Your services, each with a name, a unit, a rate, a category and a private note. Per square foot, per linear foot, per each, flat, or custom-quoted. You set them once in Settings; your reps pick them while quoting. On a SmartBuild-priced estimate they land as lines under Services & Add-Ons — measured in feet and inches, priced by the calculator or by hand, and any one of them can be made optional for the customer to add on their own page. On an estimate built in Leads 2 Build, concrete and gutters can also ride on the model itself. The operating system for post-frame and barndominium builders, so the list starts where your jobs do: the pad, the approach, the overhead doors, the engineered plans.
Also called: add-ons · concrete and site work pricing · extras list · services and add-ons
Your add-ons, priced once, quoted the same way by every rep
Concrete, insulation, gutters, doors, site prep, permits — your rows, your rates, grouped by category and searchable while the quote is open. Concrete and gutters can also go on the model instead of onto a line you fill in — put the service on the building and it takes its own quantity off the drawing.
The concrete rate lives on a sheet taped beside the printer, and the pad one rep quotes in March goes out at a different number than the one his partner quotes in April.
A rep at the kitchen table shouldn't have to make up a price. Whoever owns the pricing sets it once in Settings and the rep only picks from it, so every customer gets the same number for the same pad. A rep cannot invent a row from inside the estimate, and a line you no longer sell is switched off without deleting the quotes it is already on.
Each service prices the way you actually sell it, and prints the arithmetic
Per square foot from a length and a width, per linear foot, per each, flat, or custom-quoted — and the line shows its own math: 40′ × 60′ = 2,400 sq ft × $7.25 = $17,400. Type over the rate for one job and the line says it is above your standard $6.95 and offers to put it back. What it rolls into is the one total every screen shows.
Nothing on a hand-typed line tells you whether $7.25 was the rate or the total, so the discount someone gave to close a Friday deal stays invisible until the margin comes in short.
A number with its working beside it is a number nobody argues with. The unit decides which boxes appear, so a per-foot price can never be dropped into a flat charge — and a rate typed for one job never writes back to Settings, with the change written on the line where a reviewer can see it.
An option they can say yes to on their own page
Try itOn a SmartBuild-priced estimate, any service line can be made optional. It stays out of the total — the line says Not in the total until the customer adds it — and on the customer's page it is tagged Optional with its price and an Add to my project button. Added, it gets its own row under Your Investment and the total moves to match; Remove takes it back out. Its price is what adding it does to the whole job, markup share included, and the choice survives a re-quote. Once they approve, it is locked.
Leave the approach off and you've under-sold the job; put it in and the bottom line jumps $13,650 for something he only might want.
Customers like choosing; they don't like being sold to. An option they add themselves feels like their idea — the bigger job closes without a re-quote, and the base price still looks like the price.
Markup reaches the extras — on the job, the section or the line
Set Markup applies to to Everything and materials, labour and services are added up first, with the project percentage on the lot — a service bolted on after the markup is work you did at cost. Set it to Building materials only and services go on after the markup at the price you set. On a SmartBuild-priced estimate a section markup on Services & Add-Ons and a line markup on any single service stack on top. How the levels stack, and how they reach the customer's prices, is set out under markup.
You add $11,000 of slab, apply your thirty percent, and only later work out the percentage was figured on the building alone — the concrete went out at cost.
Builders know which extras carry risk — the pour on a wet site, the long haul. Putting margin exactly where the risk is protects profit on the jobs that would otherwise eat it, and the owner can see every markup on the job in one total.
Feet and inches, and a price you can type
Try itLength, width, size and linear feet take 20′6″, 20 6, 20.5 or 42″, and read back as 20′ 6″. Click a line's total to set its price by hand — the line shows it was set by hand against what it calculates, and Reset puts the arithmetic back. On a SmartBuild-priced estimate a hand-set price is off catalog, so it goes through pricing approvals like a changed rate.
The rep measures 48 foot 6, converts it to 48.5 in his head on the phone, gets it wrong, and the pad is priced on the wrong footage.
Reps measure in feet and inches and talk in round numbers. Taking both the way he says them removes the mental math where mistakes happen — and the line still shows what the catalog would have charged.
Raising your prices never rewrites a quote already in a buyer's hands
A service takes the rate it had the moment it went onto the estimate, and later catalog edits leave that line alone — the screen says the catalog price has changed instead of applying it. Materials behave the other way round: a number you move in your material price book reaches every design it touches, because the takeoff stays live until the estimate is cut.
You leave the price list stale on purpose, because every correction you make risks moving numbers on quotes already sitting in buyers' inboxes.
An owner should be able to fix a price list without fear. The old line holds its arithmetic and the newer price surfaces as something you choose to apply, on the jobs where applying it is fair. Nothing back-fills, so a correction is carried onto open quotes one at a time.
