Most tile jobs aren't the same on this one point. A builder hands you the tile on Tuesday; a homeowner asks you to source it on Thursday. Until now that was one setting for your whole company, buried on the Pricing Strategy page, and the only way to change it for one job was on the Costs tab after the proposal was already built.
Now it's a question you answer where you're looking at the money.
Who supplies the tile?
On the Bid page, right under the draft total, there's a picker: Who supplies the tile?
- Org default — whatever your Pricing Strategy says (it tells you which way that is)
- Contractor supplies — you're buying it on this job
- Client supplies (allowance) — they are
The same picker is still in the Costs & Materials header, and they're the same setting — change it in either place. Rebuild the proposal afterward so the pricing catches up.
When the client supplies it, the tile still appears on your materials list — you're installing it, and nobody should forget to check it in — but it prices at $0 to you and carries a "Tile allowance" note, so it never reads as money coming out of your pocket.
Your waste factor is finally doing something
Here's the part worth knowing: your waste percentage wasn't being added to any quantity. You could set it to 15% and every material still got ordered at the bare square footage. Now it's wired in — and it's wired in the way it should be:
- Only to material you're buying. Tile, thinset, grout, and leveling clips get the allowance. Membranes, backer board, trim, and drains are bought to an exact count and never get padded.
- Only when you supply the tile. If the client is buying it, no waste is added. Padding a quantity someone else pays for just inflates their allowance for nothing. (Changed on September 24: waste is now set per tiled surface and goes on the tile whoever buys it — a client-supplied row still costs you $0 but tells the homeowner how much to order. See "Set the waste for each tiled surface".)
- Once. It goes in before the boxes-and-bags math, so the number on your list is what actually goes in the van — not the raw square footage, and not a padded number padded again.
Where it changed a quantity, the row says so: "Includes your 10% waste allowance." So you can always tell an allowance from a formula that needs a second look.
Worth checking
If you've never set a waste percentage, this changes nothing for you. If you have, your next proposal will order slightly more tile and setting material than the last one did — which is the point, but it's worth knowing before you compare the two.
Your waste percentage lives on Catalog → Pricing Strategy, under Project markups & buffers.