A price list is only worth what its rates are worth
Keeping rates current is what separates a useful list from a stale one that makes your estimates confidently wrong. SmarteBuild links items back to their source, so a refresh reaches them — and tells you what moved rather than changing it underneath you.
Available on the Estimator plan and above
Four ways to refresh, and one to prefer
Alert Price Changes is the setting to have on. It tells you a rate has moved rather than changing it underneath you, so you decide whether to take the new price.
| Command | What it does |
|---|---|
| Renew prices | Updates the selected items from their linked source |
| Renew all below prices | Updates everything below the current point |
| Renew all the products of this estimate | Refreshes the whole estimate |
| Alert Price Changes | Flags items whose source price has moved, without changing them |
Never renew prices on a submitted tender
Refreshing rates on an estimate you have already quoted changes what the job says it costs, and your submitted price no longer matches your bill.
If you want to see what current rates would do, duplicate the estimate and update the copy.
A typed rate is invisible to every refresh, forever
Only items carrying a Link to Pricelist can be reached by a refresh. Rates typed by hand stay exactly as typed, however many times you renew.
That is the practical argument for building estimates from the price list rather than typing over the top of it — not tidiness, but whether next year's refresh can reach the number at all.
Use the SmarteBuild catalogue, at the price you actually pay
The shared library saves you building a catalogue from nothing, but its rates are not your rates — you have an account with your supplier and someone else does not. Set your own price against any SmarteBuild item or product and yours is what estimates from then on, with the change kept in the item's price history like any other.
Re-pricing a list without clicking down it
Export takes the list out to Excel, where a whole trade can be re-priced in a morning or sent to a supplier to fill in. Import brings the file back, updating the items that already exist rather than creating a second copy of each one.
Inside the list, two views sit side by side: Items, which are the rates you estimate with, and Products, which are the things suppliers actually sell, filed under the item each one belongs to. Filters find the items where you have set your own price, or where a product is linked — which is how you check a list is doing its job rather than slowly going stale.
One of three ways to price an item
Your own price list, your history from previous jobs, or a quote a trade has just given you. A good estimate uses all three and knows which is which.
A closer look at price lists
The list, its structure, and what happens when a rate moves.
What it connects to
Nothing in SmarteBuild is an island — that is the point of it. Price Lists & Products reads from and feeds into these.
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Bill of Quantities
The costed spine of the job — items, rates, markups and margin
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Suppliers
One supplier list across every job, with their products and rates
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Cost Codes & WBS
Structure a job once and reuse it on every job after it
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Quotes Received
Record what trades quoted and push the winner into the BOQ
Want the detail?
The help centre documents Price Lists & Products step by step, with worked examples — written for people using it, not for a brochure.
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