Add a service on Tuesday and the link he opened Monday shows it
The customer's page is a stored snapshot, and adding services or rewriting a note rebuilds it and pushes it to every unapproved link on that job. Once he has approved, nothing moves — the snapshot is the record of what was agreed, and a price change after that is a change order. The copy he is holding is rewritten at the same link, rather than a second quote landing in his inbox.
$11,568 of services goes onto a sent estimate and the customer is still reading a $37,246 quote with no services on it at all, until he rings about the difference.
A customer trusts a quote that agrees with itself. The page's totals are stored numbers, so one copy is kept current instead of a page that adds its own lines — debounced, and only when something he could actually see has changed.
Every drawn opening has a priced door behind it
Try itRather quote doors and windows as services than take SmartBuild's door costs? Tick Openings are drawn in SmartBuild, doors are added here in Settings → Service Catalog, and mark each door or window service with the opening it fills — garage / overhead, walk door or window. With Check every opening is covered before sending on, an estimate can't go out until its doors and windows cover every opening SmartBuild drew; turn the check off if you add openings SmartBuild can't draw, like a basement's. A line that looks like a door but isn't marked is named on the estimate, so a rep is never told to add a door he already added.
Twelve openings drawn, ten doors priced — and the two missing doors turn up on install day.
Nobody should be counting doors at nine at night. A check that runs on every estimate catches the missing door before the customer does, and the crew never stands in front of an opening with nothing to hang in it.
Three 9×8 doors is one line, at the size it actually is
Try itServices that come in a size carry a width, a height and a count, so the line names which door it is and multiplies out from a price you set per door. The size describes the item; it never quietly becomes a quantity — a 9×8 door costs what you say it costs, not seventy-two of something. It reaches the buyer as the scope list on the quote he reads.
Two 9×8 doors and a 10×10 all land on the estimate as "garage door", and the argument about which one the customer actually bought happens on install day with the crane already on site.
Nobody wants the which-door argument on install day. Whether a service has a size is set once on the service — a garage door does, a permit does not — and the size travels through to the sheet he signs, so the estimate itself records which door was bought.
Two descriptions per service: one for your estimator, one for the buyer
The internal note carries crew instructions and pricing cautions, and it never leaves the building. The customer-facing note is what the buyer reads under that line — 4″ of 4,000 psi over compacted gravel, fibre reinforced, broom finish. Leave it blank and no Details button appears on his line at all.
The note that warns "confirm frost depth before you commit to this price" is the same note the buyer reads, so either the crew loses the warning or the customer reads your cost caution.
The crew needs the warning and the customer needs the reassurance — never the other way round. Two labelled fields keep each audience's words where they belong, and the buyer's version is switched on one service at a time.
Rewrite the note for one buyer without changing it for anybody else
Try itA customer who has asked three times about frost depth should read about frost depth on his estimate — and the standard wording should still be standard for the next one. A line can carry its own note, be silenced on purpose, or follow the catalog, and Reset to standard puts it back in one click. Where that note lands in front of him, under the line behind Details, is on the quote your customer reads.
A buyer who has asked twice about frost depth still gets the same generic concrete blurb as everyone else, because the only wording you have is the wording everyone gets.
A customer who asked three times feels heard when the answer is on his estimate. Tailoring is a copy taken by that one line, so the shared wording is never touched — and a blank note and a missing note are stored differently, so a decision to say nothing is never lost.
The switch says 336 sq ft, not "show measurements"
Try itEach service on the quote gets two switches — how much there is, and what each one costs — and each switch is labelled with the literal text it turns on: 336 sq ft, $13/sq ft. A builder who bundles labour into a square-foot rate turns the second off and keeps the first; a builder quoting a package turns both off and shows a name and a number.
The customer sees $13 a square foot against the stone, works the material cost out for himself, and the next meeting is about your margin instead of his building.
A builder decides faster when the switch shows the words the customer will read. The labels come from how the service is priced, never chosen by hand, so Versetta Stone can't be shown the wrong way on a page the customer is already reading.
Hiding a line takes it off the page, not out of the price
Try itTurn a service off for this customer and it stops being itemised — the Customer Total does not move. Same rule the labour and markup rows follow. The switches sit in one place, what they see, and they are the same switches before you send and after.
Somebody hides the site-prep line to keep the quote looking simple, the total drops by $2,400 without anyone saying so, and it turns up as a short invoice.
Hiding detail must never hand out a discount by accident. One switch per visible thing, and the total stays put — so a tidy quote never turns into a short invoice.
The concrete bundle you quote every week lands in one action
Save a set of services with their quantities, sizes and prices already dialled in, then drop the whole thing onto any estimate. Templates live outside any one job — a package belongs to the business, so you build it from the Estimates header or save one out of the estimate you have just priced.
