Work with Financial Cost Items

You can create financial cost items in catalogs, estimates, alternates, and change orders.

When you create a financial cost item in the Catalog tab, you must either create a query or select all items to include as members of the financial cost item. You cannot select specific cost items to include as members.

All financial cost items have one of the following cost item types:
  • Labor
  • Equipment
  • Material
  • SubContr
  • Gen Req (Estimate, Alternates, and Change Orders)
  • Financials
  • Other1-Other10 (Catalog only)

You can subtotal a financial cost item with other cost items of the same type. For example, you could create a financial cost item with a Labor cost item type so you could add a 5% markup to all your labor costs. The cost of this financial cost item would then be included in the Labor subtotal, which appears at the bottom of the estimate and in many reports. For more information on how financial cost items are calculated, see Financial Cost Items.

When you expand a financial cost item in the estimate by selecting , it is highlighted in green and its members are highlighted in light green.

If you are going to create Create a Bid Day Instance, you must select the Use in Bid Day Adjustments checkbox for at least one financial cost item in the estimate to be able to adjust the estimate cost or unit price costs on the Summary tab. If you apply a financial cost item to another financial cost item, calculations performed when using the Bid Day functionality will not be correct. Calculations performed as part of the regular estimate functionality will be correct.

The status displays the current state of the cost item. This feature is especially useful when more than one person is working on an estimate or catalog to communicate the state of the cost item. The status is for display purposes only. You can mark cost items that need to be reviewed by another person or to alert others that the cost item has been changed. Statuses include:
  • Blank
  • Edited
  • Reviewed
  • Alert – Item appears in red
Note: Once you edit a cost item, the status automatically changes to Edited.

The reference of a cost item is a code that uniquely identifies the cost item. Each cost item in a catalog must have a unique reference. Cost items in an estimate, alternate, or change order do not need a unique reference. This means that you cannot leave the Reference blank in a catalog, but blank references are allowed in an estimate, alternate, or change order. The reference of a cost item can contain both numbers and letters.

If you edit or delete a cost item, only the tab where you made the change is affected.

For information on adding cost items to alternates, see Alternates Overview. For information on adding cost items to change orders, see Change Orders.

To open a job in the Manage Estimates screen, select Estimating > Estimating > Manage Estimates in the All Tasks pane. Then select the job you want to open, and select OK.
Tip:
  • Multiple users can work on the same job in the Estimating tab at the same time. The last person to perform an edit function to an estimate item will have the data retained.
  • Any sorts a user performs are temporary unless the job is set to Exclusive mode, which allows you to save sorts. Moving items also requires the job to be set to exclusive, or the move will be temporary.
  • To turn Exclusive mode on, get all other users to close the job, then select Set Job Exclusive. Make the changes to the estimate, then turn Exclusive mode off by selecting Set Job Exclusive again.
  • You can also lock a job, which not only turns on Exclusive mode, it prevents other users from editing the job. Note that all users can view a locked job. To lock a job, get all other users to close the job, then select Lock Job. To unlock a job, select Lock Job again.
  • Any filters performed in the Estimate tab are only seen by the user performing the filter.
  • You will see changes occur in real-time by changing tabs in the Manage Estimates screen or by refreshing the Estimate tab.