Your materials library

Your materials library is the shortlist of products you actually buy. Out of the ~7,000+ products across Schluter and Laticrete, you only use a few dozen regularly. The library is where you keep them, with your pricing and your notes attached.

When you add something from a catalog, it doesn't arrive blank: BidCraft fills in the product's type and works out your cost from the retail price and your cost multiplier. Both are a starting point — change either one and your number sticks.

You'll find it in the sidebar under Catalog → Materials, or directly at /my-products.

Adding materials in bulk

Typing in products one at a time works fine for a handful, but if you've got a supplier price list or a stack of past receipts, there's a faster way. Tap Add materials and pick one of two bulk paths:

• Paste a list. Copy a price list, a text message, anything with materials and numbers in it, and paste it in. BidCraft sorts it into rows for you — name, SKU, manufacturer, cost, and unit, best guess on anything it can't read for certain.
• CSV file. Upload a spreadsheet export from a supplier. BidCraft recognizes common column headers (name, SKU, manufacturer, cost, unit, category) automatically, in whatever order they come in.

Either way, you land on a review screen before anything gets added — every row is editable, and anything that looks like a product you already have gets flagged so you don't end up with duplicates. Nothing saves to your library until you hit Add materials at the bottom.

That review screen also asks where the price list came from. It's optional, but naming the supplier means BidCraft learns their item numbers and starts tracking what these materials cost you over time — see Tracking inventory and material prices.

Single-item add and searching the master catalog are still right there in the same menu — the bulk paths are additions, not replacements.

Starting from zero? An empty library also offers the starter kit — about 30 common tile-contractor materials (Kerdi waterproofing, Schluter thinset, edge trim, and friends) with costs pre-filled from your default cost basis. It's optional and one tap; prune and reprice from there.

What lives in your library

Every product in your library can be one of two things:

• A catalog product you've claimed (a Schluter or Laticrete product where you've overridden the price and notes)
• A custom product you added by hand (something not in the master catalogs — a local supplier, a specialty item)

For each one you can store:

• Retail — what the supplier lists the product at, shown right next to your cost so you can see the gap you're buying at
• Your cost — what you actually pay, which is usually lower than the manufacturer's list price
• A custom display name — what you call it (e.g., "house thinset" instead of the SKU name)
• Notes — anything you want to remember, like "only at the supply house on 4th St" or "stocks faster than the modified version"

Two more things show up on a row once your receipts start feeding it: a Paid chip with the last price you actually paid and where, and a green in stock badge when you've got leftovers on the shelf. If a receipt comes in well off your stored cost, the row asks whether you want to update it — you decide, nothing reprices itself. Full details in Tracking inventory and material prices.

Open a material for the full page

Tap any row and the material opens in a preview panel beside your list — on a wide screen the list stays right there and clicking the next row swaps the preview over to it, so you can work down a shelf without ever leaving the page. On a phone it fills the screen instead. Open full page in the preview header gives you the material on its own page, and that page is still a plain link you can bookmark or open in a new tab. (The Edit button on the row still does what it always did: a quick pass at cost, SKU, category and notes without leaving the list.)

The page reads top to bottom:

• The photo and the name. Add a photo and a shelf of identical grey bags stops being a wall of part numbers. Tap Add photo, use one from your phone, done. If the product came from a manufacturer catalog that already has a picture, you get theirs for free. Next to the pills, Edit details at the top of the card changes the SKU, manufacturer, and category in place — the same fields the list shows as columns.
• Price story. Your cost, your markup, and what that charges out at — plus the supplier's published price right beside it, so "am I buying this well?" is a glance. If you're under the published price, it says by how much. Click any number to change it.
• About. What the thing is, plus the specs worth knowing — size, PEI wear rating, slip rating, what it's approved for — and one plain line on how it's sold ("Sold per sheet · covers 0.97 sqft"). For a catalog product the manufacturer's description and specs come through automatically, and the page says so; write your own description over the top any time, and clear yours to get theirs back. Coverage is the "covers 0.97 sqft" half, and it's yours to set. It's what BidCraft divides a room's measurement by to work out how many to buy, so if a catalog figure doesn't match your real yield — partial rolls, repackaged goods — hit Edit coverage and put your number in. Clear it to go back to the manufacturer's. Every service that uses this product reads its quantity rule from this number, so one fix here re-figures them all.
• Buying. Who you usually get it from, what each supplier calls it (their item number, learned off your receipts), and every price you've paid with the date, the supplier, and an arrow showing which way it's going. Buy somewhere new? Pick + Add a supplier… in the Usual supplier list and type their name — it's saved for your whole company, and their receipts start matching from then on.
• On the job. How many you've got on the shelf, which material groups this is your go-to for, and which of your services reach for it when a proposal gets built.
• Notes, and Remove from library at the bottom.

