Default Markups (database-level) are preset percentages for Escalation, Material Sales Tax, Overhead, and Profit. As Bid costs accumulate, Quick Bid automatically marks up or increases Material, Labor, Equipment, Other, and Subs Costs using these percentages. Indirect Expenses are costs added to various Material and Labor costs to account for Stock, Clean, Supervision, and Per Diem. Indirect Expenses are covered later in this Chapter and are separate but related to Markups.
Although you will not see applied Markups until we discuss the Condition Detail and the Markups Tab, in Chapters 4 and 5, if you want Defaults applied to your job costs, you need to set them up now. If you do not setup Defaults (and many users do not), you can always setup Markups for each Bid on the Markups Tab.
Changing Default Markups affects future bids and Sections not already used in existing bids. When a Section is added to a Bid (first time any expense is added that is designed to a specific Section), Default Markups are applied if there are Defaults for All Sections or the specific Section has a Section-Specific Defaults setup.
All Sections or By Section Defaults
There are two ways to set up defaults:
- All Sections - any time you use any section in any Bid, these defaults are applied (most users do not configure these)
- Individual Sections - when you use a specific section in a Bid, these Markups are applied only to that Section. If you configure "Individual Sections", but do not enter values for defaults, no defaults will be applied for expenses in that Section.
We will cover these two in the articles that follow.
- For details on how Markups and Indirect Expenses are applied to a bid, turn to Chapter 5 (Additional Expenses and Markups).
- It is important that you understand how Markups affect Bid values. Before you setup Defaults, we suggest you first change these settings on a few Bids get a feel for how changes affect final Bid amounts. Experiment with the various options, analyzing the results on Bid values. Before making changes, be sure to duplicate your bid.