One from each corner
Stand back far enough that a whole slope fits in the frame. Four corners give Mason the shape, the number of planes, and how the pitch reads against the wall line.
For roofing companies
Quoting and job management software for roofing businesses
A roof does not price itself from four pictures taken in the driveway. Mason collects what the ground can show, tells the customer straight what the next step is, and puts the photos and the answers in front of you before you get in the truck.
Join the waitlistWhat roofing customers get asked
Questions a homeowner can answer standing in the yard.
Not one of these needs a ladder, a tape on the ridge, or a word of roofing vocabulary. A customer answers by looking, counting, or reading a sticker. A leak call and a replacement get different lists — see how the quote gets built.
- 01
How many stories, and is one side a walkout?
Height sets the ladders, the fall protection, and how long a tear-off takes. A walkout basement means one elevation is a full story taller than the front of the house looks.
- 02
How many separate roofs are on the property?
House, garage, porch cover, shed. Count them. A detached garage is a second setup, a second load of material, and sometimes a second trailer.
- 03
What is up there now — shingles, metal, flat rubber, or tile?
Tear-off, disposal weight, and the crew plan all change with the material. A photo answers this even when the customer has no word for it.
- 04
Is water coming in right now, and where is the mark?
A stain beside the chimney, a drip in a valley, and a wet spot in the middle of a slope are three different repairs before anyone gets near the roof.
- 05
Does it only leak in certain weather?
Hard, wind-driven rain points at flashing or the wall. Every rain points at the field or a valley. Only in a thaw points somewhere else again. Customers know this answer — they have stood there watching it.
- 06
Count everything that sticks out of the roof.
Chimneys, skylights, pipe vents, bath fans, a satellite dish, solar panels. Every one is flashing labor, and solar means a detach and reset on somebody else's schedule.
- 07
Where can a dump trailer sit, and how close can a truck get?
Driveway, street, or nowhere near it. Loading and haul-off are real money, and a long carry around the house changes the whole day.
- 08
Was there a storm, and have you filed a claim?
An insurance job runs on the carrier's approved scope and its own paperwork. Mason asks this early so it never quotes an insurance roof off your cash price sheet.
The photos that matter for roofing
What the camera has to get from the ground.
Mason asks for each shot one at a time, with an example, and asks again if one comes back blurry or too far away. Every request has a job to do.
Show the roof from the ground and any safe inside views. Never climb.
The rake edge, zoomed
The cut edge at the gable is where the layers stack up and show. It is the one shot from the ground that ever hints at whether there is one roof up there or two.
The ridge against the sky
A visible dip or wave in the ridge is a reason for your team to inspect the framing. A ridge that looks straight from the ground does not prove deck or framing condition.
Straight on at the main slope
Granule loss, curling tabs, patched squares, and moss may be visible from this view. They help your team decide what needs inspection, but a ground photo cannot prove remaining life or settle whether the roof needs tear-off.
Everything that sticks up, from below
Chimney, skylights, pipe boots, and the wall where an upper roof dies into siding. Flashing is where roofs leak and where quotes get missed.
Inside: the ceiling mark
Photograph the stain and say whether it is wet right now. Wet and spreading is a different call than a ring that has been there since last spring.
Inside: the attic, if the hatch is easy to reach
Phone pointed up from the opening. Daylight through the deck, dark streaks on the boards, or soaked insulation says more about that roof than the ground ever will.
The eave and fascia from underneath
Rotted fascia and a missing drip edge are both priced work, and both hide from the corner shots.
Where the trailer would go
One picture of the driveway and the approach. It answers loading, haul-off, and whether the crew is carrying bundles around the house.
How roofing quotes get priced
Squares, edges, and what gets counted on site.
