Cost centres and structure

Every price list has a structure of cost centres, shown in the left pane of the Price lists page. Items are filed under them, and picking one shows its items and everything beneath it. On a long list, type part of a code or name in the box above the tree to jump to a cost centre — the matches show with their parents for context, and Enter selects the first one.

The structure itself is edited on the Structure screen — Structure in the toolbar opens it for the list you are looking at. That is where you add, rename, nest and remove cost centres.

Filing items

An item lives in one cost centre per list. To move it:

• Drag the row (or several selected rows) onto a cost centre in the left pane.
• Select rows and use Move to in the bar at the bottom.
• In the drawer’s Details tab, under Filed under, use the pencil beside the list to change the cost centre.

The same drawer section can file an item in another of your lists — Add to a price list — or take it out of one. An item taken out of its last list shows under Uncategorised at the top of the left pane, which is also where anything that has never been filed turns up. Nothing there appears in a BOQ import, so it is worth clearing.

Follow your cost centers

The structure should mirror your cost center structure.

Same names, same order, ideally the same codes:

100  Preliminaries
200  Site works
300  Concrete
310    Slab
320    Driveway and paths
400  Framing
500  Roofing
...

Two reasons this matters.

Importing is faster. Pricing the concrete cost center means opening the concrete category — no translation between two different organising schemes.

Nothing gets lost in translation. When the two structures diverge, people import items into whatever category looks closest, and the bill ends up coded inconsistently.

One structure, used everywhere

Your cost centers, your price list structure and your tender packages should all follow the same breakdown. It is one thing to learn instead of three, and everything lines up without anyone mapping between them.

Depth

Three levels, and no deeper

A cost centre can have children, and those children can have children — but no further. If a change would make a fourth level, SmarteBuild refuses it and tells you why. Adding, dragging, changing Parent and importing from Excel all apply the same rule, in price list and cost center structures alike.

Two levels covers most residential work. Three is occasionally justified on commercial. Where you want a fourth, an extra digit in the code usually reads better anyway: 310 Slab, 311 Slab — excavation.

You will rarely want the depth in any case. Finding an entry by expanding three levels is slower than filtering a flat list, and search and the filter chips do most of the finding — the tree is for browsing, not for searching.

Codes

Number cost centres the same way as your cost centers, in gaps of 100.

Leaving room means adding 330 Retaining walls in three years without renumbering anything, and the order still comes out right.

Deleting a cost centre

Move the items out first — the counts beside each cost centre show what is in it. Items left in a deleted cost centre end up under Uncategorised, which takes longer to sort out than moving them beforehand.

When your cost centers change

If you restructure your cost centers, restructure the price list to match, at the same time.

The two drifting apart is the usual failure. It happens gradually, nobody notices, and six months later importing is slower than it used to be and nobody can say why.

A structure to start from

For residential building:

Code	Cost centre
100	Preliminaries
200	Site works
300	Concrete
400	Framing
500	Roofing
600	External cladding
700	Windows and doors
800	Services
900	Internal linings
1000	Fixing and joinery
1100	Wet areas
1200	Painting
1300	Floor coverings
1400	External works
1500	Final clean and handover

Add children where you genuinely price things separately — 310 Slab and 320 Driveway under Concrete, 810 Plumbing and 820 Electrical under Services.

Use the same list for your cost centers and you have set up both at once.

Product categories are a different thing

Supplier products have their own small categories — a way of grouping the products linked to one item from one supplier, such as Cement and Aggregate under a concrete item. They are managed on the product form, not here. See Products.