your workbook — the format depends on your portal (see below).

> YOUR PORTAL — PRICE, DIALS & OUTPUT

Every portal runs the same pricing engine on the same real build data. What differs is the price, one dial, and the workbook you receive:

• BUILDERS — $249 + GST per estimate. You get the Project Management Software dropdown (WunderBuild / BuildXact / Buildertrend) and your XLSX comes out in that software’s import format — all ~90 categories, SKU-backed line items, markup excluded so you apply your own.
• ARCHITECTS & DESIGNERS — $149 + GST per report. No software dropdown — your output is always the Build Feasibility Report: a presentation-ready proposal cover (with space for your own logo), a cost summary across every category, an adjustable Builder margin cell (starts at 20%), and an indicative ±10% budget range. Same dials otherwise (Build Type, Finish Level, Site & Access, Window Type, Passive House, State/Region).
• CLIENTS & HOMEOWNERS — $149 + GST per report. Identical to the architect output: the Build Feasibility Report, in plain English, with the indicative ±10% budget range — so you can pressure-test a design against your budget before you sign anything. No software dropdown, no leaderboard, and your name never appears publicly anywhere.
• CONTRACTORS — $99 + GST per proposal. Instead of the software dropdown you get a Your Trade dropdown (Electrical & HVAC, Plumbing, Roofing, Plastering & Insulation, Painting, Tiling & Waterproofing, Concreting, Structural Steel, Bricklaying & Blocklaying). Drop in the architectural plans — plus engineering and any specifications if you have them — and your output is a single-sheet Trade Cost Proposal: your trade’s costing items, quantity, unit of measure, cost type and costs ex GST, with editable unit rates so your own pricing recalculates every total live.

Every output is an AI-generated draft for early budgeting — indicative only, not a quote, tender or professional advice. Verify independently before relying on it. See our Terms.

> WHAT YOU UPLOAD

• Architectural plans (required) — floor plans, elevations, sections, roof plan, site plan, window/door schedules. The more complete, the better the estimate.
• Engineering plans (optional) — structural drawings, foundation details, bracing, slab specs. Helps with structural items.
• Selections & specifications (optional) — energy reports, finish schedules, BAL reports, client selections. Improves accuracy on finishes, kitchens, bathrooms.

Drop in everything you have. Wundermator handles up to 50 MB per file and ~100 pages per PDF. Larger or unusual PDFs are auto-flattened to images so stubborn architect plans still work.

> BUILD TYPE — PICK ONE OF 5

The most fundamental dial. A renovation reads completely different from a new build — existing structure, demolition, awkward access, and slow careful work around what is already there. Build Type tells Wundermator what kind of job it is pricing.

• New Build — greenfield site, full new construction. This is the baseline everything else is measured against.
• Knockdown Rebuild — demolish the existing house and build new. Adds demolition and waste removal.
• Extension / Addition — new space added, existing building otherwise untouched.
• Internal Renovation & Optional Addition (Light) — cosmetic, no structural change. Priced on the renovation area only. Any addition drawn on the plans is priced separately as new build.
• Internal Renovation & Optional Addition (Major) — structural work: walls, beams, re-framing. Same area rules as Light.

Renovations look cheaper on materials because you reuse what is there — but they punish labour. New work next to old is slow, careful and full of surprises, and that is where the real cost of a renovation sits.

> FINISH LEVEL — PICK ONE OF 5

How premium the build is — and the lever your client controls most. It is applied differently to each cost group, because that is how a real build behaves: a higher spec hits materials and supplier items hardest, subcontractors moderately, and labour barely at all. A chippy charges the same per hour whether the cladding is weatherboard or cedar.

• Investor — rental-grade. Code-compliant only, contractor fixtures, vinyl, basic appliances.
• Standard — volume-builder spec. Off-the-shelf kitchens, mid tapware, laminate.
• Mid — custom architectural home. Designer kitchen, premium tiles, engineered floors throughout.
• Premium — top-tier custom home. Architectural masterpiece, designer everything.
• Luxury — once-in-a-lifetime super home. Imported materials, bespoke millwork, no compromises.

Pick the tier that matches the specification, not the postcode. A modest house with an imported kitchen is not an Investor build.

> SITE & ACCESS — PICK ONE OF 5

How hard the site is to build on. This lands almost entirely on labour hours, lightly on subcontractors, and not at all on materials — a flat-versus-cliffside difference is extra time on site, not extra timber. Be honest here: getting it wrong is the single biggest source of estimating error on custom homes.