Mason prices in the units your sheet already uses. It does not invent a rate, and it does not borrow somebody else's average.
| Unit | What it prices |
|---|---|
| Square | Field shingles, underlayment, and tear-off, with your waste factor for how cut up the roof is. |
| Per square, per layer | Tear-off. Two layers is not double, and your sheet already knows what it is. |
| Pitch adder | Steep work slows a crew down and adds staging. A step up per square, set by you. |
| Linear foot | Ridge, hips, valleys, drip edge, starter, step flashing, ridge vent. |
| Each | Pipe boots, chimney flashing, skylight flashing, bath vents, satellite detach and reset. |
| Per sheet | Decking replacement, counted after tear-off and never guessed before it. |
| Per load or per ton | Disposal. Layers, tile, and slate weigh what they weigh. |
| Day rate | Crane, conveyor, or rigging for anything that cannot go up a ladder on a shoulder. |
Site conditions move the number inside those units: how cut up the roof is, how far the bundles have to travel, whether the crew is working over a conservatory or a flower bed, and how many elevations need staging. Shops that also hang fence or paint after a hail storm keep a separate sheet for each, and Mason keeps the questions separate too.
The honest part
What no photo settles.
This is the list your competitors leave off the website. A roof is the hardest trade to price without standing on it, and Mason is built to say so rather than hand a homeowner a number you have to walk back.
How many layers
The rake edge hints at it. The first shovel confirms it. Anyone who tells a homeowner the layer count from a driveway photo is guessing out loud.
The deck
Rot, board spacing, and old plank decking are invisible until the shingles are off. That is exactly why decking belongs on the contract as a per-sheet price and a count, not a lump in the bid.
Whether it is even the roof
Wall flashing, siding, a cracked chimney crown, and a bath fan venting into the attic all show up on a ceiling looking like a roof leak.
The back of the house
Ground photos get the front and the sides. Low-slope porch roofs and back slopes hide, and they are often the part that is failing.
Framing
A wave in the ridge is a reason to climb up and look. It is not a number.
An approved insurance scope
When a carrier is paying, the scope is theirs. Supplements are a conversation with an adjuster, not a calculation from a photo.
Illustrative example
One-story ranch · wind damage · ground photos only
- Photos show
- Three-tab shingles, one layer reading at the rake, two pipe boots, one chimney, no skylights, driveway right at the gable.
- Mason's answer
- A price range from your squares and adders, not an exact number.
- Reason given to the customer
- The back slope and the porch roof are not visible from the ground, and deck condition is unknown until tear-off.
- What lands on your desk
- The photos, the range Mason gave, and the two things to check when you go up.
What roofing jobs need on the calendar
What actually decides the roofing schedule.
Coming soonBooking, crew assignment, and moving a week around a rain day are not built yet. When they are, they will sit with the quote instead of on a whiteboard — see where scheduling is headed.
- 01
The forecast runs the board
You do not open a roof you cannot dry in the same day. One line of rain moves every crew for the rest of the week, and every one of those customers needs to hear it from somebody.
- 02
Tear-off and dry-in are one day, together
Crew size is set by how much roof you can open and close before dark — not by who happens to be free that morning.
- 03
Delivery and dumpster are their own windows
Rooftop load or ground drop, drop-off and pick-up. All of it wants the same driveway the crew wants.
- 04
Cold and heat both cost you
Shingles will not seal in the cold without hand-sealing, and they scuff under boots in high heat. The season decides the method, and the method decides the day.
- 05
Daylight is shorter than the day
Fall and winter jobs lose the back end of the afternoon. A roof half open at 4:30 is not a plan.
- 06
Permits and inspections are separate visits
Where a permit and an inspection are required, the inspector's window sits between your crew and the next job.
- 07
Insurance work waits on the adjuster
Nothing goes on the board until the scope is approved. Then it all wants to go on at once.
- 08
Storm season is a year of backlog in six weeks
Everybody calls the same week. The order you call them back in is the whole business.
01Will Mason give an exact price for a replacement?
No. Not from ground photos. The customer gets a range or a clear message that your company will take a look, with the reason in plain words. An exact roof number comes after somebody sees the deck, and pretending otherwise is how a crew ends up eating a change order.
02What happens with insurance jobs?
Mason asks whether there was a storm and whether a claim is filed, then sends those straight to your team with the photos and the claim status attached. It will not price an insurance roof off your cash sheet.
03Can it do anything useful with repair calls?
It collects the leak story — where the mark is, when it shows up, what the weather was doing — plus the inside photos and the attic view if there is a safe one. Then it hands you the call. What a repair costs depends on what is under the shingle, so Mason does not name a price for it.
04Do I have to change how I price?
No. Squares, layer adders, steep adders, per-foot flashing, per-sheet decking, disposal by the load. Mason reads your sheet, you confirm what it found, and those are the only numbers it uses.