Sections with nothing to say don't appear at all — a brand-new custom product shows two cards, not six empty ones.

Materials settings: cost basis and where you buy

The Settings button at the top of the Materials page (the gear, next to Add materials) opens your library-wide settings. Two things live there:

• Default cost basis — when a material has no explicit cost, it defaults to this share of the manufacturer's list price.
• Where you buy — your default supplier, plus category rules for the exceptions. "Tile from the tile dealer, everything else from the supply house."

BidCraft works most-specific-first: a material with its own supplier set on its page always wins, then a category rule, then your default.

Setting this saves you typing in three places — the price-list import screen pre-picks your supplier, a material with no supplier of its own shows what it falls back to, and the bulk-buy nudge on the Inventory tab names who to call.

Marking favorites for roles

This is where the library earns its keep. A role is a slot in a materials list — like "thinset for large-format wall tile" or "waterproofing membrane for showers." When you mark a product as your favorite for a role, Biddy uses it every time that role comes up in a project.

[!tip] Open any product in your library, find the Favorite for roles chip editor, and tag the roles it covers. One product can be your favorite for multiple roles (a versatile thinset might cover several install scenarios).

When Biddy is building a materials list and a service slot says "needs a modified thinset for large format" — it checks your favorites first. If you've tagged one, that's what goes on the list. No guessing.

Your go-to for a whole category

Roles are precise, and precision costs time. Most contractors have one thinset, one grout, one waterproofing membrane they reach for unless the job says otherwise — and tagging every role those could possibly fill is more bookkeeping than it's worth.

So there's a broader setting: your go-to for a category. One product per category, used whenever a slot in that category has nothing more specific saved against it.

You don't set it on a form. When a proposal's materials list picks something you'd rather it hadn't, edit that row, swap in the item code you actually use, and leave the "Use this from now on" checkbox ticked. That's the whole thing — the correction you were making anyway is what teaches it. See Materials lists explained.

Most specific wins, always: the product saved on a service beats your role favorite, which beats your category go-to. And every one of them still has to physically fit the slot — a go-to that can't do the job gets passed over rather than forced in.

Auto-add: the library grows on its own

When you approve a materials list (see Materials lists explained), any product used on that proposal that wasn't already in your library gets added automatically. It shows up with a small Auto-added badge so you can spot it.

That means after a handful of approved jobs, your library is mostly seeded for you. Your job is to:

• Set the cost on auto-added products (BidCraft seeds it from list price × your cost multiplier, but you should confirm)
• Tag favorites where it makes sense
• Archive anything you tried once and don't love

Archive (don't delete)

If you stop using a product, archive it. It disappears from the active library but stays around in case you change your mind — and importantly, it stays linked to historical projects so old materials lists don't break.

To restore something archived, switch the filter on the library page to Archived and hit restore.

[!note] Deleting from the library doesn't delete the product from the master catalog — that's the manufacturer's data, not yours. You can always re-add it later.

Sorting and filtering

The library has a search bar and four toggles:

• Most used — sorts by the products you actually reach for, based on approved-list frequency
• By name — alphabetical
• By cost — cheapest to most expensive
• Recently added — what showed up most recently

There are filters for Favorites, Auto-added, and Archived so you can clean up in batches.

Next steps

• Understand how the library plugs into proposals: Materials lists explained
• Use favorites to teach Biddy your preferences: Service materials and favorite-for-roles
• Pull new products in from the master catalogs: Finding products in the catalogs
• Let your receipts keep your costs honest: Tracking inventory and material prices