Price book · One module of the operating system
Price the house type once.
Quote it for the rest of your life.
The price book is your library of complete priced builds. A standard four by two, a duplex, a second-storey addition, each priced in full with its sections, its takeoff and its plans, and pushed onto a new job as a working estimate rather than a starting point. Revisions are kept as a chain, so the version you quoted from last March still exists exactly as it was.
The Founding Builders Programme · Onboarding in small cohorts
01 / What it does
What this feature does
Most builders repeat themselves. The same house type, the same renovation package, the same granny flat, priced again from scratch every time it comes up. The price book is the module that removes that repetition, and it is worth being precise about what it holds. A price book entry is a whole priced build, structured exactly like a real estimate with sections, line items, takeoff and plans, but attached to no job. It is a design you can quote, not a rate you can look up.
The rates themselves live in the catalogue, which is the item and assembly database. The price book is priced from it. That distinction is the one to hold onto when you compare products, because different vendors use the phrase price book to mean one or the other, and the two answer different questions. The reasoning behind keeping a cost database is in the cost database, and the estimating discipline that sits on top of both is in estimating. How the module fits a business built on repeating designs is on the project home builder page.
What makes the module useful rather than merely convenient is what happens over time. Rates move. A price book priced eighteen months ago is quietly wrong, and the failure mode is that nobody notices until a job is won at last year’s timber price. So the price book keeps watch on the catalogue behind it, and tells you which of its lines were priced from an item whose cost has since changed.
02 / Why it matters
Why builders need it
The same house priced five times
Volume and repeat builders re-price the same design on every enquiry. That work produces no new information, and each repetition is a fresh chance to leave something out.
A quote is not a starting point
A template that gives you a blank structure saves nothing. What saves time is a complete priced build with its takeoff and plans attached, arriving on the new job ready to adjust.
Rates move and nobody tells you
The quiet way to lose a job’s margin is to quote it from a price book that was accurate when it was written. The question is not whether prices moved, it is whether you found out before you sent the quote.
Updating in place erases the evidence
If re-pricing overwrites the price book, the version you quoted from last March no longer exists, and a question about that quote can never be answered. A revision chain keeps both.
Estimating knowledge walks out the door
When the design, the takeoff and the pricing logic live in one estimator’s head or one estimator’s spreadsheet, the business owns nothing. In a price book the business owns it.
A won job should not stay tied to a template
Once a design is pushed onto a job it becomes that job’s estimate and stops moving. Later changes to the library do not reach backwards into work already quoted, which is the correct behaviour, not a limitation.
03 / The VIABUILD way
How VIABUILD handles it
A price book entry is a complete estimate with no job attached, cloned whole onto the next one, and revised rather than overwritten.
Building an entry is exactly like building an estimate, because structurally it is one. It has sections, line items priced from catalogue items or entered by hand, and it can carry its own plans, takeoff sessions and measurements. That is a deliberate architectural choice rather than a shortcut, and it is what allows the whole thing to be pushed onto a real job without translation.
Pushing it clones everything. Sections, plans and plan pages, takeoff sessions and their measurements, bill of material items, deductions and graphic measurements, then the line items with all of their references remapped to the copies rather than left pointing at the library. The result lands on the job as a draft estimate carrying a record of which price book and which revision it came from. If any part of the clone fails, the partial estimate is removed rather than left half-built, so you never inherit a design that is silently missing a section.
From that moment the job’s estimate is its own thing. Revising the price book later does not reach back into jobs already quoted from it, which is what you want. A quote sent to a client should not change because someone tidied the library afterwards.
Drift is where the module earns its place. A price book line that was priced from a catalogue item keeps a link to that item, and the system compares the price captured in the line against the item’s current price on every read. That produces a live count of how many price books have moved, shown in the navigation, and a per-book table of exactly which lines are affected and what changed. Re-pricing then does not edit the entry in place. It clones the whole entry to a new revision, re-prices the lines that carry a catalogue item, leaves the lines you entered by hand alone, and marks the previous revision superseded so it stays readable rather than disappearing.
- A price book entry is a complete priced build, not a blank template
- Sections, line items, plans, takeoff and measurements all included
- Pushed onto a job as a full clone, landing as a draft estimate
- The pushed estimate records which entry and revision it came from
- A live count of which price books were priced on rates that moved
- A per-book view of the exact lines affected and what changed
- Re-pricing creates a new revision and supersedes the old one
- Lines you priced by hand are never re-priced behind you
04 / The workflow
How it runs, step by step
- 01
Price the design once, properly
Build the entry the way you would build a real estimate, sections and line items priced from the catalogue, with the plans and takeoff attached if the design has them. The effort is spent once.
