Accurate Material Pricing and Material Discounts
Pricing services offer 
HVAC estimators an important advantage when estimating HVAC Piping and Mechanical projects. Rather than forcing estimators to manually type in updated material prices for individual items as list prices change, material price tables in some estimating software programs are updated automatically with the latest material list price. Material price changes are sent by the software provider as either an email file attachment or CD. Material discount changes from list price are managed in the estimating software specifications where they are entered as a percentage or a multiplier and may be changed at any level within a material table category. Percentage or multiplier changes for different material sizes and descriptions are also entered within a material table category. An estimator can choose to have discounts load from a default specification file into job specifications, or use a software general preference selection to by-pass the job specification and allow job files to look directly at default specifications for material discounts. In either case, having accurate up-to-date list pricing in estimating software tables, with accurate material discounts, is one of the most important factors in preparing an accurate HVAC Mechanical material and labor cost estimate.
Jim Seekamp , Wendes Systems, Inc.
