Flooring software comparison (2026): quote, fit, invoice, get paid

For UK flooring retailers and fitters · 11 minute read · August 2026

Almost every flooring software comparison — ours included, historically — is really a comparison of demos. Someone measures a room on screen, a cutting plan appears, everyone nods. Then you buy it, and six months later you're still typing product codes into a till that has never heard of a roll, still ringing three fitters every Monday morning, and still going through a shoebox of unpaid invoices on a Sunday night.

The demo was never the problem. The problem is that a flooring job doesn't stop at the quote, and most software does.

So this comparison follows a single job all the way through — measure, quote, order, fit, invoice, paid — and asks what each type of system covers at each stage. Use it as a checklist against whatever you're being shown.

The short version

There are broadly five things UK flooring businesses run on. None of them is wrong; they just cover different parts of the job.

American dealer platforms (QFloors, Broadlume, RFMS) belong in this picture too — they cover most of these stages properly — but their supplier links, tax handling and vocabulary are built for the US market. Enterprise systems like Cyncly cover everything and are priced and implemented accordingly. Both are covered in the vendor comparison.

Now the stages themselves, and what to ask about each.

This is the part everyone demos, so judge it hard. The difference between software that adds up areas and software that plans cuts is 10% or more of your material cost on a typical domestic job — every job, forever. Our carpet wastage guide shows where that goes.

Three things separate a real estimator from a calculator:

• Whole-job nesting, not room-by-room. Every piece — rooms, stairs, landings, thresholds — planned across the roll together, with pile direction respected and a drawn plan you can hand to the fitter.
• Roll width as a decision, not an assumption. The same job costs differently on 4m and 5m, and the stairs usually decide which. If the software can't price both, you're guessing. (4m vs 5m, explained.)
• More than one product on one job. Carpet in the lounge, a different quality on the stairs, LVT in the hall — that's a normal three-bed, not an edge case. A system that models one product per job makes you raise two quotes and add them up by hand.

Where PlanIt sits: rooms typed, imported, spoken, or read by AI from a photo of your site sketch; a multi-room optimiser that nests everything across 4m and 5m with pile direction held; and since this summer, two or more floor coverings priced together on a single job with one cutting plan and one quote. There's also an optional stock module for fitters and vans — rolls, remnants, cut lengths, minimum levels and a low-stock alert — that can take a job's materials straight off what you're holding.

Your quote is a sales document that competes against two others on the customer's kitchen table. What matters is that it looks like it came from a real business, it's itemised enough to be trusted, and it's easy to say yes to. Our quote template guide covers what belongs on it.

The buying question is what happens after you send it. If accepting means the customer prints, signs and scans — or phones you and you write it in a book — you'll lose jobs to whoever made it a single tap.

Where PlanIt sits: a branded PDF, a link the customer opens on their phone, an accept button that records who accepted and when, and an optional deposit taken by card at that moment. Bank details, including IBAN for overseas customers, appear on the documents themselves.

Skip this stage if you're purely domestic. If you're not, it's the stage where the wrong software costs the most, because commercial pricing has a shape domestic estimating simply doesn't: several specification options priced side by side, value engineering when the number comes back too high, and a bill of quantities the QS expects to see built up rate by rate.

Done in a spreadsheet, a tender is one option deep. When the architect asks what the same job looks like in a cheaper carpet tile, you re-price it from scratch — over a weekend, usually.

Where PlanIt sits: a commercial mode that holds several options against one job, compares them line by line, swaps a specification through the whole build-up in one move, and shows your own internal profit per option before you send anything. Bill items carry a QS-style rate build-up. And the tender pack itself can be uploaded — the scanner reads the drawings and schedules, takes off what it finds, and hands you rows to accept or reject before anything becomes a bill.

If you have a shop, this is where a generic till fails you, and it fails in a specific way: it can count boxes, but it has no concept of a 4m roll that is now 23.4m long because you cut 3.6m off it this morning. So the stock figure drifts, then nobody trusts it, then nobody updates it. We wrote up the whole checklist in choosing an EPOS for a flooring shop.

What a flooring counter needs beyond a normal till: rolls with real lengths and cuts taken off them, remnants that stay sellable, batch numbers that survive a complaint six months later, pallets and packs for SPC and LVT, deposits against orders that aren't in yet, trade accounts with credit limits and statements, and a cash-up that balances at the end of the day.

Where PlanIt sits: the till side covers all of that, including goods-in against supplier orders, pallet-to-pack-to-m² for SPC, price-sheet import with an AI scan for supplier catalogues, trade accounts with statements and allocations, and a full cash-up and Z report. Products and prices are shared with the estimating side rather than typed twice.

Here's the stage almost no flooring software covers, and it's the one that eats your mornings. The job is priced, the materials are in, the date is booked — and the fitter still finds out what he's doing because you rang him. Then you find out how it went because he rang you, or didn't.

The cost isn't just the phone calls. It's the photo of the sub-floor that lives on someone's camera roll, the completion that never makes it onto the job record, and the disputed job eighteen months later where nobody can prove what the floor looked like before you started.

