Price lists and products
Your rates, kept — and the supplier behind each one
Why this one matters
Your prices are the one thing in an estimate that is genuinely yours. They are what you have negotiated, what you have been burned by, and what you know a trade will actually accept — and in most businesses they live in one person’s memory and a two-year-old spreadsheet.
A price list is that knowledge written down once, with the supplier and the product attached, so the estimate and the purchase order are talking about the same thing.
What you will see
- A price list organised under the same cost codes as the estimate
- Several suppliers held against one item, with their prices
- A superseded product marked, so an old range is not picked by mistake
- The chosen product carried through to the order
What was said
The narration, word for word, for anyone who would rather read it than watch it — or who is on a train.
A price list is your rates, kept in one place: each item with its unit, its price, and its cost code.
Down the left are the cost codes the price list is filed under, with a search to find one quickly. Click a cost code to see just its items, or All items to see everything again.
SmarteBuild supplies a list to start from. Mine shows the items your company has added. Each estimate uses the price list you choose for it when you create it.
My price set shows the SmarteBuild items you have put your own price on. With products and No products show which items have supplier products linked, so you can see where the gaps are. And the search finds any item by its code, name or description.
If a supplied rate isn't yours, set your own price on it. Yours is used instead, from the date you choose.
To add a rate of your own, press New item. Give it a name, a code and a unit, its price before GST, and its cost type, and file it under a cost code so it lands in the right place on every estimate. Then Create item.
Products are what you actually buy: a supplier's product, with its code and its price, filed under the price list item it supplies.
Grouped by item, you can see every product that can supply each one. Choose a product on a bill of quantities item, and its price comes with it.
When rates move, renew them. Items in your estimates that came from the price list update. Items typed onto a job by hand don't, because they were never linked.
Columns chooses what the list shows: here, each item's cost code. Import brings a whole price list in from Excel, which is how most builders move their rates across, and Export gives you a copy to work on or send to a supplier.
Keep the list current, and every estimate you start from it is current too.
Doing it, rather than watching it
This page is the tour. When you are in SmarteBuild with a job open and need the detail — every option, every exception, the things the video had no time for — the help centre has the full article.
Building a price list — the full reference
Read about it instead: Price Lists & Products · Suppliers · Purchase Orders
Start with one job and see
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