RAVE’s financial management system is designed to help you manage all the financial aspects of your projects including budgeting, supplier bills, client invoices, and financial reporting with ease.



Accessing your Project’s Budget Workflows


You can access your Project’s financial workflows from either the Financial button, or the Site|Build button's Build Project list, clicking on the project’s job number, and then the Budget sub-tab. 

 

 

This will display the project’s Financial Management Systems workflows – all laid out in an easy and logical order, starting with: 

  • Creating a preliminary budget
  • Sending your quote (tender) requests out 
  • Managing your quotes and tenders received in
  • Building up a full client estimate or proposal
  • Creating purchase orders
  • Receiving bills in
  • Managing payment requests and sending client invoices out 
  • Back costing and other project reporting.




The Estimate sub-tab


This is where we have multiple options to add/review markup and margin, add/edit a welcome message, add attachments, manage variations, and send clients proposals to accept or reject. There are a few options on this page so we will go through them one by one to explain how each works.



The Estimate Overview
The Estimate Overview is the first section at the top of the Estimate Sub-Tab. This is where we summarise our profit adjustments, view our overall project pricing and see whether our estimate has been accepted by the client.  We'll go through this section in detail shortly.



The Estimate Version
Below the Estimate Overview is the Estimate Version section - where you can select which estimate you are working in be it the main proposal, a duplicate proposal or a variation.  Selecting the estimate in this section, dictates which estimate proposal and pricing you are working on, and will update all other sections on this page with the details for that estimate.  You can edit the estimate version name, and do a range of actions for the estimate via the pencil edit icon and the 3-dot action dropdown menu.  



Client Acceptance History

The Client Acceptance History displays the acceptance history of the proposals sent. It will show when a client accepts or declines a proposal, the date and time it was accepted/declined, when it was last viewed, the proposal status at that time, the date/time the action took place, who actioned it, and also if the client added a message. 



The Markup & Margin section
Below the Client Acceptance History is the Estimate Version's Markup & Margin section - where we can tweak (or view only) the margin and markup for the Estimate Version we are working on. The version markup is added to your line item markup to reach your desired profit margin. 



The Quotes section

Below the Estimate Version Markup & Margin is where your Estimate Quotes sit. These are the quotes that make up your Client Estimate.  You have the ability to add an overall client scope, manage the order of your proposals estimate categories, and add any overall inclusions and exclusions.




Estimate Overview - A closer look


The estimate overview displays the current financial state of your proposal (and any variations) with any adjustments from the Markup & Margin section.

A green Accept Estimate button at the top right of the screen allows you to confirm your proposal—any changes from this point become variations of the proposal.

Here's an explanation of the figures to the top right of the display:

- The current TOTAL Project Value - excluding GST, including all Markup

- The current TOTAL Project Value - including GST, including all Markup
- The Line Item Markup (A) - the total value of markup applied to your proposals' line items at a quote level

- The Active Version Markup (B) - the total value of markup applied from the Markup & Margin section

- The amount of GST applied 

- The Raw Cost - the cost of all of your quotes in your estimate, excluding GST and all markup

- The Calculated Margin - being the total of all markup added to your project value, i.e. the sum of your line item and active version markups

A Hide Details button minimises this section to display the raw cost, profit adjustment and sell price (total project value including GST)


TIP: Rave includes handy tool tips (the question marks in a circle) which you can hover over for more detail.






Editing your Estimate Proposal figures via the Markup & Margin Section


Over and above the line item markup applied at a quote level, you have the ability to apply an additional fixed markup or margin to the raw cost of your proposal (or variations), or to set an overall fixed sale price for your proposal or variation.

In this example, we have a proposal with a line item markup of 10% and a raw cost price of $667,224.93 + GST, i.e. you will only make a 9.09% margin or $66,730.22 on this job.  If this line item markup doesn’t seem enough, you can click into the markup adjustment box and apply a markup adjustment - say 25% - and click the Save Changes button.  Rave will now add a version markup adjustment to the raw cost, being an extra $166,814.24, and recalculate the Total Project Value to $1,035,876.13, and the overall calculated margin of 25.93% or a $233,544.46 profit.




If you know the client has budget of $1.1M and you want to change the proposal to a set dollar amount - you can click into the sell price box and set the dollar value - say $1,090,000.  RAVE will then take the original 10% line markup, and calculate the extra markup/margin adjustment it needs to get to a fixed price of $1,090,000.  Updating the Estimate Version value, and the Estimate Overview value to $1,090,000 as well.



NOTE: You can reset everything back to how it was before by clicking the ‘Clear’ button.
 