The same four lines get rebuilt from the catalog on every quote, and on the third one that week the site prep is left off — $2,400 of work done for nothing.
The package you quote every week shouldn't take ten minutes every week. The template builder uses the same line editor as the estimate, so a rate typed into a package behaves exactly like a rate typed onto a job — and the site prep is never forgotten on the third quote of the day.
An applied package stays a unit you can lift back out
Try itThe group comes out in one action while the lines you added by hand stay — and the reverse: remove what you added and every package survives it. A builder who adds a couple of things, applies a template, then changes his mind about the template should not have to work out which four rows came from where.
Seven service rows on the estimate, four of them from a template he no longer wants, and the only way out is deleting rows one at a time and hoping he got the right ones.
Changing your mind about a package should take one click, not a hunt. Membership is written onto each line when the package is applied, so the group lifts out cleanly and hand-added rows stay put.
Applying a template copies it — editing one never reaches the other
The lines become the estimate's own. Changing a quantity here never writes back to the saved package, and editing the package never reaches into estimates already built from it. They still price and print one by one for the buyer, instead of arriving as a lump he cannot question.
You tidy a price in the garage template in March, and four quotes already sitting in buyers' inboxes quietly change with it.
A quote already in a buyer's inbox should never move because you tidied a template. The lines become the estimate's own, and they still price and print one by one so the buyer can question any of them.
Two garages means two garage packages
Try itThe same package can be applied more than once, and each one is its own removable group — a second garage is a second set of doors and a second slab, not a duplicate. Each group keeps the template's name, frozen at the moment it went on, so it stays labelled even after you rename or delete the saved template.
The second shop gets its own slab and its own two doors, then removing the first garage package strips all four lines and nobody notices until the contract is out.
Two garages is two garages, and the quote should say so. Each application gets its own id, so removing one package never takes the other with it — on exactly the job where that would cost the most.
- 1Add your services in Settings, Service Catalog — a unit, a rate and a category each.
- 2On an estimate, pick a service and the right calculator appears: square feet from a length and a width, linear feet, a count, a flat charge, or a price you type. Measurements take feet and inches — 20′6″, 20 6 or 20.5.
- 3Each line prints its own math — 1,200 sq ft × $3.30 = $3,960 — or click the total to set the line's price by hand.
- 4Make optional keeps a line out of the total until the customer adds it on their page.
- 5With your markup set to apply to Everything, services carry it alongside materials and labour — and a section markup or a line markup can sit on top.
- 6Lines save to the job as you type, so a background refresh can never wipe an edit in flight.
Builders quote far more than the shell — concrete, site prep, permits, doors, insulation — and all of it lived in a PDF or in a rep's head, priced from memory on the phone. Two reps quoting the same slab a month apart came out well over a thousand dollars apart, and the low one is the one that got sold. Now it is your own priced list, and it lands on the estimate as a calculator. The rest followed from how builders actually sell. Margin has to be able to reach the extras, because an $11,000 pad at cost is $11,000 of work done for nothing. A rep standing in a driveway says twenty and a half feet, so the boxes take feet and inches. And a customer who might want the 40 by 40 approach shouldn't see it inflate the bottom line — so it can sit on the quote as an option, priced, until they say yes.
- Add-on pricing living in a document nobody updates
- Every rep quoting the same service at a different rate
- Arithmetic done by hand on the phone
- Options that either inflate the total or get left off the quote
- Drawn openings with no priced door or window behind them
Rates freeze when you add them
Each line carries its own copy of the rate, the unit and the name. Change your catalog afterwards and the line does not move — the row tells you the catalog price has changed and offers the new one, rather than applying it behind your back.
Sized services — a 9×8 door, three of them
Mark an item as sized and its lines gain a width and a height. The size names which door this line is and never feeds the arithmetic — a 9×8 door costs what you say it costs, not 72 of something. Custom-quoted lines carry a price each and a count that multiplies it.
Unit-aware service calculators
Five kinds of unit, each with its own controls and its own wording. A square-foot line can be entered as length by width, and it keeps both — because the dimensions are what a customer recognises. A 21 by 16 pad means something that a bare 336 sq ft does not.
Two notes on a service — one private, one for the customer
One description was doing two jobs. The private one stays what it always was — crew instructions and pricing cautions, and it never leaves the building. The customer one is what a buyer reads when they tap Details: four inches of 4,000 PSI concrete over compacted gravel, fibre reinforced, broom finish.
Change the customer note for one customer only
Three states on every line: follow your standard wording, blank it on purpose for this customer, or write something specific. Your standard is always still there, which is what makes an override undoable.