Two layers. Usage rows cover every line the takeoff can produce. Catalogue rows are the real products a yard sells. Your edits beat everything, then the catalogue default, then the shipped default. We only serve post-frame and barndominium builders, so the price book starts as lumber, steel and trim — and the shipped numbers are the blended median of every priced line across 258 real post-frame estimates, not invented.
Also called: price book · material prices · cost and sell · builder prices · what does 2x6 cost
The prices are yours, and they start out real
Every line the take-off can produce has a cost and a sell price you can edit. The shipped starting numbers are not invented: they are the blended median of every priced line across 258 real post-frame estimates from two shops, converted into the unit this list uses. What you pay against what you charge, and the margin bands that go with it, live in your material price book — this list is the one the model reads while you draw.
The default book says a laminated column is $12 a foot, the yard charges $4.53, and you find that out after the customer has signed at a price you cannot build for.
The owner can trust the first quote out of the box instead of discovering the defaults at the yard. The starting numbers were pulled out of real estimates by a script that can be re-run, not typed by somebody guessing — and since a median across two shops is nobody's yard exactly, every number on the page is a field you change yourself.
252 materials, searchable, priced one at a time
Try itFraming, sheathing, trim, accessories, doors and windows, trusses, foundation, freight and labour — every size of dimensional lumber, every steel gauge, each on its own row with a unit, a supplier code where the source lines had one, and a count of how many real priced lines it was built from. Search by name or SKU; trusses alone runs to 138 rows. The 252 materials it starts with, and the prices you overwrite with your own yard's, are all in the material price book.
The yard quotes you in SKUs, the list only searches by name, and the wrong panel gauge gets priced into a 4,000 square foot roof.
The office prices straight off the yard's quote on the desk, SKU and all, without guessing which row it means. Each row says how many priced lines it was built from, because a default from 3,045 lines of 2x6 and one from 61 lines of a single truss are not the same kind of number and should not look alike.
Change one price and every place it is used moves
Try itGirts are 2x6 SPF, purlins are 2x4 SPF, posts are the 3-ply laminated column, wall and roof steel is the 29ga panel. Because each drawn part is tied to a real product, editing 2x6 SPF once moves every girt, cripple and sill on every estimate at the same time. The counting itself — every stick, sheet and screw off the building you drew — is a separate job; this page is only what those pieces cost.
Lumber goes up four cents a foot and somebody has to hunt down girts, cripples, sills and eave struts on four separate rows, then do it again next month.
Lumber moves four cents a foot and the office makes one edit, not a hunt across four rows every month. The member the builder draws, the line on the estimate and the row in the price book are one material — and the judgement in that map is stated, not hidden: posts are the 3-ply laminated column because that is what both shops actually buy, 758 priced lines against 58.
A running price while you are still drawing
The builder shows a materials sell total that moves as the building moves, priced off the same book the estimate will use — so what does four more feet cost gets answered while the customer is still deciding. The figure holds steady through a drag and recomputes when you let go, rather than flickering under the cursor.
The customer asks what another eight feet does to the price, the honest answer is "let me work it up and call you tomorrow", and tomorrow is a day for him to ring somebody else.
The rep answers "what does four more feet cost" while the customer is still on the phone, not tomorrow. It runs through the same resolved book the estimate uses rather than a quicker builder-only approximation, because the number a builder says out loud is the one he is held to.
What four more feet costs, before you say yes
Stretch the building, hang a lean-to, put the roof on a 6/12 — the total under the panel moves with it. The same drag that changes the geometry changes the material count, and the material count is what the book prices, so there is no second step where somebody re-prices it by hand.
You quote 40 by 64 at a number, he comes back wanting 40 by 72, and the extra eight feet gets guessed at on the spot because re-quoting means starting again.
The customer gets his answer while he is still excited about the bigger building. Price is attached to the geometry rather than typed beside it, so the drawing and the number can never describe two different buildings — every change re-measures and re-prices about thirty-four line types so nobody has to remember to.
Upgrade one building without changing your defaults
Try itThis customer wants standing seam where your default is exposed-fastener ribbed. The choice is stored on the design, not in your settings — it changes what the take-off emits, so it reaches the money rather than just the picture, and every other job keeps the shop default. A design records only its departures, so it reopens in a year and prices the same way while the defaults it never touched go on improving underneath it.
One customer's standing-seam upgrade gets typed into the shop's default book, and the next four quotes go out priced on a roof those jobs are not getting.
One customer's standing-seam upgrade never leaks into the next four quotes. A design records only what departs from your defaults, so it reopens in a year priced the same way, while the defaults it never touched keep improving underneath it.
An unpriced line is named, not silently free
Try itA missing price costs zero and says nothing, which is exactly how gaps stay hidden until a customer conversation. The total reports how many lines it priced, how many it could not, and which ones, and the banner above the material list carries you to the rows that need a number, already highlighted. When a total comes back light because a material was never given a price, the price book names what went out unpriced.
Turning on a concrete slab and insulating all four walls left the estimate total completely unchanged, and nobody caught it until the invoice.
The office finds the missing price before the customer finds the low total. A usage with no price does not throw an error — it quietly adds nothing — so the unpriced count travels beside the total everywhere it is shown, and the banner drops you on the rows that need a number.
A check that stops a price being wrong by a stock length
The same mistake shipped three ways in one afternoon: steel keyed to a row that did not exist and priced at zero; lumber charged per foot against a piece count, so a 16 foot post billed as one foot; a per-truss rate applied to a line measured in feet, putting $27,740 of timber on a 16 foot porch. Every line now carries both numbers — 92 pieces and 1,404 feet consumed — and the book decides which one it multiplies. The guard behind that sits with the price book.