Creating a new Estimate Version

You can have multiple versions of a single quote - each with a different markup using the duplicate button.


Things can quickly change when you present a quote to your client. They don't want linea now, they want brick. Instead of having to restart the quote again, RAVE allows you to duplicate the entire version, remove the linea, add brick and present the new Estimate version, while still keeping the first option for the client.

 

Once you present your first version, email or download and print it, you have the option to ‘Duplicate’ it via the 3 dot action button. A pop-up box will appear asking you to confirm that you do want to duplicate the estimate.

 

Rave will now duplicate all quotes from your original estimate with the word COPY added to the end. You now have the ability to edit the duplicated version - remove/add pricing, change product qty’s, and make other changes. 

 

Back on the Quotes page, you will find that the original version quotes are locked and cannot be changed - but the duplicated quotes are unlocked and are able to be removed or added to.

The version of the job that you're currently looking at is your ‘active’ version. To switch back to Version 1, just click the circle beside the estimate version, and confirm that you want to switch back. The ‘Is Active’ tag will show you which estimate version you are currently ‘viewing and working on’. You cannot add quotes to an estimate that is not your current active version. You will need to ensure the version you are wanting to add quotes to is your active version - this means your back costing is kept in tact.


 

You can add another quote to this job from someone else by clicking the ‘Add a Quote’ button - this will take you back to the quotes page. 

You have the ability to add a personal message and/or a scope of works to the top of the estimate proposal (PDF), and as a welcome message to the body of the email i.e. "Dear Brooklyn, Thank you for the opportunity to price......"
 


 'Manage attachments' allows you to add PDFs, plans, or anything you want here as long as its in PDF format.  The order you add these in is how RAVE will append them to the client’s estimate/project. 
 


If you are ready to present this estimate to your client, you can head to the middle of this page, and click the             ‘Generate Proposal’ button on the right-hand side - as per the image below.



On the left-hand side of the Generate Proposal page, you’ll see a preview of your Estimate Proposal. Your welcome message (and/or scope of work) is displayed above your first category i.e. Framing Materials. Each scope (if included) is added below each category header.

To the right are your Proposal Options – allowing you to change the layout and detail of your proposal, and preview your changes.  Here you can:

  • Choose the option of creating an Estimate or a Quote
  • Set the number of working days your proposal is valid for – positioned below your logo to the top right
  • Change the proposal style – a number of different proposal layouts depending on the amount of detail you want to share, these are:
    - Minimal - Line Items (with Qty, UOM, Unit Price and Total)
    - Minimal without Prices - displays the Total Project Price only
    - Simple - displays the Category Name with Total Project Price only
    - Simple with Prices - displays the Category Name with Category Total, and Total Project Price
    - Streamlined - displays the Category Totals and Line Items (with totals only)
    - Streamlined No Pricing Lines - displays the Category Totals only i.e. hides pricing lines from the proposal
    - Detailed - displays the Category Totals, Category Names, Line Items (with UOM, Qty, and Total), and Total Project Price 
    - Full - displays the Category Totals, Category Names, Line Items (with UOM, Qty, and Unit Price), and Total Project Price
  • Include Inclusions & Exclusions – displayed immediately below the Total Cost section
  • Include Scope of Works – located below each section’s Category Header
  • Include Subcategories - For clients using subcategories, you can now include those on proposal styles: Simple with prices, Detailed and Full.



  • Show Markup Breakdown – located below the Total Cost (inc GST & Markup)
  • Show Markup % on Items – displayed on each inventory line entry
  • Show Raw Cost Pricing - displays the raw cost pricing on the proposal (This is showing your costings to your client)
  • Show Client Project Contingency – appearing as a % with a total cost including contingency, below the total cost amount



 As you can see, the Markup Breakdown tells the client that this entire project has a 30.43% markup. 


 
If you want to show an individual markup on line items you have the option to display this to the clients. You can display the individual markup alongside each item instead of an overall markup at the bottom.

 

If you do not want to send the proposal to your client just yet, click the ‘Generate the Proposal’ option, which will save a copy of your proposal in the files section of your project in RAVE - accessible via ‘Site/Build, your project number, Files then Generated Estimate Proposals or via your project number/Files.


Your Estimate Proposals file will stay stored there until you (or your team) replace it with a new one.  Every time you send or generate a proposal, RAVE will save it for you and store it here, so you don’t have to worry that you might lose these files. We will also check the latest version box if you update that proposal and re-download or send it to the client with changes.




Sending proposals to clients


For information on how to send a proposal to clients, check out our Sending Proposals to Clients article.