Organising items
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A bill of two hundred items is only useful if you can find your way around it. These are the tools that keep it navigable.
A switched-off item stays on the job but stops counting towards the total.
Cost codes
Section titled “Cost codes”Edit Cost Codes sets the code on an item — which cost code it belongs to. Change Cost Codes Heading re-labels a heading in the tree.
Moving an item to a different cost code is the most common structural edit you will make, and it is worth doing as soon as you notice, because everything downstream groups by it. An item coded to the wrong trade turns up on the wrong purchase order.
Sorting
Section titled “Sorting”Change Sorting sets the order items appear in within their cost code, and WBS tree sorting controls the order of the tree itself.
Ordering items in build sequence rather than alphabetically makes a bill much easier to check. Excavate, form, reinforce, pour, finish reads like the job happening; a gap in that sequence is a missing item, and you can see it.
Sorting a column to look at the bill
Section titled “Sorting a column to look at the bill”Click a column heading — Item, Product, Supplier, Unit, Qty, Cost, Total, PS/PC, Progress, Status, and Ordered or Actual Cost if you have added them. Click again to reverse it, a third time to put the bill back in its own order. A faint arrow on the heading shows which ones you can click, and your choice is remembered.
This is a way of looking at the bill, not a change to it: nothing is saved, and the order that prints, orders and reports is the one you built. Sorting by Total finds where the money is; by Supplier, everything going to one trade; by Status, what is still an estimate.
Because the rows beside an item are not its real neighbours while a column is sorted, dragging rows into a new order is switched off until you clear the sort — the handle says so if you hover it. The same is true when several cost codes are shown at once.
Organise Items
Section titled “Organise Items”Organise Items opens one window for filing items into cost codes. Reach for it after importing from a template that does not quite match the job, or when a bill has grown untidy — it is far faster than opening items one at a time.
Three ways in, all from the BOQ:
| From | What it opens with |
|---|---|
| Organise Items on the ribbon | every item on the estimate |
| Organise Items on the ticked-items menu | those items, already ticked, under Ticked in the BOQ |
| Show Orphan Items | starts on In no cost code at all; the window is titled Items in no cost code |
Reading the window
Section titled “Reading the window”Every cost code list on the estimate is a column, so you can see an item’s place in all of them at once. A dashed Not in this list means it has no cost code in that list, and each column heading counts how many of those there are — click the heading to see just those. Lists shown hides columns you are not working on.
The panel down the left is one list at a time as a tree, with a count on each cost code. Click a
code to see its items. Above the tree sit All items, Ticked in the BOQ, Not in
and, when there are any, In no cost code at all.
Group by cost code is on to begin with: rows sit under the left panel’s cost codes, each
heading showing the code’s parents, how many items and how much. Not in comes first,
in yellow, because that is usually what you opened the window to fix.
Moving items
Section titled “Moving items”- One item — click its cost code in any column. A type-to-find picker opens; arrow keys and Enter work, and Not in this list at the top takes it out of that list.
- Several — tick them (Shift-click ticks a run, and a group heading’s tick takes the whole
group), then use Put them in:
An item is in at most one cost code per list, and moving it in one list never touches the others. That is the thing worth understanding before you start: the columns are independent.
Every move saves straight away. Undo, or Ctrl+Z, takes back the last one, step by step.
Open in a new tab gives the same page more room; the BOQ window closes and refreshes itself when you come back. The sitemap button beside the list opens that list’s cost codes for editing, and Reload brings those changes in.
The window tells you why nothing can be moved when the estimate is locked — the job is under construction or finished — or when your access is read-only or you do not have the Organise Items permission.
Deleting items is not done here. To clear out orphans, filter the BOQ itself to Not in a cost code, tick them and delete.
Items not in a cost code
Section titled “Items not in a cost code”An item can end up on the job but in none of its cost codes, which is called an orphan. It still has its quantity and rate, and some of the job’s totals still count it, but no cost code’s total does, and it won’t go onto an order.
When a job has any, the BOQ says so in a yellow strip at the top: “12 items ($48,300 switched on) on this job aren’t in any cost code”. The cost code list also shows a Not in a cost code row pinned above All items. Click either one to list them. The bar above the list says why each one is there:
- No cost code at all: usually its cost code was deleted, or it was added while the BOQ showed All items (that can’t happen any more; see below).
- A blank cost code: usually a job copied from another company.
- Filed under a cost code list that was taken off the job.
To fix them:
- File them: pick a cost code (type to find it) and press File. It files the ticked items, or every item listed if none are ticked.
- Put the list back: for items still filed under a cost code list that was taken off the job, Put “…” back on this job switches that list on again, and they’re all filed at once.
- Delete them: tick them and use Delete in the Actions menu on the toolbar.
Nothing is created to hold them. Not in a cost code isn’t a real cost code, so it never appears in templates, reports or Xero.
New orphans are no longer made by accident:
- + Item while the BOQ shows All items asks which cost code the item goes under.
- Duplicate and Paste while showing All items put each copy under its original’s cost code.
- Deleting a cost code, or switching a cost code list off a job, says how many items (and how much money) would be left without one first.
Filtering the view
Section titled “Filtering the view”
Show only narrows what you can see. Group by cost type rearranges it instead, with a subtotal under each heading.
Several settings narrow what you are looking at:
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Only Included Items | Hides switched-off items |
| Only Selected WBS | Shows one cost code at a time |
| Hide Empty Nodes | Suppresses cost codes with nothing in them |
| Show Archived | Brings archived material back into view |
Hide Empty Nodes is what makes a full standard structure usable on a small job. Import your fifteen-trade template onto a bathroom renovation and eleven of the trades are empty; hide them and the bill reads as though it was built for the job.
Only Selected WBS is the one to use when you are working a trade at a time.
Pricing the whole of 800 Services without the other fourteen trades on screen is
faster and much less error-prone.
Show Buttons
Section titled “Show Buttons”Show Buttons controls which action buttons appear on each row. Turning off the ones you never use gives more width to the columns you actually read — worth doing on a laptop.
Choosing columns
Section titled “Choosing columns”
Ordered and Actual Cost start switched off. They are the two worth turning on once a job is running.
The columns icon at the right-hand end of the header row switches columns on and off:
| Column | Starts |
|---|---|
| Product | On |
| Supplier | On |
| PS/PC | On |
| Progress | On |
| Status | On |
| Ordered | Off |
| Actual Cost | Off |
Switch off what you do not use and the rest of the columns get the width. An estimator who prices by rate rather than by product usually turns Product and Supplier off; a job in construction usually wants Ordered and Actual Cost on — see Over budget.
Your choice is remembered against your login, so it follows you to another computer, and it is yours alone — it changes nothing for anyone else on the job. Column widths are remembered the same way: drag the edge of any column header.
The Flag field marks an item for your own attention. There is no fixed meaning to it, so give it one and be consistent — most people use it for “come back to this”.
Flag an item with the flag button at the start of its Actions. On, the flag turns solid orange and the row goes yellow; click it again to clear it. Flagged (the flag button) on the toolbar then lists just those items.
Flag anything you have typed a quantity for that should really be measured, any rate you are unsure of, and anything waiting on a price. Then work the flags down before you submit.
A practical routine for a large bill
Section titled “A practical routine for a large bill”- Build the structure first, in build sequence.
- Import from your template, then Hide Empty Nodes.
- Work one trade at a time with Only Selected WBS.
- Flag anything provisional as you go.
- Before submitting: clear the flags, check there’s no Not in a cost code warning at the top of the BOQ, and check the trade subtotals add to the job total.
Step five takes two minutes and catches most of what goes wrong in a bill.