Estimates and templates

An estimate is one priced version of a job. It owns the Bill of Quantities, the take-off, the cost codes and the markups. A project can carry as many as you need, and they do not interfere with each other.

Creating an estimate

You can also start one without opening the job: New estimate on this job, or Duplicate to copy the estimate the job is currently showing.

With the project open, choose New above the list of estimates (or + → New estimate on this project at the top of the page).

Field	What it does
Estimate name	How you tell this version from the others
Code, House size, Contract price	Optional now; the contract price is inc GST
Job status, Supervisor	Where the job is up to, and who runs it
Start from	A blank estimate, A template (type to filter the list), or A price list (builds the BOQ from every item in it)
Make this estimate a template	Makes this estimate available to copy from later

Starting from a big template can take a few seconds; the button says Creating… until it is done. The new estimate opens straight away. Cost code lists set to switch on for every new estimate are switched on for it automatically.

The field hint on the name suggests Production Estimate or Sales Estimate, and that is the idea — name the estimate after what it is for, not what number it is.

Name estimates after their purpose

Tender — Rev A and Tender — Rev B (reduced spec) tell you which is which in six months. Estimate 1 and Estimate 2 do not, and you will open both to find out.

Choosing a price list

The price list you pick decides which rates are offered when you build items. You can still type a rate by hand or take one from a different supplier, but the default drives most of the work.

Pick the price list that matches the kind of job. If you keep separate lists for renovation rates and new-build rates, choosing the wrong one at this point means correcting rates item by item later.

Why you would have several estimates

Situation	How to handle it
Client wants a cheaper option	Duplicate, downgrade the finishes, compare
Tender revision issued	Duplicate, update to the new drawings, keep the original
Two build methods	One framed, one steel, priced side by side
Budget vs contract	Keep the early budget alongside the signed version

Duplicating an estimate

Choose Duplicate in the estimate’s ⋮ menu — on the job page, or on the job in the Projects list. A Duplicate estimate window opens listing what can come with the copy, and how much of each the original holds (34 tenders · 17 quotes, 104 files · 58 MB). Anything the original has none of is greyed out as Nothing to copy. The window remembers your last choice on that computer. The copy is called “Copy of” the original and opens straight away.

Each line says how much of it the original holds, so you can see what you are about to copy — 104 files and 58 MB of documents is why that one starts unticked. Colour selection is greyed out because this estimate has none.

Always copied, and not something you can untick: the items, their quantities and formulas, with the assemblies, take-off fields and their formula fields, the markups, the cost codes (including any switched off as Not required and their notes) and the specification.

Also copy:

Tick	What comes	Ticked to begin with
Product selection	The product chosen on each item. Untick it and every price stays exactly the same, but no item names a product.	Yes
Colour selection	The schedule, its categories, allowances and rooms. Client confirmations and admin approvals do not come — see the note below.	Yes
Quotes and tenders	The tenders with the suppliers asked and the items tendered, and the quotes received with their prices, chosen lines and files. The award history stays with the original — the copy already has the awarded prices.	Yes
Client tender	The tender document’s wording, sections and settings — not the client’s name, date, pictures or plans	Yes
Upgrade options	The sales upgrade options and their choices	Yes
Documents	Every file and folder, copied one by one. It uses storage, which is why the size is shown and why this one starts unticked. Files belonging to orders, invoices, variations and claims stay with the original.	No

More:

Tick	What comes	Ticked to begin with
Measurements on the drawings	The plan sheets and every measurement drawn on them, with copies of the plan files, so the new estimate has its own drawings. Untick it and the take-off quantities still come, but the drawings do not.	Yes
Payment stages	The contract’s payment stages and percentages	Yes
Schedule	Tasks, links and stages, with the job’s working days and holidays	Yes
Team access	Everyone who can open the original can open the copy, with the same access	Yes

Never copied: orders, invoices, variations, claims and site records. Those belong to what actually happened on the original job.

If one ticked part cannot be copied, the copy still goes ahead and the message names what was left out — Estimate duplicated, except: documents. Everything else came across.

An older copy showing 0 on a formula line

Copies made before formula quantities were carried across can show 0 on those lines, which also leaves the estimate total short. Press Refresh Formulas on the BOQ toolbar once and they recalculate. If a line still reads 0, its formula is reading a measurement that did not come across — open that item’s Calculate Quantity screen and re-measure it.

Why the selection approvals do not duplicate

The schedule comes across, but it arrives waiting for approval again. A selection still marked as pushed into the estimate would never push its price into the new estimate — so the new job would be quoted short and nothing on screen would tell you. Clicking approve again costs a moment; a silently low quote costs money.

Worked example: pricing a cheaper option

The Hendricks extension is priced at Tender — Rev A and the client asks what it would cost with a colorbond roof instead of tiles.

1. In the ⋮ menu of Tender — Rev A, choose Duplicate, leave the ticks as they are, and press Duplicate.
2. Rename the copy Tender — Rev B (colorbond roof).
3. In the new estimate’s BOQ, open the roofing cost code and swap the tile items for the colorbond items from your price list.
4. Compare the two estimates side by side in either one’s Summary — the budget vs actual bars under the table put them on one scale.

Rev A is untouched. If the client goes back to tiles, you still have the original priced and ready to submit.

Templates

Ticking Make this estimate a template makes an estimate available in the Copy items from a template dropdown when creating new estimates.

This is how most builders avoid rebuilding the same bill on every job. Set up one estimate with your standard cost codes and the items you use on nearly every build — preliminaries, site costs, the standard trades — mark it as a template, and start every new job from it.

A template is a normal estimate. It lives under a project like any other, so many builders keep a project called something like _Templates to hold them.

Archived and deleted estimates

An estimate can be archived or deleted without touching its siblings.

Both are hidden from the list of estimates by default. The Show trashed and archived switch under the list of estimates brings them back into view, marked Archived or Trashed so you know what you are looking at. Restore from trash in the estimate’s menu brings a trashed one back; untick Estimate is archived under Edit details to unarchive one.

Two things worth knowing about that switch:

• It remembers. Your choice is kept against your login, so it survives leaving the page and coming back — you do not have to re-tick it every time.
• Showing them is not the same as being able to use them. A trashed or archived estimate appears in the grid but still cannot be selected, which is why the grid hides them by default: it then agrees with the estimate dropdown, which has always excluded them.

See Archiving and deleting.