Craftsman Costbooks

Craftsman Costbooks are lists of construction cost items that you can copy from to create estimates in ContractorTools. The cost data in Craftsman Costbooks is provided by the Craftsman book company and is available as an optional additional subscription service in ContractorTools.

You can view the contents of the Craftsman Costbook data before deciding to subscribe to them. Tap "Craftsman Costbooks" in the Home screen to view the list of Craftsman Costbooks:

Tap on one of the costbooks in the list to read a description, and browse data in that costbook:

Tap Browse Items to browse the items in the costbook:

Note: To copy items from Craftsman Costbooks, go into the estimate in a job and tap "+" to add an estimate item. Then, in the New Item screen, tap "From a Costbook":

You will notice that when you copy an item that includes labor cost from a Craftsman Costbook into ContractorTools, the labor cost will be shown in terms of cost per unit:

The labor cost per unit is how much labor will cost to install one unit, in this case square foot.

If you click on the Labor cost, that will take you to a screen where you can enter/edit the labor cost:

Notice the two tabs at the top of the screen: "Cost Per Unit" and "Rate & Productivity". The "Cost Per Unit" tab shows the labor cost in terms of cost per unit, and the "Rate & Productivity" tab shows the labor cost in terms of cost per hour, and productivity (hours per unit, or units per hour):

Notice that when you go to the "Rate & Productivity" tab, some Craftsman Costbook items show the hourly rate as the same as the cost per unit, and the hours per unit and units per hour are set to 1.

Here's why:

- Labor cost per unit is how much it costs in labor to install one unit. In the example above, ceramic tile is measured in square feet, so labor cost per unit would be labor cost per square foot.

- Rate and productivity is how much it costs for one hour of labor, and how many units (sf) can be installed in one hour.

You can convert the labor cost from rate and productivity to cost per unit (cost per unit = cost per hour x hours per unit), but you can’t convert from cost per unit to cost per hour and hours per unit without knowing at least either the cost per hour or the hours per unit. If you don’t know either of those, the only way to convert cost per unit to cost per hour and hours per unit is: cost per hour = cost per unit, and hours per unit = 1.

Some labor costs in the Craftsman cost books are provided only in cost per unit, not in cost per hour (labor rate).
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For those items, when you click on the “Rate & Productivity” tab in the labor cost screen, it shows the Hourly Rate set to the cost per unit, and Hours per Unit (and Units per Hour) are set to 1.

Back on the Craftsman Costbooks screen...
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... you will notice the "Cost Modification Factors" option. Tap it to open the Cost Modification Factors screen:

The Cost Modification Factors screen allows you automatically adjust the costs in the Craftsman Costbooks up or down by a specified percent as cost items are copied into jobs.