Proportional Costs

Proportional Costs are calculated as a percentage of the estimate total.

Dan Fellman avatar
Written by Dan Fellman
Updated over a week ago

ContractorTools allows you to include "Proportional Costs" in job estimates.

Proportional Costs are cost items that are calculated as a percentage of the total of the other costs in an estimate.

Here are some examples of proportional cost items:

  • Site Supervision

  • Construction Insurance

  • Bond Fee

  • Finance Charge

You may want to use proportional cost items for these type of costs because their cost is based on the size of the job, or the sum of the cost of the other items in the job.

Adding Proportional Costs

To add proportional cost items to a job estimate, go into the estimate, select the "Items" tab to display the list of items in the estimate. Then tap + to add a new item. This will display the "New Item" screen:

Select "Proportional Cost" at the bottom of the Add Item options. This will display the list of Proportional Costs that have been added so far (if any).

Tap + to add a new proportional cost. This will prompt you to enter a name and a rate for the proportional cost.

The rate is used to calculate the amount of the proportional cost as a percentage of the rest of the costs in the estimate.

Proportional costs are calculated after adding markups and taxes, and are displayed in the totals section at the bottom of the formated estimate document:

Invoicing Proportional Costs

When you invoice jobs that have proportional costs in them, you don't have to do anything differently if you invoice based on a percentage or fixed amount of the job.

If you want to invoice proportional costs separately from other estimate items, you will need to use the "Itemized Invoice" method.

When you use the "Itemized Invoice" method, you are allowed to select individual items to invoice. Tap + to add items to the invoice, then select the "Proportional Costs" option:

Then tap + to select a proportional cost:

Then select the proportional cost to invoice.

You can invoice all of a proportional cost, or if you want to only invoice part of it, select the "Fixed Amount" tab and enter the amount to invoice.

As with the estimate, proportional costs appear in the summary section of the invoice:

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