Dependent Cost Items

Dependent cost items are cost items with values calculated based on a percentage of the cost of other items. Examples include insurance the company carries, bonds, and labor overhead.

If you need to use additional dependent cost items, you can create your own, but you must delete all the existing default dependent cost items first.

The following steps walk you through deleting your existing default indirect costs so you can create your own.

Step by Step — Deleting Existing Default Indirect Costs

  1. From the Ribbon, select the Estimate tab.

  2. Under the Breakdown Structure section, select Cost Breakdown Structure (CBS).

  3. Select the Prime Bond indirect cost item by clicking on its row header.

  4. Then press and hold the Shift key while selecting the Job Financing indirect cost item. All your dependent indirect cost items are now selected.

  5. Right click on the selection and select Delete.

  6. Select Yes to confirm you want to delete the selected Cost Items. Your indirect cost items are now deleted.

You can also control which default dependent cost items are copied into new jobs from scratch. You do this in the Library from the Master CBS.

The following steps walk you through toggling the inclusion of default dependent cost items in new jobs from scratch.

Step by Step — Toggling Default Dependent Cost Items

  1. From the Ribbon, select the File tab.

  2. Select Library from the left pane navigation.

  3. From the Library's Ribbon, select the Estimate tab.

  4. Under the Master Breakdown Structures section, select Cost Breakdown Structure (CBS).

  5. Use Column Chooser or Go To Column to bring the Auto-Include column into your view.

  6. A check mark in the Auto-Include column indicates that those cost items in the Master CBS will be included in new jobs from scratch.

Define a Contingency Add-On based on Man Hours

The following steps walk you through adding ad defining contigency based on man hours for the job.

Step by Step — Define a Contingency Add-On

  1. From the Ribbon, select the Estimate tab.

  2. Under the Master Breakdown Structures section, select Cost Breakdown Structure (CBS).

  3. From the Cost Breakdown Structure (CBS) Register, right click on the row header for any cost item and select Insert Dependent Cost Item.

  4. On the resulting Attention prompt, select Based on CBS Man Hours.

  5. Once you are done with the Attention dialog box, Click OK.

  6. Double click on the CBS Man Hour Add-On description to highlight the description title.

  7. You can customize the visibility by changing the description to Contingency.

  8. Double click on the newly named Contingency row header to open the CBS Man Hour Add-On Record.

  9. From the Description tab, add a description to the Man Hour Add-On Detail.

  10. The description allows the total Man-Hours for the job to display.

  11. From the record, select the Dependency tab to see what contributes to your subject to cost.

    You can also refine how you build your contingency. It can be based on costs where man hours is over 10 hours. You can do this by setting a filter on the Hours (Duration driven) column and choosing Define Subject Cost using column filtering.

    11. Define the Contingency Add-On by designating Add-On Cost/Man-Hour column.

Defining a Price % Add-On

The following steps walk you through adding and defining Price % Add-On for the job.

Step by Step — Defining Price Add-On

  1. From the Cost Breakdown Structure (CBS) Register, right click on the row header for any cost item and select Insert Dependent Cost Item.

  2. On the resulting Attention prompt, select Based on Job’s Price.

  3. Once you are done with the Attention prompt, click OK.

  4. Double click on the Price % Add On row header to open the record.

  5. The Price % Add-on Record opens to the Description tab. Type Office Overhead in the Description field and type a rate of 4.

    • Office Overhead is now defined with a rate of 4% of the job’s price.

  6. Once done, click OK to close the record.

Defining a Direct Cost Add-On

The following steps walk you through creating a Direct Cost Add-On dependent cost item.

Step by Step — Define a Direct Cost Add-On

  1. From the Ribbon, select the Estimate tab.

  2. Under the Master Breakdown Structures section, select Cost Breakdown Structure (CBS).

  3. From the Cost Breakdown Structure (CBS) Register, right click on the row header for any cost item and select Insert Dependent Cost Item.

  4. On the resulting Attention prompt, select Based on Direct Costs.

  5. Once you are done with the Attention dialog box, Click OK.

  6. Double click on the Direct Cost Add-On row header to open the record.

  7. On the Description tab, type Small Tools in the blank row under the Description column.

  8. You can define additional rows for other add-on costs as needed.

    • The Dependency Cost Breakdown appears on the right.
    • The Subject Cost is the cost that the cost item depends on, based on what is defined on the cost item’s Dependency tab.

  9. Click on the Dependency tab to see what contributes to your subject cost.

    • There are a couple of options at the bottom to control how dependency items are selected. By default, the bottom radio button is selected.

      • The bottom radio button allows you to use column filtering to control what items are included.

      • The top button allows you to manually select the cost items you would like to include.

  10. For this activity, leave the default (lower) button selected.

  11. Select the Description tab. You can define an add-on Rate (percentage) or Cost at any of the cost category levels in the Dependency Cost Breakdown on the right side of the record.

    • You can also add a rate at the Total level to have it apply to all your cost categories.

  12. Type 10 in the Rate field at the Labor cost category level, then press Tab.

  13. Once you are done, click OK to close the record.