A 4,000 square foot roof prices at $225 because 27 foot panels were billed as one foot each, and the quote goes out looking like a bargain you now have to honour.
The owner never sends a $225 roof he then has to honour. Lumber is bought by the stick and priced by the foot, so that crossing happens in one conversion, and a build check walks every preset, roof shape, foundation and option — because the lines that go unpriced are the ones behind a toggle nobody thought to try.
One building, one price, on every screen
The estimate list, the pipeline card and the estimate workspace once answered what is this worth three different ways, and one estimate came out $8,299 apart from itself — the same building wearing two prices. All of them derive it from the drawing through this book now, so one number follows the job wherever it appears.
The card says $96,000, the estimate says $104,000, and the customer has been reading whichever one you happened to send him.
The customer hears one number from everyone in your company. One function computes the value and every screen calls it — slower than storing a figure, but a hand-typed number stops tracking the estimate the moment the building changes, and a quietly stale card is worse than one that takes a moment.
Materials are not the whole number
The running figure in the builder is materials at your sell price. The customer total adds the labour the building works out to, the services you dropped onto it and whatever markup you set — a materials-only figure under-states a job by roughly a third.
You quote off the materials figure, win the job, and discover the erection labour and the concrete pad were never in the number.
The owner never wins a job off the materials figure and then finds the labour and the pad were never in it. Materials are measured off the model and priced from a book; labour, services and markup are decisions a person makes and can defend — kept apart so you can see which half moved.
The order sheet names the same product you priced
The list that goes to the yard is regrouped the way a supplier prices — one line per material and stock length — and it names the catalogue product, not the drawing's word for it. What you priced as a girt and what you order as 2x6 SPF are the same row, so sending the order starts from the thing you already quoted.
The estimate says "wall girt", the yard's invoice says "2x6 SPF 16ft", and reconciling the two is somebody's Friday afternoon.
Friday afternoon stops going to reconciling "wall girt" on the estimate with "2x6 SPF 16ft" on the yard's invoice. The binding that makes a girt cost something is the same one that makes it orderable, read once and used by both — two maps would drift, and the drift shows up as a delivery that does not match the quote.
The live number stops when the estimate is dated
Try itWhile you are drawing, the total follows the book. Editing a price does not rewrite an estimate you have sent, or any version you saved — each one holds the prices it was saved with. Put your 2x6 up on Monday and everything still on the bench moves with it; go back to an older version and you are told what it comes to at today's prices beside what it was, rather than having it quietly repriced. Where an estimate freezes sets out exactly where that line falls.
Lumber moves in March and the quote he signed in January quietly reprices itself, so the number he agreed to is not the number on his contract.
The customer's January quote stays the January quote, even when lumber moves in March. A live price is right for a design nobody has seen and wrong for one a customer is reading, so the freeze is tied to saving a version — and an old version is never silently repriced, only compared against today.
Your cost never leaves your side of the screen
Every row holds two numbers. Every total a customer ever sees is built from the sell price — the cost column exists so the margin is in front of you at the moment you are typing the price, and it is on no quote, no portal and no printed estimate.
A cost column gets pasted into a quote once, and the customer has your margin in writing for every job you bid him after that.
Your margin stays yours — no customer ever sees what you paid. One book holding both numbers puts the margin in front of you at the moment you type the price, and every customer-facing total goes through the one function that reads the sell price, so there is no second path a cost could leak down.
- 1Open Builder prices in settings for the usage rows, or Materials for the full yard list.
- 2Edit a cost or a sell price. It lands on the running total in the builder, on the estimate and on the summary at once.
- 3Each part of the building is tied to a real product, so editing
2x6 SPFmoves every girt, cripple and sill on every estimate. - 4A design can carry its own material choices on top, without changing your defaults.
- 5The total tells you how many lines it priced, how many it could not, and which ones.
A price book that ships with invented numbers is worse than an empty one, because a builder trusts it once and finds out at the yard. The starting rates are the blended median of every priced line across 258 real post-frame estimates, converted into the units this list uses. Rows that are still an estimate rather than a measured median say so, so you know what to override first. And any material with no price is named out loud — a missing price silently costs zero, which is how earlier gaps hid for so long.
- A design tool with no prices, or with prices nobody can edit.
- Silent zero-cost lines dragging a total down with no signal.
The full yard price list
A catalogue built from every priced estimate across two real shops: Framing 27, Sheathing 14, Trim 24, Accessories 29, Doors & Windows 11, Trusses 138, Foundation 2, Freight 1, Labor 6. Each row carries a unit, a cost, a sell price, a supplier code where there was one, and how many priced lines it came from.
What each part of the building is actually made of
The join between the piece the 3D builder draws, the line on the estimate, and the row in your price list. The takeoff says Girt, 64 pcs; a yard sells 2x6 SPF by the foot. The tie between them is the price.
This building's own material choices
Material choices live on the design, not on your account. Only the departures from your defaults are stored. So one customer's upgrade is priced as an upgrade, every other job keeps the shop default, and improving a default still reaches every building that never overrode it.
A guard that stops a price being off by a stock length
A check that runs before anything ships. It walks every starting building and every combination of options, and fails the build if a line's quantity and its rate are in units that do not cross — a count against a per-foot rate, a per-truss rate against a measurement in feet.
A running price while you design
A live materials sell total, in the builder itself. It is priced through your own price list plus this design's material choices — the same numbers the estimate will use. It holds steady while you drag and recomputes when you let go, so it is not flickering under your cursor.