Frequent Asked Questions (FAQ)
IS SHEDMATE FOR ME?
What is Shedmate?
We are a South Australia-based company helping shed businesses all over Australia and Asia streamline their construction planning and execution by providing an innovative software platform enabling users to design, quote, engineer and document steel shed projects in real-time from any device. This significantly reduces time, costs, and human error associated with traditional methods.
What is the aim of Shedmate?
To empower companies and governments to efficiently iterate, design and fabricate steel structures for our community in real time
What are the benefits of using Shedmate for my business?
Using Shedmate for your business can bring substantial benefits, especially if you're facing challenges in scaling, efficiency, and customisation within the shed industry.
Streamlined Operations and Quoting Efficiency: Shedmate dramatically reduces the time needed to design, quote, and engineer shed projects. Instead of waiting weeks for preliminary engineering, you can generate accurate quotes in real time. This speed improves your customer response time and ensures you don’t miss out on opportunities due to delays.
Scalability Without Increased Complexity: For businesses looking to grow, Shedmate minimizes the dependency on key personnel, making your operations less vulnerable to staffing changes. The system is designed to scale with your business, allowing you to handle more projects without a proportional resource increase.
Customization and Independence: Unlike other software tied to specific suppliers or limited in functionality, Shedmate offers robust customisation options. You can tailor the system to your needs, including integrating your pricing, engineering workflows, and supplier choices. This flexibility increases your profit margins and enables you to offer more complex and higher-margin custom shed solutions.
Error Reduction and Improved Accuracy: By automating manual operations and integrating your workflow into a single system, Shedmate reduces human errors, ensuring that your designs and quotes are accurate from the start. This accuracy leads to fewer revisions and rework, saving you time and money.
Seamless Integration and User-Friendly Interface: Shedmate is designed to be intuitive and easy to adopt, with a user-friendly interface that reduces the learning curve for your team. Additionally, it integrates smoothly with your existing systems, minimising disruptions during implementation.
Empowering Independence and Profitability: Shedmate enables you to become an independent reseller, free from reliance on major brands or suppliers. This independence allows you to take control of your business, offering a complete solution from quoting to engineering to ordering, which can significantly enhance your profitability.
In summary, Shedmate addresses the common pain points of quoting delays, scalability issues, and customisation limitations and aligns with aspirations for growth, efficiency, and independence. By adopting Shedmate, your business can operate more smoothly, grow more rapidly, and achieve higher profitability.
What are the main features of Shedmate?
Shedmate empowers your business from Enquiry to Fabrication. We work with cold-formed and structural steel designs, including gable and skillion sheds, and we have many modules that can work independently, which means that we have a solution for each business regardless of the size and methods used. Our main modules are:
3D Designer Enquiry System
Real-time shed Designer
Real-time preliminary engineering (For Cold Formed Sheds matching our bracket design and construction method).
Real-time quoting module (Instant Quoting)
Real-time Bill of materials (Based on your own rules)
Real-time construction plans (Including floor plans, elevations, sections, custom details, 3D view, concrete plans, framing plans, excavation plans and more.)
File Storage System (All your files in the same place)
Ordering System (For Cold Formed Sheds matching our bracket design and construction method).
Frame Fabricator system (For Cold Formed Sheds matching our bracket design and construction method).
Engineering Services (Signed by one of our engineers) - (BETA)
Site Plan Designer with High-resolution imagery on Metro Areas
CAD* and BIM** Export
An Autodesk Revit (RVT) 2019 file.
An Autodesk Design Review (DWFX) file
An Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) 2x3 file
A Drawing Exchange (DXF) 2010 file
Tekla and Advance Steel Export.
What structural material frames can I use with Shedmate?
Shedmate is very flexible about the materials you can use. The items below apply to all plans except Shedmate Lite and engineering services, in which only the frames highlighted in red apply.
Structural Elements
Columns and Rafters: Cold Formed profiles, SHS, RHS, UB, UC, Web Trusses.
Purlins and Girts: TH, Zeds (Z), C-Section frames, SHS and RHS.
Bracing: Straps, ROD, EA, Structural Cable.
Footings: Round Concrete Footings (Piers)
Other: Fly Bracings, Apex and Knee Bracing, Mullions, Fascia, Concrete Mesh and Resistance Definition, Purlin and Girt bridgings (Zeds), etc.
What openings and accessories can I add to a Shed using Shedmate?