• Flat & Open — level lot, slab on ground. Trucks, crane and laydown all fit.
• Gentle / Good Access — 0–5% fall, minor cut and fill. A bit tight, but machinery still gets in.
• Moderate / Tight — 5–15% fall, retaining and possibly a stepped slab. Close neighbours, narrow side run, limited parking.
• Steep / Restricted — 15–25% fall, significant retaining or piers. Near boundary-to-boundary, crane or pump, adjoining property to protect.
• Extreme / Crane-Only — 25%+ fall. Suspended floors, deep piling, no laydown. Tight urban infill or clifftop.

All three dials compound. A major renovation, at a premium finish, on a steep site is a different build from any one of those alone — and the engine treats it that way.

> THE OTHER DIALS — WINDOW TYPE, PASSIVE HOUSE, REGION, DURATION

• Project Management Software (builders only) — picks the import format of your XLSX: WunderBuild, BuildXact, or Buildertrend. Same estimate, same ~90 categories — only the columns change. Architects, designers and clients don’t see this dial: their output is always the Build Feasibility Report.
• Window Type — sets the supply rate per m² of window & door area, from standard aluminium sliders up to European-style triple-glazed uPVC/timber. This is a fallback: if your plans or selections document name a specific window system, the documents win and this dial is ignored. Windows are one of the biggest single-category swings on a custom home, so if you know the spec, pick the matching tier.
• Passive House — yes or no — switches the whole estimate onto the Passive House recipe set: airtightness membranes, tapes and blower-door testing (its own category), heat-recovery ventilation, upgraded insulation and glazing assumptions, plus the slower, more careful labour that certified-airtight work takes. Expect a materially higher estimate than a standard build of the same size — that’s the real cost of PH, not a rounding error. Leave it off and PH items are auto-detected only if your plans clearly call for them.
• State / Region — Australia + New Zealand — every state prices differently, so Wundermator applies a per-state multiplier matrix across labour, subcontractors and materials, plus state-specific insurances (contract works, public liability, workers comp, and your state’s home warranty scheme — HBCF in NSW, DBI in VIC, QBCC in QLD, and so on). Tasmania is the calibration baseline. New Zealand runs as its own region with NZD pricing and 15% GST.
• Construction Duration (weeks) — your active build programme. This drives the project-management labour allowance (off-site admin ~6 hrs/week plus on-site supervision ~2.5 hrs/day across the programme) and time-based preliminaries like site facilities and equipment hire. Enter your honest best estimate — understating the programme understates the management cost of the job.

> RENOVATIONS — THE THREE-STEP VALIDATION

Pick Internal Renovation & Optional Addition — Light or Major — and a Renovation Scope panel appears. This is the one part of Wundermator that will not run on autopilot, and deliberately so: on a renovation, what you are not building matters as much as what you are.

The rule underneath it: we price ONLY the trades you tick, ONLY on the renovation area. Existing structure that stays — roof, floor, existing walls — is never priced.

Step 1 — Read the plans

Click Read the plans. Wundermator scans the drawings for alteration zones, demolition hatching and any addition, and reports what it found — for example “170 m² renovation + 35 m² extension”, with the existing house read separately. The existing-house figure is your sanity check: the renovation area can never be larger than it.

Step 2 — Confirm all three areas

Three boxes appear, each pre-filled from the plans, each with its own number and its own tick. You confirm every one:

• Renovated — read from the plans’ alteration zones. This gets priced.
• Untouched — existing area you are not working on. Never priced.
• Extension — any new floor area. Priced as a new build, at full new-work rates.

The three should reconcile against the existing home total. Edit any number you disagree with — the plan read is a starting point, not a verdict. Nothing prices until all three are ticked, and an empty box locks the Generate button. That is on purpose: an unconfirmed area is the single easiest way to price a renovation twice or miss half of it.

Step 3 — Tick the trades

Then tell it which trades are actually in scope. Thirteen to choose from:

• Structural changes (walls / beams)
• Wet areas — bath / ensuite / laundry
• Kitchen
• Electrical (re-wire / additions)
• Plumbing (re-pipe / additions)
• Heating / cooling
• Insulation & re-plaster
• Flooring
• Painting
• Windows & doors (external)
• Cladding (external walls)
• Roof (re-roof / roofing)
• Joinery & built-ins

Light and Major presets tick a sensible starting set. Wundermator also pre-ticks trades it can see on the drawings — but the moment you touch a tick yourself, your choices win and the suggestions stop overriding them. An unticked trade is not priced at all, so this list is what stands between an honest renovation number and a new-build number wearing a renovation label.

