EstimateSync

Items Reference ​

Items are the individual pieces of work inside a room estimate. They cover painting surfaces, painting linear features, painting repeated objects, manual time-and-material work, and repair/prep work.

Add Items to a Room ​

When you add an item, EstimateSync gives you three starting points:

  • Catalog — saved reusable templates from your organization.
  • Common — built-in items filtered for the current room type.
  • Item Types — custom items based on a calculation method.

Use Catalog when your team has already saved a setup. Use Common for room-specific built-ins. Use Item Types when you need a custom calculation.

Item Types ​

Area per Hour covers large surfaces like walls, ceilings, siding, and deck floors. It uses area, coats, production rate, spread rate, paint rate, and labor rate.

Length per Hour covers linear work like baseboards, crown molding, fascia, soffit, railing, and trim. It uses length, coats, production rate, spread rate, paint rate, and labor rate.

Time per Coat is for repeated objects or detailed work where each unit takes a set amount of time per coat. It uses quantity, coats, time per coat, optional both-sides behavior, items per gallon, paint rate, and labor rate.

Quantity per Hour is for many similar items where a count and items-per-hour rate make more sense than measuring area or length.

Flat Rate is for fixed-price work. Flat-rate painting items use an entered labor price and material cost. EstimateSync derives labor time from the project's labor rate and paint usage from the applicable paint rate. Flat-rate repair/prep items use entered hours and material cost without calculating paint gallons.

Time and Materials is for painting work priced from entered hours and material cost — handy for open-ended work like extra prep. EstimateSync calculates labor from the project's labor rate and derives paint usage from the applicable paint rate.

Fields and Totals ​

Paint items include coats, production rate, spread rate, paint rate, and whole-gallon rounding. Repair/prep items hide paint-only fields and use material cost instead.

Production Rate controls labor time — fields offer preset values and let you enter custom ones. Spread Rate controls paint usage. Whole-gallon rounding affects paint material cost and item totals for paint items.

Spread-rate paint items show a Paint coverage section with the current paint usage, marked Auto while usage is calculated from the spread rate. Enter a Gallons value to override the spread rate — the section switches to Manual and material cost uses the entered gallons. Edit the spread-rate field to return to automatic calculation. Whole-gallon rounding applies only in Auto mode.

Set Coats to zero to mark a paint item as Not Included. The item stays in the room so the excluded scope stays visible, but it contributes no time, materials, paint, or price. The editor shows a Not Included banner and keeps only the coats field editable until you raise coats above zero. On customer-facing estimates and invoices, the item is labeled Not Included instead of showing a price, and work orders list not-included items as a note under their room.

Some items pull from room measurements, room default coats, or current rates. The coats selector marks the current room default. If you manually change a linked value, that item becomes customized for the room.

Item totals show calculated labor, materials, and total. For spread-rate paint items, the Paint coverage section shows the current paint usage. Missing required inputs trigger warnings until you complete the fields.

Included and Not Included Items ​

You can mark a paint item Not Included from the item editor to keep it in the room without charging for it. Not-included items keep their entered values but stay out of room and project totals, and they're labeled Not Included on the room list, the customer invoice, and the crew work page. Switch the item back to Included to bring it back with its previous values.

Repair/prep items can't be marked not included. Marking an item not included breaks its link to room default coats, and re-including it doesn't restore that link. A room default coat count of zero marks items still linked to that default as not included — raise the default again to re-include them.

Saved Items and Default Items ​

The Catalog stores reusable item templates. Saved templates capture reusable setup — not job-specific values like the room's actual area, quantity, inclusion state, notes, calculated results, manual gallons overrides, or current room-default links.

Room Defaults can point to Catalog templates so new rooms or items start from your saved setup.

Repair and Prep Work ​

You add repair/prep items from the Repairs section of a room. They support common repair templates, saved repair templates, or item types. Repair/prep work contributes labor and material cost without paint-gallon behavior.