Table of Contents
What Are Kits?
Kits are an item type used in estimating to help quickly create consistent estimates. Kits combine multiple items and production factors, along with takeoffs, to produce estimated labor hours or quantity of items. While kits are an item type, they often group other items types like material or labor.
🌟 Developing kits is a great way to make sure your estimates are accurately and consistently proposed.
Requirements
You must have System Admin access or
Branch Admin access with Enhanced Branch Security checked.
(To do this go to Administration ➡️ Configuration ➡️ Application)
How to Create a Kit
1. Go to Settings.
2. Click Administration.
3. Next, click the Estimating tab.
4. Then, select Item Catalog.
The Item Catalog will appear showing your already created items! To create a new Kit, click New in the upper right then click New Kit.
Enter the name of your kit in the Item Name field. For more info on where Item Names and Alternate Names appear in Aspire, click here.
The Alternate Name will populate automatically with the Item Name since it is common for these to be the same.
Assign a Category.
Assign a Unit Type. The unit type of the kit relates to how the takeoff that will be used is measured. Typically, the Unit Type should match the Takeoff Item unit of measurement.
Assign a Takeoff Item if needed. Takeoff Items are often assigned to kits being used in Contract Opportunities but are not required. Kits for work orders will have takeoffs entered at the opportunity level.
By default, new Items will be available for all Branches. A branch can be assigned if the kit should be limited to specific branches.
The Available to Bid checkbox is checked by default and is what lets the kit be used within an estimate.
If needed, check the Force Single Unit Pricing checkbox. This is most commonly used with planting material kits. For more info on Single Unit Pricing, click here.
Add a description in the Description field if needed. You can have the option for kit descriptions to display on proposal layouts.
Adding Items to a Kit
After the above fields are filled out, we can assign items to our kit by searching the items catalog.
📌 Note: The items used for a kit must be created first before the kit itself. To learn about creating other items besides kits, click here.
Once the item is added, the item setup can be completed.
Item Name is assigned form the catalog item selected.
Item Type is assigned from the catalog item selected.
🧠 For Factors, Units, and Inverting, read the section below to better understand what to put in these fields.
Enter your Factor, or Production Factor, for each item assigned to the kit.
The Units displayed are the Unit Type of the item added and the Unit Type assigned to the kit.
Selecting Invert will flip the Unit Types.
The Waste field allows a waste percent for the item.
Example: Brick pavers are estimated based upon the square footage of the patio. However, because of cuts needed, it has been determined that there will be 10% waste from those cuts. This factor will allow for that waste when estimating and purchasing.
Unit Cost is assigned from the catalog item selected.
Extended Cost is calculated using Unit Cost and Factors.
Once all the information is entered, click Save in the upper right.
Factors, Units, and Inverting
💡 When creating a kit, it's important to understand the relationship between the Factor, Units, and Inverting. Let's look at a kit with a production rate for our team to cut grass using a 21'' mower.
We'll read our Factor and Units from left to right. The kit is setup to say it takes .006 Hours for every 1 SqFt of grass mowed with a 21" mower. As you can see, our Units column shows Hr / SqFt.
If we use SqFt as our production factor, we can use the invert button to flip our unit types. This means we have now switched from Hr / SqFt to SqFt / Hr. The kit now reads we can cut 10,000 SqFt of grass per 1 Hour.
Kit Examples
⚠️ The factors used below are for example purposes only and may not be how your company performs work.
Mower Size
It's common to create kits based on the size of the mower. After all, a larger mower will be able to cut more grass in a shorter amount of time than a smaller deck mower. Therefore, a 21'' mower will have a different production rate then a 60'' mower.
Spreading Mulch
When building kits, you will want to not only at labor items but also the material items needed to do the service. It is common to calculate how much mulch is needed by measuring the square footage to be mulched and how deep the mulch is being spread.
This kit below is saying a crew member can mulch 162 SqFt every labor hour (1) and the mulch will cover 162 SqFt with every cubic yard spread.
Installing Plants
Plant Install kits can be used to calculate labor and materials based on count of plant material.
The below kit is saying we can install (25) 1 gal Liriope per 1 hour. The plant item itself will calculate estimated QTY based on total entered in the Estimate.
Using a Kit in an Opportunity
Using the previous examples, we can see what the kit will look like when estimating.
When adding items to services in our estimate kits can be search for by name and will be identified as kit on the left hand side.
When selected, the unit type assigned to the kit can be displayed and our qty entered. Using the previous example, entering 10,000 SqFt will estimate 1 crew labor hour.
Changing the quantity based on the takeoff we've performed, or what we've measured at the site, changes our labor hours to reflect the new quantity (3.5).
