Rave has the ability to save an entire Estimate (job costing) as a template to quickly and efficiently use again next time. The steps below will teach you how to turn your existing estimate into a template.
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 finally the Budget sub-tab.
Once in the Budget sub-tab, click on the Estimate sub-tab.
You have already learnt how to create the estimate, edit the sell price, and add any Terms and Conditions in our previous help article How to Create a Client Proposal/Estimate via the Estimate sub-tab.
To save this estimate as a template for future use, scroll down the estimate page to the Estimate Version section. Ensure that the estimate you want to save as a template is not accepted and still displays as a Draft status.
You also need to check that the circle on the left is selected for the version you want to save as a template i.e. there could be multiple versions - and ensure the Is Active button is checked on the same project. Click on the 3-dot action dropdown and select the Save as Template option.
Once you select the Save as Template option, you need to name your template. Give it a name that is easily recognisable in case you decide to make multiple templates for different house plans or different variations of the same plan. IE The Matakana – Brick or The Matakana - Weatherboard. Once you hit save, your template is ready to be used in any other job.
To load this new template into a fresh job, you would go to the budget sub-tab in that job, and go directly to the estimate page. This will currently be a blank page with no information loaded. Scroll Down to the Estimate Versions section, and click on the CREATE NEW VERSION drop-down arrow, selecting the Load from Template option.
This will open the Load Estimate from Template pop-up. Choose which template you wish to load and press LOAD.
It will now load the entire estimate template with all of your quotes, sell pricing and information into the job.
All of the quotes will be approved and loaded to the Estimate version as well as on the Quotes page. The suppliers, cost centres, categories/subcategories and line item information are all copied from the template into this job. The pricing is not locked as this estimate isn't approved yet. You can now proceed to make final changes/tweaks to the pricing, suppliers and other information before presenting to the client.
Managing Estimate Templates
Your estimate templates are available from Site Build/Templates – under the Financial Templates section. There you will see the 1200x1200 Tiled Shower saved as an Estimate Template. You can rename a template or delete it in this menu.
Note: You cannot edit an estimate template from this section. You must load it into a job to make changes and then resave the template again.
