The roofing & contracting glossary.

A roofing square is 100 square feet of roof area. It's the standard unit for ordering shingles, underlayment, and most roofing materials.

The pitch multiplier converts a building's flat footprint area into the actual sloped roof surface area. A 6/12 pitch has a multiplier of about 1.118, meaning the sloped roof is 11.8% larger than the footprint.

The waste factor is the percentage of extra material you order to account for cuts, mis-laps, and complex roof geometry. Standard is 10–12% for simple roofs and 15–20% for hips, valleys, and dormers.

Tear-off is the removal of an existing roof down to the deck before installing a new roof. It typically adds $1.00–$1.75 per sq ft per layer to the total job cost.

Speed-to-lead is how fast you respond to an inbound lead. Contractors who respond within 5 minutes close 4–9× more jobs than those who wait an hour.

A lead magnet is something you give website visitors in exchange for their contact information. For contractors, an instant-quote widget is the highest-converting lead magnet available.

An embedded widget is a piece of third-party software that runs inside your website. SatelliteQuotes' instant-quote widget loads with one script tag and one div — no developer needed.

White-label software lets you brand a product as your own. SatelliteQuotes is fully white-label — your logo, colors, and company name appear everywhere, and customers never see ours.

Minimum project price is the floor price you'll quote for any job, regardless of size. It covers your fixed costs of dispatch, crew mobilization, and overhead.

A complexity multiplier increases your base price for jobs that take longer due to layout — multiple peaks, valleys, dormers, or steep pitch. Typically 1.0× for simple, 1.15× for moderate, 1.3× for complex.