What Tally does

Tally turns drawings into priced quantities. You upload a plan, tell Tally what its scale is, then draw on it. Every line you draw and every symbol you click becomes a measurement, and those measurements roll up into a priced total you can send out.

Nothing is guessed on your behalf. Every quantity stays visible, editable, and traceable back to the mark you made on the drawing.

1. Create a project. One project per job. It holds the drawings, the measurements and the pricing.
2. Upload your plans. Drop in a PDF drawing set and pick the pages you need.
3. Set the scale. Tell Tally what one sheet represents in the real world. You do this once per plan, and until you do, measuring is switched off.
4. Take off. Count items, trace lengths and outline areas straight on the drawing. You describe and price each measurement as you create it.
5. Read the total, then export. Quantities gathers everything into a priced roll-up with a grand total, and exports it.

That is the whole job. Everything else in this guide is a branch off those five steps.

A project has four tabs across the top. Project is the job itself, and holds its details, its to-do list, who it is shared with and the files attached to it. Plans holds the drawings, and is where you open one to take off from it. Worksheet is the editable build-up of everything you measured, plus anything you need to add that was not on a drawing. Quantities is the priced roll-up you check and send.

Anything that applies across every job, such as your rates, your team, your labels and your count symbols, lives under Setup rather than inside a project.

Most of this guide is about drawings, because that is where most takeoffs start. Tally also accepts 3D building models, and they belong to a project in exactly the same way a drawing does. See take off from a 3D model.

Get your bearings in find your way around, then start a job.