On walls
Doors (PA, Roller Doors, Sectional Doors, Sliding Panel Doors and Glass Doors)
Windows
Bay Openings
Skylight, Downpipes, Internal Walls
On roof
Skylights, Roof Vents (Spin Away/Whirlybird)
On Shed
Concrete Slab, Concrete Aprons, Awnings, Mezzanines, Multiple Insulation and Cladding types.
Could Shedmate send me a material list to give to our steel supplier? Once we have all the pricing we need, can we insert it into the program?
Yes, you can. The instant quoting system lets you input your custom pricing details and calculations in Shedmate, including Labour costs and administrative fees (using formulas or fixed-rate prices). The quoting B.O.M can be tailored to your company rules and exported. You can buy materials from anyone, but if you use our engineering, you must comply with our standard bracket connection details.
Who is Shedmates most prominent Roll Forming partner?
We are an independent software company, and you can use any Roll-Forming partner in the market. Shedmate automatically produces Frame Fabrication details, but your business decides who to go with for the ordering process.
Can we purchase through Shedmate and use your price file?
Shedmate does not sell you Shed Kits. We offer you a software as a service to empower you to design, quote, engineer and order materials from anyone in the market. Under the Shedmate Lite Plan, you can become an independent seller of Shed Kits. Shedmate provides you with Engineering Certification services (fees apply per project) and bracket designs that you can buy from any manufacturer. It is important that you have experience ordering Sheds, as we don't do this for you.
Can I use my Engineering historical database with Shedmate to produce quotations?
Yes, absolutely (If you are a Standard or Enterprise Customer). In Shedmate, you can import your engineering library via Excel if you have one. The system is in Beta now, and I will look in the library for the most appropriate engineering report. The user can confirm the replacement of all frames to suit your preliminary engineering. Although it is becoming less and less usual due to site-specific requirements from councils and private certifiers, Shedmate allows you to do it if you are a Shedmate Standard user. However, remember we don't have any liability regarding your engineering usage. If you are a Shedmate Lite user, you must use our engineering and pay per project as you sell sheds.
How does the system work regarding wind design and engineering compliance?
Shedmate (Pay As You Go) has an advanced engineering analysis system that can be used to check site-specific wind forces and the impact of the structural loads on every structural frame of your project. You can run the system yourself for quoting purposes. Once you are ready to order your engineering report, an engineer from our team will review the analysis and ensure everything complies with the standards. At the end, you will receive all the documentation you need, including:
Standard Connection Details
Certificate of Compliance for your State
Engineering report with a summary of calculations
Signed Architectural Plans
Wind Report
Engineering Drawings
We do not offer engineering certification for Structural Steel Sheds with UB, UC, and Web Trusses. You can use our Lookup Engineering tool to include your own preliminary engineering range and sizes for quoting purposes, but you are required to sort our engineering for your Shed.
What are the design limits for span, height and bay sizing?
Shedmate designer can work independently from our engineering system to provide less restrictions for quotation and documentation. Limitations are listed below
| Variable | Shed Designer | Engineering Design |
|---|---|---|
Span (Gable) in m | 60m | 18m |
Span (Skillion) in m | 60m | N/A |
Height (Gable) in m | 9m | 6m |
Height (Skillion) | 9m in the shortest column and 25m in the heighest. | N/A |
Roof Slope (Gable) | 30 degrees | 12, 15, 18, 25 |
Roof Slope (Skillion) | 15 degrees | 3, 5, 9, 12 |
Bay Size | 15m | 6m |
MUST USE OUR BRACKET DESIGN AND FLY BRACING. |
How is Shedmate different to other companies?
There are other quoting systems in the market that generally tie you to their own manufacturers. Shedmate is an independent business, our goal is to provide you with the tools to grow your company as you want. By having BIM as our backbone, we can go a lot further than most competitors due to our flexibility to make adjustments. This made it possible to design our ordering system, automatically product construction documentation, include a Bill of Materials in real time, and export files to native CAD/BIM systems. With our easy to use solutions, anyone can create construction plans, engineer and quote a steel shed project in minutes, from any device ready for fabrication and integration with CAD/BIM professional design software. Have you received a better offer from a competitor? Talk to us and we will provide you with a better deal!
SOFTWARE PRICING AND ONBOARDING
How does the pricing work?
Shedmate offers its licensing through a monthly subscription (no locked-in contracts) with four main plans to choose from:
Lead Generator - $299/mo.
Shedmate Lite (Lead Generator, Site Plan, Quoting and PAYG Engineering - This plan required you to use our bracket design and construction method and buy engineering from us) - $599/mo. + Engineering Certificates per project.
