Docs Features
Budgets
The internal cost model for a bid. Assemblies priced from your libraries and driven by takeoff quantities, with margins, tax and a push to the proposal.
A budget is your internal cost for a bid. It is a list of priced assemblies, such as "ACT ceiling: tile, grid and wall angle", "Install crew", "Scissor lift rental" or "Fire-stopping subcontract". Each assembly takes a quantity from your takeoff (or one you type) and prices itself from its parts. Margins turn cost into sell, and Send to proposal carries the sell figures into your proposal. The client never sees the budget.
Where to find it
- Sidebar: Budgets (under Home). Budgets are grouped by project.
- On a bid: the Budget tab.
- In a workspace: the Budget button in the top bar.
How the money flows
- Measure in a workspace. Each measurement has a subject.
- Link an assembly on the budget to that subject. Its quantity follows the takeoff.
- The assembly prices itself from its components, at cost.
- Per-type margins (and labour burden) turn cost into sell.
- Send to proposal writes one proposal line per assembly.
- Submit the proposal to the client.
Assembly types
| Type | What it is | Its lines are |
|---|---|---|
| Material | A priced composition, such as ceiling tile and grid | Components |
| Labour | A crew and its hours, priced by rate, hours or crew-day | Roles |
| Equipment | A rental item, priced by day, week or month | Items |
| Subcontract | A package of scope, bought and leveled | Inclusions and bidders |
Material
Each component has a unit, a pack size and pack type, a waste %, whether to round up to whole packs, and a unit or pack price. A preview shows how many packs and dollars a sample quantity comes to.
Labour
Price each role by rate (units per hour), by hours, or by crew-days (days x crew x hours per day). Burden is applied to the whole labour group as a markup.
Equipment
Rate period, rate and number of periods, plus delivery, pickup, operator, fuel, damage waiver and fees. The duration can follow a labour assembly's crew-days.
Subcontract
A package with inclusions, exclusions and a list of bidders whose prices you compare. See Subcontract leveling.
Quantities from the takeoff
- Quantities from in the budget header picks which workspaces feed the budget. You need edit access to a workspace to choose it.
- In an assembly, the Takeoff source picks the file, the subject and the measurement (area, length, perimeter, volume or count). Or switch to Manual quantity.
- Formulas can use
{qty},{area},{length},{count},{perimeter}and{volume}. Type@in a formula to pick a takeoff total. - When the takeoff changes, Budget actions > Sync takeoff quantities updates the linked assemblies. Typed quantities stay as they are.
Margins and tax
The cost summary reads like math: Total cost + Markup = Sell after markups, then Tax on sell. Set margins for each type (Material margin, Labour burden and margin, and so on). Admins set the company defaults in Admin > Settings > Proposal > Estimating, and only admins can change tax for a bid.
Mark an assembly as an Alternate to price it and print it without adding it to the total.
Several budgets per bid
A bid can have as many budgets as you need, each with a type:
| Type | Use it for |
|---|---|
| Estimate | Bid-stage pricing for the invitation |
| Revised estimate | Re-priced after a scope change or addendum |
| Change order | A priced change to awarded work |
| Contract | The buyout budget after award |
| Future phase | Rolled forward for later work |
Roll over copies a budget into a new draft on the same project or another one.
Working together
Only one person edits an assembly at a time. If a teammate has it open you see "{name} is editing this" with a Take over button. Each assembly has a History tab showing who changed what, people and agent alike.
Lines the agent wrote are flagged until someone clicks Mark reviewed, or Review all in Budget actions.
Export
Budget actions > Export to Excel downloads a summary sheet and a sheet of every line, grouped by type with margin and sell.
What the agent can do
With the Budgeting & Libraries plugin on, the agent can build assemblies, fill cells, add and remove rows, read the levelling board, save templates and push assemblies to a draft proposal. Every change that moves money shows an approval card first.