Recipes are Material and/or Labor items used to make up an increment of measurement, e.g build a lm of wall, m² of floor, or all the items to make up one door. Buildxact has a list of pre-made assembly/recipes that can be used as they are or amended to suit your specific project. You can also create your own.
There are three ways to create an assembly/recipe:
Manually setting up assemblies/recipes from the catalog area
Loading assemblies/recipes in bulk from the catalogue area
Saving assemblies/recipes you've built from the estimate area
How to manually set up assemblies/recipes from the catalog area
1. From the left-hand Navigation menu, click on Catalogs
2. Select to show only the Assembly/Recipe Catalogs (note this will mean clicking on the other options to leave only the Recipe Catalogs)
3. Then click Create New
4. Choose Assembly/Recipe Catalog
5. Name your Catalog
6. Include a description
7. Choose a Contractor or Dealer/Supplier from the dropdown menu
8. Click Create
This adds your assembly/recipe to the list of catalogs, click on the one you just created to open it.
9. Click on the Items heading
10. Click on Add Category
11. Name the category
12. Add a subcategory (if required)
13. Click New Assembly
14. Name your recipe
15. Give your recipe a unit of measure (select from the dropdown or add manually)
16. Click the Add Item button to add items
17. Choose items from the price list, or free type in the items, add quantity needed for the unit of measure, and cost.
Click Save & Close in the bottom right of the screen.
Loading recipes in bulk from Catalogs
Before beginning we recommend you review this recipe loading template. It will help you understand the formatting and also the types of information you can load.
1. In the Navigation menu, click on Catalogs
2. Select to show only the Recipe Catalogs (note this will mean clicking on the other options to leave only the Recipe Catalogs)
3. Then create new
4. Choose "Recipe Catalog"
5. Name your Catalog
6. There is an optional description field
7. Choose a Contractor or Supplier from the dropdown
8. Check this box as you want to import from Excel
9. Click "Create"
In the pop up, choose "Start Import" then click "Upload data from file" and choose the file
10. Make sure the first row shows the file header names and the first column header name is "Is Recipe" with "Yes" against each recipe name in the column
11. Click "Yes"
12. This is the column name from the excel file
13. Choose the matching header from this column using the dropdown
14. Click "Confirm mapping"
15. Repeat above steps on the following fields
At the bottom of the screen click "Review"
You will see a preview of how it will look once imported, if it looks like the original Excel file then you're all good, click "Continue" to finish the import.
Click "OK" and the import will continue in the background while you work.
Saving recipes/assemblies you've built from estimates
1. Start the line you want to add a recipe to
2. Click the recipe icon
3. Name your recipe
4. Give your recipe a unit of measure
5. Click the + button to add items
6. Choose items from the price list, or free type in the items, add quantity needed for the unit of measure in step 4, unit of measurement, and cost
7. Click ''Save As" to save the recipe to the catalog area
8. Check the description and units to ensure they're ok, they've been auto populated from your recipe
9. Add the category, by default we use the category the recipe lives in within the estimate
10. Add a subcategory if needed
11. Click save to confirm adding the recipe to the Recipe catalogs area.