Shedmate Standard - $2499/mo.
Enterprise - (TBC - Only valid for existing users)
Shedmate also offers a 21-day peace of mind guarantee. If you try Shedmate and decide it is not the right system for your business, we will give you your money back, no questions asked.
How many people can use Shedmate?
All our plans come with a standard package of 3 users. New users can be purchased at $199/mo/user. For companies with more than ten users, it is more cost-effective to subscribe to an Enterprise plan. (Talk to Sales)
How does the onboarding process work?
Once you sign up for Shedmate, our team will prepare your company environment based on your company rules. This generally takes 2-3 days. We will then set up samples of our pricing databases and quoting templates you can modify. The login details will be e-mail to company contacts, and then you can start using Shedmate from any computer, tablet or phone with Google Chrome. We ask every company to review the Setting up Shedmate section on our Resource Centre to ensure you have a good onboarding process.
In this section, you will get everything you need to
Define Company Rules
Can I setup my pricing rules myself? Can your team do it?
We prefer that someone from your company be directly involved in the process, as this requires decision-making that would be efficient for our team to do if we build a series of weekly meetings. Shedmate has tutorials and guides on how to set up your own pricing, and you can do it yourself. If your company doesn't have someone, we can offer this service for a fee (generally $90/hr.), billed fortnightly.
How much does it cost for custom development? How long does it take your team to deliver it?
Due to limitations on our development and engineering teams, we only offer custom development to existing customers. If you are an existing client and need a quote for custom development, please talk to your customer success agent. Development costs range from $90-180/hr. We can not estimate a ballpark figure or timeframe without assessing your needs in detail. If you are a new customer, please subscribe to one of our plans and then you can request an assessment from our team.
SETTING UP MY MATERIAL PRICING
Can I have different pricing databases in Shedmate?
Yes. You can create as many pricing databases as you want and assign those to specific project quotes by creating new quoting versions of the same project. You might have a database for a region of the country, other databases for different suppliers, etc.
ENGINEERING/SHED SPECIFICATIONS
Does Shed mate have a choice of columns base connections
Shedmate uses bolt-down above slab U Brackets by default. We don't do Angle Connection Brackets at this point. Embedded brackets could be used, but we would need to set this up for the company, which would require custom development. At the moment, our waiting list for any custom development is 4 months.
Does Shedmate offer an override for Knee and Apex Brackets
Shedmate uses specific Knee/Haunch and Apex Brackets that comply with our automatic engineering. We have done custom bracket certification based on customer demand in the past, but this takes a while to sort out with engineers and would fall into custom development, so we are not offering it at this time. See below bracket samples.
Does Shedmate have options for Internal and no internal pressure?
Our engineering system calculates fully opened and Fully Enclosed Sheds. For partially opened sheds, we are currently developing a system that will work with internal pressure calculations, wind tunnels, and other structural regulations to guarantee compliance with all rules. We can still offer partially opened shed engineering certificates, but this process is done manually by our engineers, which takes longer than the 2-day average for fully opened or fully enclosed Sheds.
Can we offer clients Extended side and gable eaves and if so example to connections
Not at the moment. Shedmate can model, quote and document side eaves, but we don't have connections for it yet. Gable eaves on our road map to be deployed but I don't have a timeframe of it yet. See below.
Is it possible to look at a sample of engineering (Bracketry, Connections etc)
Please find attached details of our connections and brackets.
What Class of buildings does the engineering cover?
We currently do class 10 and 8.
Can we look at an example of slab engineering
We don't do slab engineering, we do footings only. Shedmate allows you to define in the designer what thickness, concrete resistance and mesh you want to use, but it is not included on the engineering report.
Can I add my own connection, cleats and fabrication details?
You must use Shedmate's standards for Lead Generator and Shedmate Lite.
Clients from Shedmate Standard and Enterprise can request custom development to add connections, cleats, and fabrication details to our bracket designer, but we are not offering this service now due to significant demand from existing customers, aiming to maintain the quality of our service.
Does the system run back to back column and rafters as well as knee and apex ties?
Yes, you can easily enable back-to-back columns and rafter, as well as knee and apex bracings, directly on our shed designer. However, back-to-back isn't applicable for Shedmate Lite customers.
Is your fixed frame designed as a welded connection?
Shedmate supports only bracket connections for fabrication and ordering purposes. Welded plate workflows can still benefit, but an export to Tekla or Advance steel is needed.
Can we add other sheeting and gutter profiles?
Yes, we can do any custom development on demand.
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