Where PlanIt sits: fitters get their own app on their own phone — a separate, purpose-built one, not a login to your shop system. Each fitter sees only the jobs allocated to them, works through the job's steps, takes before and after photos on site, adds notes, and marks the job complete. It lands back on the permanent job record in the shop within a couple of minutes, photos included.

Two details worth stealing whether you use us or not. First, what a fitter can see should be a decision you make: cost, margin and what the customer paid stay hidden by default, and prices and phone numbers are per-fitter toggles. Second, the photo policy should be settable per fitter — mandatory after-photos for subcontractors, optional for your own lads — because one blanket rule either annoys your staff or lets a subbie off.

Most flooring software finishes at "invoice raised". The trade's cash-flow problem lives entirely in what happens next, and it's genuinely dull work: knowing what's owed today, knowing what went overdue this week, and sending polite reminders on a schedule instead of when you're annoyed enough to remember.

Three things to check, in order of how much they cost you:

• Does an invoice have terms and a due date at all? A surprising amount of trade software has no concept of payment terms. Without them, nothing downstream can work — you can't sort by overdue if nothing was ever due.
• Is there one screen showing outstanding, due this week, and overdue? And do the numbers click through to the actual documents, so a figure and its invoices can never disagree?
• Can it chase on its own? Not a report you have to open. Reminders that go out whether or not you're at your desk, and stop the second the money lands.

Where PlanIt sits: an accepted quote becomes an invoice with a proper INV number, payment terms and a due date — retail due on receipt, trade on that account's terms, both overridable as you raise it. When it's paid in full it gains a receipt number and keeps its invoice number, so your accountant and the customer's bank reference still agree. An Invoices screen shows outstanding, due within seven days, overdue and paid this month, and each figure filters the list beneath it.

Then, if you switch it on, PlanIt chases. Reminders go out two days before the due date, on the due day, and repeat while the invoice stays overdue — you pick which of the three, and how long to keep going. They stop the moment the invoice is paid, credited or cancelled, and they go out in your shop's name with replies coming back to you. Trade accounts get a monthly statement of everything outstanding instead of a reminder per invoice, because that's what an account holder expects to receive.

Half of flooring work happens in an empty house with thick walls, and a good proportion of the rest happens in a van. Software that needs a connection to open is software you'll stop using on site — you'll measure on paper "just this once" and then always.

Ask specifically whether the app opens and works with the phone in flight mode, and what happens to the quote you wrote while offline when the signal comes back. The honest answer involves a sync queue and a rule for what wins when the same job was touched in two places.

Where PlanIt sits: the estimator, the till and the fitters' app are all installable apps that work offline and sync when they can. That last part is unglamorous and it's where most of our engineering time goes — two devices editing the same job is the hardest problem in this whole product, and anyone who tells you otherwise hasn't hit it yet.

What it costs, and what to actually compare

Published pricing is rare in this market, which makes real comparison hard. When you do get a number, compare these four things rather than the headline rate:

• The annual all-in figure, including support, per seat, for the number of people who'll really use it.
• The contract length. A low monthly rate on a three-year term is not a low price; it's a loan. Ask what happens if you want to leave in month four.
• What's metered. Being charged per quote, or per user for people who only look at the diary, changes behaviour in ways that cost you more than the software.
• Whether they take a cut. Some platforms take a percentage of what you transact or a share of payment revenue. You shouldn't pay your software more because you had a good month.

For the record, ours: a free plan at ten quotes a month, £19 per user a month for estimating, £35 for the full job-running set, £99 per site for a shop with the till, stock and trade accounts, and £299 for contract work. Three-month minimum, then monthly. Quotes, rooms, optimiser runs and cloud sync are unlimited on every paid plan. Full pricing here.

The seven questions, on one page

Print this, take it to every demo, and make them show you rather than tell you.

If a vendor can do five of those in front of you without rescheduling, they're a serious option. If the answer to any of them is "that's on the roadmap", ask when — and ask it in writing.

Frequently asked questions

What should flooring software actually cover?

Seven stages: estimating with a real roll-cut plan, the quote the customer accepts, tendering if you do commercial work, the counter and stock, the fitting day, invoicing and collection, and working with no signal. Most packages do two or three of them well. The gaps are where your admin time goes.

Can flooring software chase unpaid invoices automatically?

Some can. In PlanIt, raising an invoice sets terms and a due date, and you can switch on reminders two days before the due date, on the due day, and repeating while it's overdue. They stop the moment it's paid, credited or cancelled. Trade accounts get a monthly statement instead. Reminders only apply to invoices raised with terms, so switching it on can't email your back catalogue.

Do fitters need their own app?

If your fitters currently find out their week by WhatsApp, yes — it removes the ring-round and puts before-and-after photos on the permanent job record. What matters is that it shows them only their own jobs, and never your cost or margin unless you allow it.

Is one platform better than an estimating package plus a separate till?

Two systems work, but you pay for the seam: products typed twice, stock that doesn't know what the estimator committed, and no link between a quote and the money that eventually arrives. One platform earns its keep when the same job passes through the estimator, the counter, the diary and the invoice. If your work only ever touches one of those, a specialist tool may suit you better — and we'd say so.