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Line-Item Pricing on Reports is Here!

Our Software
August 5, 2015

We know that every job is different, and sometimes you need to show customers a line-item breakdown of prices on your proposals. Now, with just 1 click you can do this in Clear Estimates.

Just below the "Payment Schedule" section on your proposals, click the checkbox to select and show line-item prices on your proposals. It's that easy! Once you've selected that, you'll see a line-item breakdown with pricing on your estimate.

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This is setup by default to be unchecked, but if you go to your options, then reports, then preliminary or formal you can set if you want it to be checked by default. This is great if you show line-item pricing on most proposals. You can always uncheck that box on estimates that you do not want to show line-item pricing for.

You may also notice there is an option for how to deal with parts that have no report text. Most of the time, you won't need to worry about this, but sometimes you'll have parts in your project that do not have text to show on the report. This is useful if you want to include an item in the estimate, but don't want to show the text or description of that item on your proposal.

Well, if you have those on your estimate we need to know how you want to handle the price for that item when you show line-item pricing. You have two options, the first and most simple one (and the default) is to "Do not show the line item". This basically means that the part still will not show up on the proposal and there will be no price for it. Let's take a quick example.

I have 3 just parts in an estimate: Installing wall framing ($1,000), installing 2 windows ($500), and painting ($250). Let's say that for some reason that I DO NOT want to show the wall framing or the painting on the estimate, so I removed the "Report Text" for those parts. Now on my estimate, the only part that shows is "Installing 2 Windows". Without line-item pricing, this doesn't matter. You see just the "Installing 2 Windows" and the total cost of $1,750.

But if I show line-item costs and have "do not show line item" selected, I'll see something like this:

Installing 2 windows - $500

Total Cost - $1,750

So the numbers do not add up, and this might confuse the customer. Instead, we provide you another option where you can group parts with no report text into "Other Costs" (you can change what text appears here in your options). This way your estimate with line-item costs will show:

Installing 2 windows - $500Other Costs - $1,250

Total Cost - $1,750

This might be a little confusing at first, but try just creating a small simple estimate as an example and taking the "Report Text" out for some parts. This should show you pretty easily how this works and how you can best use this.

As always, let us know if you have any questions!

Clear Estimates Team!

Jack Dean
Jack Dean