Marking up line items

In this article, you'll learn how to mark up the items on a job or estimate. Enter what an item costs you and the percentage you want on top, and the CRM works out the 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. So you set it on the job or estimate, and the Margin shows up on that job's items list.

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 Add item, or click a line that's already there to edit it.
Note: Markup and cost are web-only. The phone app's item forms show the item name, quantity, unit price and description, but no markup or cost. Do this part on the web.

How markup, cost and price work together

Once the item has a name, the form shows one row of four boxes: Quantity, Price, Markup (as 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. If it matches something in your price book, pick it from the list that drops down. The book item's price, cost, description and taxable setting come across with it.
  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.
Tip: Price book items don't have a cost field of their own. The Add New Item form in the price book takes a title, category, description, price and the taxable and enabled switches, so there's no automatic markup on the book item. If an item was brought in by an import and carries a cost, that cost comes across when you pick it, and the markup is worked out from it right away.
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 the web, the job's Items tab lists every line with its 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, showing what share of the price is yours after cost. 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.

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