Understanding Cost Groups, Cost Items, and Cost Sections
When putting together estimates and change orders and using Buildwise’s job costing features, you need a way to organize your costs. To help you with that organization, Buildwise offers cost groups, cost items, and cost sections. These three categories allow you to track the cost of goods in a way that is easy to identify for both your clients and your accountant.
In Buildwise, we encourage you to build your estimates and change orders using cost groups and cost items; however, only cost groups are used for entering and tracking expenses.
To set up your Buildwise Company profile, refer to Add or Import Cost Groups, Cost Items, and Cost Sections.
In this article, we’ll cover the following:
Cost Groups
Cost groups are cost codes or construction categories used in estimates, change orders, and job-cost tracking. They represent a step in a construction project, such as demolition, framing, and drywall. Buildwise uses a simplified set of cost groups and represents the information across three COGS (labor, material, and trade partners).
When you create a cost group, you can add cost items that are associated with it. The cost group serves as the main category, or parent option, with cost items as subcategories or child options.
Example
The example below shows a cost group called Demolition with the cost item Interior Demolition. You would first select the cost group before adding a cost item.
Tracking Time and Receipts
When Team Members track their time on the Buildwise mobile app, they can link that time to a cost group to simplify record-keeping. They can also use the app to upload receipts from expenses associated with a cost group, streamlining the accounting process.
Cost Items
A cost item is a subtask grouping within a cost group. See the image above.
Cost Sections
A cost section groups the scope of work (SOW) by work area within a cost group.
Cost Sections are optional in Buildwise.
We recommend using cost sections for construction locations (First Floor, Basement) or functional work areas (Heating, Cooling).
Example
The example of an Estimate below shows a cost group of Framing with cost sections of First Floor and Second Floor and cost items nested within cost sections.
