Bill Item

A bill item represents a priceable line item in a BOQ. Bill items have a rate attached to them which is the sum of the rates of resources and productions that form part of the work breakdown structure of the item. Estimators will focus most of their time and energy developing the rate breakdowns of bill items to eventually arrive at a total estimated cost for a project. The development of bill item rates is described in Price Bill Items.

In Trimble Quest, bill items have the following properties:

  • Item Number

  • Payment Clause

  • Description

  • Bill Attribute (Ex: Trades)

  • Bill Quantity

  • Unit

  • Worksheet(s)

  • Net Rate

  • Selling Rate

  • Tags

  • Comment

Figure: Bill Item

The Item Number, Payment Clause, and Description fields are typically used to identify a bill item. The description of a bill item is simply a short line of text describing what the item represents. The item number and the payment clause fields can contain any text that is deemed useful for identification purposes. Similar to bill sections, these fields can also be used to reference some external code/specification on which the BOQ is based. These fields do not have to be unique and they are not compulsory.

The Trade property of an item forms part of the Bill attributes and could also be called a grouping attribute, used for organization and rollup purposes. This attribute can be used to divide bill items into logical/functional groups or categories. These groupings are not only useful for structuring purposes, but they will also prove useful during the reporting phase of a project.

The Bill Quantity property of an item represents the total quantity of the item that needs to be built/installed/procured/manufactured to complete a project. Any numeric values are accepted for this property.

The Unit property of an item indicates the unit in which any quantity of the item is measured. In Trimble Quest, the unit of an item is not used in mathematical computations. Consequently, you can choose any appropriate text for this property. Typical examples are m2 for square meters and No. for per item.

The worksheet of an item can be thought of as a price calculation sheet which is used to compute the net rate of an item. The net rate of each item aggregates the individual resources and productions that form part of the expected scope of work of the item. The net rate buildup is specified and calculated in the worksheet of a bill item. Worksheets are described in BOQ Worksheet of a Bill Item.

The Net Rate of an item represents the expected cost to the company per unit of the item. The net rate is a calculated property based on the work breakdown structure defined in the worksheet of the item.

The Selling Rate of an item is used to specify the unit rate at which a bill item will be sold to a client. There are several ways in which a bill item can be marked up, all of which are discussed in more detail in Markup and Selling Rates of this document.

Any number of Tags can then also be assigned to a Bill Item. Tags present a powerful way of organizing data.

Additional comments can be applied to a Bill Item using the Comment column.