> WHAT YOU GET BACK

A spreadsheet (XLSX) formatted to import directly into WunderBuild, with line items, quantities, materials, labour, sub-contractor allowances, and PS / PC items for things needing client selection or supplier quotes. Plus a text summary covering total cost, $/m², markup-adjusted contract value, and sanity checks.

> LOCKED LABOUR RATES

Wundermator’s labour rates are locked at the source. They never change based on which tiers you pick. The $/hr you see on a Labour line is the same rate, every time, every job.

When you change Finish Level, Site Steepness, or Build Type, what scales is the hours the job takes — not the rate. A Steep site doesn’t make your chippy more expensive; it makes the framing take longer. The $80/hr stays the same.

If you ever see a Labour line on a Wundermator-generated estimate with a rate other than $80, $95, or $130 — flag it to kyle@zanettobuilders.com.au. That’d be a bug.

> IMPORTING TO WUNDERBUILD (BUILDERS ONLY)

Builders only — architect and client Build Feasibility Reports and contractor Trade Cost Proposals open straight in Excel, nothing to import. Once you’ve downloaded the XLSX, here’s how to get it into WunderBuild as a fresh estimate. Whole round-trip is about 2 minutes once you’ve done it once. (On BuildXact or Buildertrend? Pick that option in the Project Management Software dropdown and use your software’s standard estimate import.)

1. Create a new estimation. In WunderBuild, go to the Estimations dashboard and click + New Estimation (top right). Fill in the basic details — name, type, client, template (if you use one), markup %, site address — then click Create.
2. Open the Costing tab. Inside the new estimation, click the Costing tab in the top navigation row (next to Schedule, Takeoff, Quote Requests, Specifications).
3. Open the import dialog. Top right of the Costing tab, click Options → Import from Spreadsheet.
4. Upload your Wundermator XLSX. Drag the file into the drop zone, or click Select Spreadsheet to browse. Max 10 MB. Click Next: Map Fields.
5. Confirm the column mapping. WunderBuild auto-detects the columns — you’ll usually see something like “14 of 15 columns mapped”. Wundermator’s output is built to match WunderBuild’s expected columns, so this should be near-instant. Skim the mapping to confirm Item Number, Category, Costing Item, Quantity, UOM, Cost (ex.), and Cost Type all line up.
6. Hit Import Data. Bottom right of the dialog. WunderBuild brings every line item into your new estimation.
7. Review and refine. This is where you do the human work — sense-check items, tweak quantities and prices, add anything Wundermator missed, remove anything that doesn’t apply to the job. Wundermator gets you from blank slate to a complete first draft. Your eye and experience finish the job.

Tip: if a column doesn’t auto-map, click the dropdown next to it and pick the matching WunderBuild field. The mapping is remembered for the next time you import.

> HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE?

Most estimates complete in about 10 minutes. Large or complex plan sets can take up to 25 minutes. The browser shows live progress through four stages: reading plans → calculating labour → pricing items → generating spreadsheet.

Estimates that fail due to system errors are automatically refunded as account credit.

> WHAT IT ISN’T

Wundermator gives you a fast, AI-generated draft estimate — not a builder’s formal quote, not a quantity surveyor’s report, and not a substitute for a qualified estimator’s eye on a complex job. AI gets things wrong sometimes. Always verify before you sign anything.

Use it the way most builders do: as a fast first-pass to size up a job, sanity-check feasibility, generate a starting point for negotiation, or pre-flight a tender before you spend hours on a manual takeoff.

> TIPS FOR THE BEST OUTPUT

• Drop in architectural, engineering, and selections together — context matters.
• Set the build type, finish level, and Passive House toggle accurately — these drive the estimate. Anything unusual (owner-supplied joinery, demolition, special scope) should be shown on the plans or the selections document, which the model reads directly.
• Be honest with the Site Steepness tier — getting it wrong is the single biggest source of estimating error in custom homes.
• If a PDF was scanned (not exported from the original software), text quality matters — re-scan at higher resolution if outputs look off.
• Consistent plan sets work better than mixed sets from different revision dates.

> PRICING

Builders: A$249 + GST per estimate. Architects & designers / clients & homeowners: A$149 + GST per Build Feasibility Report. Contractors: A$99 + GST per trade proposal. No subscription, no minimum, no hidden fees — and your first run is free once approved. Failed runs are automatically refunded as account credit — see our Refund Policy.

> NEED HELP?

Email kyle@zanettobuilders.com.au — we read everything.