WHAT IS A COST CATALOG?
A Cost Catalog provides you with one place to store and log costs that you might commonly use between projects and templates.
WHERE IS IT?
Find the Cost Catalog in the template library of your account by selecting the Templates menu from the top navigation bar, then choosing Cost Catalog from the list of options.
You can additionally access information from the Cost Catalog from any Active or Prospect project plus your Specs & Selections templates. This allows you to bring down costs from the catalog and conversely also push costs from these areas back up to the catalog for storage.
THE PARTS & PIECES
As a repository of costs, the catalog stores basic information about the various costs you utilize when estimating plus providing ways to sort and search the list for easy use and updating.
Adding to the Catalog
There are four main ways to add costs to the catalog. Use the import function to bring in costs that live on an existing template or project OR to bring in costs from an outside spreadsheet file. Finally, add costs from scratch using the “+ New” function in the catalog.
Cost Anatomy
Each cost in the catalog contains a description, unit price, unit type, cost type, and accounting code. These same fields make up the cost lines you find in a project estimate and on Specs & Selections templates. Record the relevant information you’d like to store in the catalog. This will allow these costs to easily drop into a project or template for quick estimating.
Trade Partners - Assign the corresponding trade, vendor, subcontractor, or supplier to the cost. Use this to search and filter costs by who the prices come from. As your trades send you updated prices, easily pull up the list of their costs to then update.
Tags - Assign each cost with tags to enhance searching and filtering your cost catalog. Use these to tag costs under various criteria such as:
- Room (bathroom, kitchen, bedroom, etc.)
- Area of Construction (interior vs exterior)
- Division of Construction (remodel vs new construction)
- Last Updated (June 2019, Spring 2019, etc.)
- Quality of Material (good, better, best, mid-grade, high finish, etc.)
These can be used to quickly filter the cost catalog based on the tags applied.
SKU - Use this field to record the material model or SKU number for a cost.
URL to Website - Attach any website urls for the cost recorded.
LEVERAGING YOUR COSTS
Once you’ve built your catalog of costs, easily leverage this information to build estimates and update prices.
Quick Estimating
As you build an estimate for a prospective client, you’ll be able to pull information from the Cost Catalog. Search in the description field of a new Cost Line to find a cost from the catalog to pull in. Since the catalog will house costs of all kinds, you can pull in the most up-to-date information.
Updating Prices
When prices change, use the Cost Catalog to update those costs then you can select to send those updates to certain templates and projects. Check the box next to any cost with an updated price, then select Update Costs on Templates & Projects. You’ll see a list of projects and templates where that cost is utilized which you can then choose from to decide where to update the price.
Save time estimating and tracking down vendor/sub prices by storing these commonly used prices in the Cost Catalog!
Note: This function is only available on CoConstruct Core, Standard, and Plus plans.