Marking up line items

In this article, you'll learn how to mark up the items on a job or estimate. Type what an item costs you and the percentage you want on top, and the CRM works out the selling price. It's a quick way to keep a steady margin on parts, materials and anything else you buy in.

Markup lives on the line you add to a job or estimate, not on the price book item itself. A book item carries a price and, if you've entered one, a cost. The moment that item lands on a job, the markup is worked out from those two numbers.

To open the item form on a job:

  1. In the menu, click Jobs and open the job.
  2. Click the Items tab.
  3. Click Add item, or click a line that's already there to edit it.

To open the item form on an estimate:

  1. In the menu, click Estimates and open the estimate.
  2. Under Items, click Price book to pick from your book, or Add item to type a one-off line. Click a line that's already there to edit it.
Note: Markup and cost only show on a computer. The phone app's item forms show Item name, Quantity, Unit price and Description with a Taxable switch, and no markup or cost. The job's item form on the web at phone width drops them too. Do this part on a computer.

How markup, cost and price work together

Once the item has a name, the form shows a row of four boxes: Quantity, Price, Markup (a percentage) and Cost. The three money boxes drive each other:

  • Change Cost and the markup is recalculated from the price you already have.
  • Change Markup and the price moves to cost plus that percentage.
  • Change Price and the markup is recalculated from the cost.

For example, a cost of $50 and a markup of 100 gives a price of $100. Type 150 in Markup and the price becomes $125. Type 120 in Price and the markup reads 140.

Markup only works when there's a cost. With Cost left at 0.00, the markup stays at 0 and the price is whatever you type.

Marking up an item

  1. Open the item form on the job or estimate (see above).
  2. In Item Name, type a name. On a job, or after clicking Price book on an estimate, matching items from your book drop down as you type with their price beside them. Pick one and its price, cost, description and taxable setting come across.
  3. In Cost, type what the item costs you.
  4. In Markup, type the percentage you want on top. The Price box updates as you type.
  5. If you'd rather start from the selling price, type it in Price instead and the markup works itself out.
  6. Click Save.
Marking up an item on a job
Marking up an item on a job
Tip: On a computer, the price book's Add New Item dialog takes a title, category, description, price and the Taxable item and Enable item switches, so there's no cost box there and the book's table has no Cost column. The phone layout and the phone app's price book form do have a Unit Cost field. If a book item carries a cost, it comes across when you pick the item and the markup shows right away. If it doesn't, type the cost on the line.
Note: Changing the price, cost or markup on a job or estimate line only changes that line. The price book item stays as it was for the next job.

Seeing the margin on a job

On a computer, the job's Items tab lists every line with Quantity, Price, Cost, Amount and Taxable columns. When a line has both a price and a cost, a small grey Margin tag sits under the cost. It shows what share of the price is yours after cost, so a $100 price on a $50 cost reads 50.00 Margin.

The estimate's items table shows only Quantity, Price and Amount, so the Margin tag is a job-page thing.

The Margin tag under a line's cost on a job's Items tab
The Margin tag under a line's cost on a job's Items tab

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