Subbed out a line? Say so — and type what labor really cost

You hire a demo crew for the shower tear-out. You didn't buy their materials, your guys didn't log days on it, and what it cost you is one number: their invoice. Until now Cost Analysis had no way to say that — the line kept its crew-day estimate, kept its AI-guessed materials, and the labor figure was a number you could look at but not touch.

The Labor column is yours to type in

Click the Labor number on any line, type what it really cost, Enter. Cost and margin on that line move, the totals follow. A small edited tag marks a number you typed; hover it to see what BidCraft had computed. Clear it to go back.

The override panel further down the line has always had a Labor cost field — it's the same number, now reachable from the row itself. And the row finally shows it: an override you'd pinned before today was being honoured in the totals but not in the Labor cell. Fixed.

Tick "This line was subbed out"

Expand a line and tick the box. The Actual days field reads Subbed out (nothing to log), the Labor cell becomes the sub's invoice, and if materials are still linked the panel offers Remove all — they come off, the materials cost drops to $0, and the line reads sub supplied. Name the sub if you want it on the line.

Until you type the sub's cost, the line counts $0 labor and wears an enter sub cost tag so it can't slip past you.

On the Labor — Predicted vs Actual card, subbed lines count in dollars, not days: what you estimated stays on the predicted side, what you paid the sub lands on the actual side.

Remove all materials from any line

Two or more materials on a line and the materials header shows Remove all. One confirm. Subbed or not.

Two labor numbers, kept apart: what you charge and what it costs

Your day rate is what you charge for a crew day. Until now it was also the only labor number BidCraft had, so the Costs & materials step quoted it as the cost too — and a labor-only line like a demo read 0% margin no matter what.

Pricing Strategy now has a second box: crew cost per day, what a day of your crew actually costs you (wages, taxes, truck). Per-role crews get a cost beside each role's rate. Leave it blank and BidCraft estimates it from your day rate with overhead and profit backed out, and says estimated wherever the estimate shows. Type the real number and every cost page — Costs & materials, Cost Analysis, the margin tiles — uses it. The price of the job never touches it.

Each line also remembers its own computed labor cost now. That closes a slow leak: pinning a materials cost on a line and letting the list re-reconcile a few times could nudge that line's labor a few dollars each pass. It can't any more, and clearing an override puts the computed number back exactly.

The Costs & materials step gets the same controls

Open a line on the Bid page's Costs & materials step and the strip at the top of it has everything above: click the labor cost to type what it really was, tick This line was subbed out, name the sub, and Remove all the materials the sub supplied. Same controls, same numbers as Cost Analysis.

One small thing that adds up now

Permit and other pass-through fees are counted in the Estimated Cost tile even when you have a materials list. They were being dropped before, which made the tile disagree with the rows underneath it.

Where to find it: any project → Money → open a line in Cost Analysis. Full details in Predicted vs actual cost analysis.