Recording voice and text notes

Notes are the most important capture you can give BidCraft. Photos tell the AI what things look like; notes tell it what's actually happening — measurements, scope decisions, conditions you noticed, materials you're planning. A 20-second voice note often beats five extra photos when it comes to proposal accuracy.

The three flavors of notes

Tap the Notes tile under any room and you'll get a sub-picker with three icons. They all live on equal footing — use whichever fits the moment.

Voice notes — the power move

Tap the mic icon, talk like you're explaining the job to your apprentice, and BidCraft transcribes it. You don't need to format it or structure it. Conversational sentences work great.

[!tip] Voice-note dimensions ALWAYS win. If you say "the shower is 3 feet wide by 5 feet deep, niche is at 3 feet high," BidCraft trusts that number absolutely — even if a photo measurement disagrees. Saying the measurement out loud is the single most accurate thing you can do.

Things worth saying into a voice note:

• Real measurements — "the floor is 8 by 6, vanity wall is 7 feet"
• What you're planning — "we're doing 12x24 porcelain on the floor, full-height tile in the shower"
• Conditions — "the substrate looks rotted on the west wall, will need to swap subfloor"
• Client preferences — "they want a curbless shower, brushed nickel fixtures"
• Anything not visible in a photo — "plumbing is going to need to move 18 inches for the new vanity"

Say the walls by name and you'll get them by name. BidCraft keeps a stated dimension exactly as you say it — "the back wall is 8 by 4" is stored as that width and height, not squashed into one square-footage number, so nothing rounds away between the walk and the proposal. And when you tell walls apart — "back wall runs full height, the two side walls stop at the tub" — it builds a named surface for each one, so wall-by-wall work is already split out and ready to price when you open the measurements.

Take as long as you need. A quick 20-second note and a full five-minute walkthrough narration both work — there's no practical length limit anymore.

[!note] The transcription is good but not perfect — if you mumble or it's loud at the job site, glance at the text and clean it up. Tap the pencil icon on the note to edit.

[!tip] If sending a recording fails (spotty signal happens on job sites), your recording stays on your phone — you'll see a Try again button. You never have to say it all twice.

Text notes

If you're somewhere quiet or already had a phone call with the client, type it out. Hit the pencil icon under Notes and write freely. Same content rules as voice — measurements, scope, conditions, decisions.

Handwritten note photos

If you sketched the bathroom on a notepad with measurements scrawled in, BidCraft can read that too. Tap the camera icon under Notes and shoot the sketch like you'd shoot any photo.

[!steps]

1. Tap the Notes tile, then the camera icon.
2. Photograph your sketch or measurement notes.
3. The AI reads the handwriting in the background and adds it to your project context.
4. Review the extracted text — you can edit if anything misread.

This is huge for contractors who already sketch everything on paper. You don't have to change your habits — the app meets you where you are.

The dimension priority order

When BidCraft builds your scope and proposal, it weighs sources of dimensions in this order:

1. Your voice notes and text notes — highest trust

2. Manual overrides you typed into the dimensions card — overrides win

3. Printed dimensions read off a drawing or tile schedule you uploaded — measured numbers, high trust

4. Numbers it read off a tape measure in a photo — high trust

5. Cross-referenced measurements from multiple photos of the same area — solid

6. AI estimates from a single photo — lowest, used as last resort

[!warning] If the AI got a dimension wrong, the fastest fix is not to retake the photo. Record a 5-second voice note with the right number ("the shower is actually 4 feet, not 3"), then re-analyze the room. The AI will use your stated number.

Next steps

Once you've got photos, video, and notes captured, the next move is to make sure they're grouped right. Head to Organizing inputs by room for multi-room jobs. Then run analysis — see How photo analysis works for what happens next.