Use the price book

The price book is your pre-priced library of labor rates and material items. Once it's filled in, estimates get faster, pricing stays consistent across crews, and you stop the 'wait, what do we charge for that?' conversation that happens five times a week at smaller shops.

Add items

Settings → Price book → Add item. Each item has a name, unit (each, hour, sqft, lf, sf, day), your cost, and either a markup percent or a fixed sell price. Whichever you change, the other recalculates.

Group similar items with tags ('drywall', 'rough plumbing', 'tile') so they're easier to find when adding to an estimate. Tags also help when you want to update all items in a category at once — vendor raised drywall prices 8%? Filter by tag, bulk-update.

Use in an estimate

When you add a line, start typing — the price book autosuggests. Pick an item and quantity; the line populates with the right description, unit, and price. Edit anything per-line if this job is special (a tight space upcharge, a non-standard finish, a friend-discount).

Keep it current

Update prices the day you get a new vendor quote. The price book is only useful if it reflects what things actually cost this week, not last quarter. Most shops do a quarterly review where they pull their last 5 invoices from each major vendor and re-baseline the costs.

Labor rates in the price book

Labor lines work the same as materials. Set the cost (your loaded labor rate including taxes and insurance) and the sell rate (what you charge the customer). The markup field shows the spread — most shops want this between 35-60% on labor depending on trade and complexity.

Different rates for different work: "Standard install hour," "After-hours emergency hour," "Apprentice hour" all live as separate price book items. Pick the right one per estimate line — no mental math.

Starting from scratch

If you have no price book yet, the fastest path is to open your last three estimates and extract every line item into the price book one at a time. After three estimates, you'll have 40-60 items, which covers about 80% of future bids. Add to it as new types of work come through.

Common price book mistakes

• Including taxes in the sell price. Tax should be calculated at the invoice level based on jurisdiction, not baked into individual line items.
• Markup that doesn't account for waste. For tile and drywall, your 'cost' should be 110% of the material order (10% waste factor). Otherwise your margin shrinks every job.
• Letting the price book go stale. If your costs are six months old, your margins are accidentally negative on the items where vendors raised prices.
• Not pricing the small things. Touch-up paint, screws, caulk, dump fees — these add up. Roll them into a 'job consumables' line at $50-150 depending on job size, or itemize.