Bulk operations

The Operations menu acts on whatever you have selected. Everything here works on many items at once, which is the difference between an afternoon and five minutes when a bill needs restructuring.

Selecting

Command	What it does
Select All	Everything currently visible
Select none	Clears the selection

Select All respects your filters. If Only Selected WBS is showing one cost center, Select All takes that center — which is usually what you want, and occasionally a surprise. Check what is on screen before running a destructive operation on a selection.

Orders, invoices, quotes, variations and tenders

Order, Invoice, Quote, Variation and Tender — on the ribbon above the bill, and in the Operations menu — start that document from the items you have selected.

With nothing selected, every item shown goes in. Pick a cost code, click Order, and the whole cost code is on the order. “Shown” means what is on screen, so a search or a filter such as Only included narrows it; clear them first if you want everything under the cost code. Select items only when you want some of them.

Items from several suppliers become several orders. If the items going onto an order come from more than one supplier, Order raises one order per supplier instead of one mixed order you would have to split by hand. Leave the Supplier box in the order window blank for this; choosing a supplier there keeps everything on one order for that supplier. See Raising orders from the BOQ.

Moving and copying

Command	What it does
Copy	Copies the selection
Cut	Marks it to be moved
Paste	Places it at the current point
Duplicate selected	Copies in place

Cut and Paste move items between cost centers, which is how you fix a group of items coded to the wrong trade in one go.

An item that is on an order, an invoice, a tender, a quote or a colour selection cannot be moved this way. Paste puts a copy in the new place and the original stays where it was, still attached to those documents — delete or switch off the one you do not want.

Copy and Paste work between costings, so you can lift a whole trade from one job to another. That is often faster than re-importing from a price list, because it brings the quantities, suppliers and notes as well as the rates.

Copying between costings is an underused shortcut

Priced a bathroom on the last job that is nearly identical to this one? Copy the whole cost center across and adjust, rather than rebuilding it from the price list.

Duplicating

Duplicate selected copies items in place, complete with rates, descriptions, suppliers and notes.

Use it for repeated elements — three identical bathrooms, eight identical units, two identical carports. Duplicate, then edit what differs.

Check the descriptions afterwards. A duplicated item still describing Unit 1 while sitting under Unit 2 will reach a subcontractor’s order saying Unit 1.

What a copy keeps. The quantity comes across whichever way it was worked out — a typed figure, a calc sheet, a linked item, a measured field or a formula — and a copied formula reads the same fields and items the original did. Copy it to a different costing and the formula is cleared instead, because the fields and items it referred to are not there.

Switching on and off

Command	What it does
Switch on selected	Items count toward the total
Switch off selected	Items stay in the bill but do not count

This is how you price options. Carry both the tiled roof and the colorbond roof, switch on whichever the client has chosen, and the total follows.

It is also the safe alternative to deleting while a client is still deciding. A switched-off item keeps its rate, its supplier and its history at no cost.

Worked example: pricing an option

The Hendricks client is undecided between a tiled and a colorbond roof.

1. Price both, in cost center 500 Roofing.
2. Select the colorbond items and Switch off selected.
3. The total reflects the tiled roof.
4. Client changes their mind: switch the tiled items off and the colorbond on.

Two clicks, no re-pricing, and both options stay on the record.

Setting rounding on many items

Set rounding applies one rounding rule to every selected item at once — the same Output setting the Calculate Quantity screen sets one item at a time.

Select the items, choose Set rounding, pick the rule, and Apply. Useful when a whole trade should order the same way: every concrete line to the nearest tenth of a cubic metre, every timber line up to the whole length.

This changes quantities, not just how they look

Rounding is applied to the quantity itself, so the line totals and the costing total move with it. Check the total afterwards.

The three size-based options — Into Size, By Size and By Size Rounded Up — are deliberately not offered here. Each needs a size for the individual item, so set those from Calculate Quantity where the size lives.

Deleting

Delete selected removes items permanently.

Items that are on an order, an invoice, a tender, a quote or a colour selection are skipped, because deleting them would take their lines off those as well. The rest are deleted, and the message says how many were skipped — for example 3 item(s) deleted. 1 skipped (has dependencies). Deleting a single item from its row refuses in the same way and names what the item is on.

Before you use it, consider whether Switch off would do instead. Deleting takes the rate, the supplier link, the notes and the take-off field relationship with it, and none of that comes back.

Caution

Check your filters before deleting a large selection. Select All takes everything currently visible, and “currently visible” depends on Only Selected WBS, Only Included Items and Hide Empty Nodes. It is worth glancing at the item count before confirming.

Locked items

With Lock Ordered or Billed Items on, items that already carry an order or an invoice will not be changed by bulk operations.

That is the setting doing its job. If a bulk edit skips some items, check whether they are locked before assuming the operation failed — the lock is protecting the relationship between what you committed and what you allowed.