Table of Contents
Purpose
Having dedicated subcontractor items in your catalog allows you to accurately quote, track, and analyze subcontractor costs across jobs.
Some common subcontractor item examples include:
Trade Subcontractors to provide electrical, plumbing or masonry to account for trade-specific subbed work.
Service Providers for portable toilet rental, and surveying.
Equipment Rentals for cranes or excavators for equipment supplied by subs.
Material Installations for landscaping, fencing, or paving for subcontracted material and labor.
Additionally, a centralized subcontractor catalog helps you with vendor tracking that makes sure only approved or contracted subs are used. You’d be able to budget with accuracy and base Sub budgets on real historical data!
🧠 Some Sub item examples include: Sub Snow Removal, Sub Irrigation, Sub Hours, or Sub Equipment.
Overall, building out a comprehensive subcontractor item catalog allows you to properly plan for and manage subcontractor usage, while analyzing costs to make more strategic sub decisions.
Requirements
✅In order to add Sub Items to the Item Catalog, you must have System Admin or Branch Admin permission.
✅If you have Branch Admin permission you’d also need Enhanced Branch Admin Security added to your user role.
Creating Sub Items in the Item Catalog
Before Sub items can be used on estimates, they must first be created in the item catalog.
The item catalog is located in the Estimating tab of Administration, is a record of current or past items that have been created for estimating services.
⚠️ In this article, we will go over important fields to use, and skip over the ones not needed for sub item set up.
To add an item to the catalog:
Click your Profile Icon in the blue side menu. Then, select Administration.
Navigate to the Estimating tab and then select the Item Catalog tab.
To create a new item for the item catalog, click the blue New icon and a dropdown menu will appear. Select the New Sub item type.
The New Sub Item screen will appear.
You can begin to add your Sub Item details to get closer to adding it to the Item Catalog!
Type in the Sub Item Name.
This will be the name that is displayed on your customer’s proposal.
The Alternate Name can be the same as the item name, left blank, or updated.
You can edit the alternate name to be a specific name of a product, plant genus, species or other scientific names as needed.
Alternate Name appears in the Item Catalog Search List, when searching in the Purchasing Assistant, is available for use on Purchase Receipt layouts or on estimate sheet layouts.
Select the Category that the Sub Item should belong to.
Item categories can be set up in Lists in Administration.
You can navigate there by selecting your Profile Icon ▶️ Application ▶️ Lists ▶️ Catalog Item Category ▶️ Then, you’d select the New button to create a new category!
The Item Code field is also available below Item Category.
This is an optional field where you can enter a vendor code or manufacturer code.
📑Learn more about the differences between Item Name vs. Item Alternate Name vs. Item Code by clicking here.
📑 In this next section, we discuss Purchase Units vs. Allocation Units. For a more detailed explanation of how to set these up, read this article!
Enter in how much the unit cost is from the vendor in the Purchase Unit Cost field.
Select the purchase unit’s measurement which is how the item is ordered or bought.
Select the allocation unit’s measurement in how the item will be allocated to jobs.
If unit measure is different from the Purchase Unit you will need to fill out the conversion factor in the Allocation field.
⚠️Make sure the item catalog’s purchase unit is entered and converted correctly with the correct Allocation Unit. This is important when processing your vendor’s invoices. If the Allocation Unit is entered incorrectly in the purchase receipt, this could cause inaccuracies in your revenue.
See chart below for examples:
Item Name | Purchase Unit | Conversion | Allocation Unit |
Sub Parking Lot Sweeping | Dollar | 1 | Dollar |
Sub Snow Removal | Day | 8 | Hr |
📌 Note: The Allocation Item Cost will update once the item has been saved.
Assign the branch(es) for where the item will be available. This function is available only if the Enhanced Branch Admin Security permission is checked in Administration ➡️ Configuration ➡️ Application.
You can select All Branches so your item is available to all branches, or if your item is specific to a certain branch, you can select the branch from this drop down.
The Takeoff Item drop down is used to allow Aspire to automatically calculate item quantities.
If desired, select the Takeoff Item from where the calculation on the estimate should happen. This is mainly used for building kits.
The Description field provides a more complete description of the item. This note becomes available when the item is placed onto a service in the estimate.
🧠You can also choose to include the item description in a proposal layout to give extra information to your customer.
Checking the Available to bid checkbox will make sure the item can be used when estimating a service that contains the item.
Checking the Inventory item checkbox will make the item available to be received in inventory.
The Price List is found at the bottom of the item details screen.
You can select New to create an Allocation item cost different from the original cost by entering the new price list purchase unit cost.
This new cost will be applied to the price list catalog you’ve selected.
🧠Reminder: Price List Catalogs are used for setting up pricing overrides at the branch level for specific items in the catalog. Catalog Price Lists are added to your organization’s Branches on the Branches screen.
When all of your edits to your Sub Item have been made, select save to add it to the item catalog.
⚠️ If you want to edit the item name later, after it has been bid, we recommend not changing the name on the original item. Instead, make the item unavailable to bid and create a new item. Update kits and templates with that item, then deactivate the old item.