Find answers to common questions about efficiently managing your projects using Buildertrend. Dive in to discover tips, best practices, and expert insights that will help you navigate your financial management tasks with confidence and ease.

Cost Codes are specific to the needs of each builder and should therefore represent company workflows, materials and needs. Click here to access our Cost Code Overview article and review best practices and download a copy of the National Association of Home Builders standard codes.

A Variance Code is used to show an unexpected cost in the Budget. When marked as a Customer Variance, Purchase Order costs collected from a Change Order will reflect appropriately in the Budget.

Variance Codes that are marked as a Customer Variance are the only codes that will be recognized in the Budget as client-initiated. All other costs will be recognized as Builder Variance and seen as a cost your company must cover. Variance Codes can be edited within the Cost Code section of the Company Settings menu.

This is a default Cost Code added to your account, used as a preliminary placeholder until your Codes are uploaded or created.

Cost Codes are the foundation of all Financial Management features in Buildertrend. They may be referred to as items, products and services, trades, labor and materials, or anything that describes your costing process.

Cost Categories are the groups in which Cost Codes are organized by. Buildertrend provides a default Category, "Buildertrend Default", used as a preliminary placeholder until your Categories are uploaded or created.

A Cost Code is the title of the product, service, or item used in costing process. There is no dollar value, quantity, SKU or any further information attached.

A Cost Item is a purchasable product or service associated with a single Cost Code. Numerous Cost Items can be associated with a Cost Code to avoid having a Cost Code list that is too specific.

Example: A single appliance Cost Code "100 - Appliance" would contain multiple Cost Items, such as "Refrigerator", "Dishwasher", etc.

No, Buildertrend Cost Codes are not the same thing as a Chart of Accounts. The equivalent to Cost Codes in Buildertrend are Items or Products and Services in Quickbooks and Xero.

Yes, Cost Codes may be renumbered or re-named at any time, which will update in all locations where used. However, if a code has been used, it will be unable to be deleted, as to preserve your historical data, but can be deactivated, removing it for use from future Jobs.

Once your Cost Codes are correctly established, you can begin building or importing your Cost Catalog via Excel. Please contact our support team if you need assistance importing your Catalog in.

Yes, you can update Cost Items en masse rather than individually, by utilizing the checked actions.

If a Cost Item is in use anywhere in the program, you will be prompted with a list of instances the Cost Item is used. From here, you may choose if and where you'd like this Cost Item to update.

If there is a Quantity added to the Catalog, this will appear as locked when imported. Unless the quantity is standard for that item, we recommend not utilizing the Quantity toggle within the Catalog, leaving it open on the imported feature.

Yes, attachments can be added to Cost Groups on the job, or as a default within the Cost Catalog. To add attachments to Cost Groups within the Catalog, navigate to the Financials menu in the Cost Catalog tab. Then, select Catalog.

Using the checked actions, you can create a Purchase Order, Client Invoice, Bid Package and Allowance from the Estimate worksheet. To complete, use the checkboxes to select the desired line items, then select the Create dropdown in the top right corner of the Estimate.

Create a "Contingency" Cost Code to properly manage as the job progresses. Then, add a line item for "contingency" to the Estimate and add the desired amount. When you need to subtract an amount from this, create a negative Change Order, using your new "Contingency" Cost Code. Once the Change Order is approved, the Revised Cost column and Job Running Total will reflect properly.

Yes, you may create a PDF to print by navigating to the Proposal Dashboard on the top left of your Estimate. You must first create a Proposal for this to be active. Next, click the name of your Proposal from the dashboard to automatically create a PDF.

Profit ➗ Client Price.

Selecting to Lock Estimate will prevent any edits on your Estimate worksheet, opening the Revised Costs tab for edits.

"View" and "Edit" permissions are needed to lock/unlock the Estimate.

This button will be unavailable when the user does not have "Edit" permissions, or the Job Proposal is released. Click the "View Proposal" button to un-release it.

You can revert back to any past estimate where a proposal was created.

Both active and inactive clients can receive invoices to the email or phone listed within their Contact upon release. Any client can pay invoices online if you as the builder are connected to payments. One thing to note is that only active clients can access invoices directly through the Buildertrend client portal.

Yes, you may create an invoice from Change Orders, approved Selections, Estimates, Bills, Time Clock, and QuickBooks Costs. To do this, select Add From dropdown from within the Invoice. Line items can be invoiced in full or at a percentage of your choosing.

Once a line item within those features has been fully invoiced, it will be removed from the Add From dropdown to prevent over-invoicing.

Yes, any invoices related to the feature (Change Order, Estimate, Bills, etc.) will appear within the specific feature details and feature grid. Filters may need to be adjusted to view "Related Invoices" or "Percent Invoiced".

No, an applied Credit Memo lowers the total amount your client owes you.

The following information will sync to your accounting software from a Credit Memo:

No, only an internal user with Credit Memo permissions can apply memos to Client Invoices. The client can view released Credit Memos from their portal.

Yes, the Client Portal Job Price Summary will show the Applied Credit Memos.

No, but it will create an Applied Payment that states that the payment was recorded by accounting and that the Payment Method was a Credit Memo.

Yes, you may add additional Subs/Vendors to released Bids by opening the desired Bid and selecting "Edit Bid Package" at the bottom. Next, navigate to the Requests tab at the top of the window and use the dropdown the select the desired Sub/Vendor.

Yes, you can quickly add documents to multiple packages. Navigate to Bids, then, select all desired Bids using the checked boxes. Next, select Add Documents from the top right of the window. Browse Computer, or simply drag and drop to add.

Yes, Schedule Items can be created only on approved Bids - either during the approval of the Bid, or from Bids that have already been approved. To add a Schedule Item to an approved Bid, go to the Bids grid, find the desired Bid, and click on 'Add Schedule Item' on the right side."

A Purchase Order Prefix uses a unique identifier to quickly recognize a Purchase Order from other entities, such as "PO". Navigate to Bills/POs/Budget section within Company Settings menu to add.

An option to "Add PO suffix to bill number" is available for additional detail.

Yes. You can either void existing paid Bills, or create a negative Bill. Refer to the Advanced Purchase Orders and Bills Overview for the recommended process for each option.

All roles, including all previous Custom Roles that have been created, should have View, Add, Edit permissions at a minimum. To ensure users can see all Receipts, only only just those they upload, "Global - Can see all Receipts" must be activated.

On a flat rate invoice, the tax amount is applied to the whole subtotal. If your sales tax is a group composed of multiple components (this is quite common), then those component tax rates will be itemized in the tax breakdown. The client sees a single tax line on top of the subtotal.

Line item invoices do not apply taxes to each line item individually. All line items add up to a subtotal, and the sales taxes apply to that subtotal.

The client will see the total tax amount, as well as a detailed total, but will not see tax on each line, as tax is not applied to each line, as mentioned above.

After connecting, when you sync your job to QBO, the job zip code will be the basis for your automated tax. Your job will pull in a new rate matching the real rate for the given locale (based on job zip code). The manually-created rate that was previously in place still exists on your system, it’s just no longer the job default.

Invoices created after the sync will now begin using the automated default rate in place. Anything pre-existing to your QBO sync will need to be manually updated to the new rate.

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If you have any questions or require additional support, feel free to chat with us, send an email: support@buildertrend.com, or give us a call at 1-888-415-7149. We’re always happy to help.