- 02
Keep the library small and real
A price book is worth keeping for a design you actually repeat, a standard house type, a renovation package, a granny flat. A library of speculative entries nobody quotes is maintenance without return.
- 03
Push it onto the new job
The whole entry is cloned onto the job, plans, takeoff, measurements and line items with every reference remapped, and lands as a draft estimate that records where it came from.
- 04
Adjust for this job, not for the library
From that point the estimate belongs to the job. Site conditions, client changes and this build’s specifics are priced there, and none of it reaches back into the library.
- 05
Watch the drift signal
The navigation carries a count of how many price book entries hold lines priced from a catalogue item whose price has since changed, so the question of whether the library is current answers itself.
- 06
See exactly what moved
Open the entry and the affected lines are listed with the price captured at the time against the current one, so re-pricing is a decision made with the numbers in front of you rather than a blanket refresh.
- 07
Re-price into a new revision
Updating clones the entry to a new revision and marks the old one superseded. Nothing is overwritten, so the version behind a quote you already sent remains exactly as it was.
- 08
Lock the estimate and the job takes over
When the job’s estimate is locked it pushes into the job budget grouped by cost code, and from there into purchase orders and cost tracking. The library’s job ends at the quote.
05 / FAQ
Common questions.
A library of complete priced builds. A price book entry is a whole design priced in full, with its sections, line items, plans and takeoff, attached to no job, ready to be pushed onto the next one that matches. It is not a rate lookup. The rates live in the catalogue, which is the item and assembly database the price book prices from. Both meanings of the phrase are in common use across the market, so when you are comparing products it is worth asking which one a vendor means before you assume the feature you saw is the feature you need.
Everything the entry holds. Sections, line items, plans and plan pages, takeoff sessions, takeoff measurements, bill of material items, deductions and graphic measurements, with every internal reference remapped to the copies so nothing on the new job points back at the library. It arrives as a draft estimate on the job, recording which entry and which revision it came from. If any part of the copy fails the incomplete estimate is removed rather than left in place, so you cannot inherit a design that is quietly missing a section.
No, and deliberately so. Once a design is pushed onto a job, that job’s estimate is an independent record. Later revisions to the library do not reach backwards into it. A quote that changes after it was sent, because someone tidied a template, is a quote you cannot stand behind, so the pushed estimate is frozen at the point it was created and only the job changes it from then on.
The system tells you rather than waiting for you to check. Every price book line that was priced from a catalogue item keeps a link to that item, and the price captured on the line is compared against the item’s current price whenever the question is asked. That produces a running count of how many price book entries are affected, shown in the navigation, and a per-entry view listing the specific lines with what they were priced at against what the catalogue now says. The point is that staleness becomes visible before a quote goes out rather than after a job is won.
It is cloned rather than edited. Re-pricing creates a new revision of the whole entry, re-prices the lines that carry a catalogue item from the current catalogue price, leaves lines you entered by hand exactly as you priced them, and marks the previous revision superseded. The superseded revision stays readable, which is what makes the chain useful. If someone asks in a year why a quote from last March said what it said, the answer is a revision you can open, not a reconstruction.
No. Where an estimating practice applies one of its own price books into a builder’s organisation, the design is flattened on the way across. Values are copied, and every link back to the estimator’s own assemblies, catalogue items, cost codes and suppliers is deliberately stripped, with the origin recorded as a note instead. The builder receives a priced quote, not the costing intellectual property behind it, which is the arrangement that makes the sharing workable at all.
No. Pricing here is arithmetic over your own rates. Line values come from catalogue costs or from what you typed, totals are the sum of the lines, markup is a percentage you set at the organisation or the estimate level, and GST is applied at the statutory rate. Oryn™ does not choose a price, adjust a margin or predict a cost anywhere in this module. Where the intelligence layer touches estimating it is in reading documents, matching supplier price list rows to your catalogue items deterministically, and suggesting cost codes from vocabulary mined out of your own history.
06 / Keep reading
Related features & guides
Price your most-repeated design once, and stop re-pricing it.
Build one price book entry for the house type you quote most, push it onto a live enquiry with the takeoff attached, and let the drift signal tell you when the rates behind it have moved.