Overview
Assemblies—also called recipes in Australia, New Zealand, and the UK—allow you to group multiple items together and use them as a single unit in your estimates. If you're using Buildxact in North America, you'll see Assembly throughout the product. In Australia, New Zealand, and the UK, the same feature is called a Recipe.
For example, a downlight assembly could include:
The downlight
Installation labour
Any other materials required to install it
Once created, an assembly can be reused in estimates, imported in bulk from Excel, or saved directly from an existing estimate.
In this article, we'll cover three ways to create assemblies:
Create an assembly manually
Create assemblies by importing an Excel spreadsheet
Save an assembly from an estimate
If you're just looking to load a simple list of prices, this article is not for you, click the button below to head to the right place.
Watch the video
Watch the video below for a complete walkthrough of creating assemblies, including manually creating them, importing them from Excel, and saving them from an estimate. Full step by step details are down below the video.
Create an assembly manually
Go to Catalogues.
Select Create New.
Select Assembly.
Enter an assembly name and description.
Select Create.
Open the Items tab.
Add a category if required.
Select New Assembly.
Enter the assembly name and category.
Select Add Items and add the items that make up the assembly.
Unit of measure
The Unit of Measure determines what one unit of the assembly represents.
For example:
Each — all items make up one complete assembly.
Square metre — all items make up one square metre of the assembly.
Linear metre — all items make up one linear metre of the assembly.
Enter the quantity, unit of measure, and cost for each item included in the assembly.
Minimum and increment
You can also specify a Unit of Measure Minimum and Unit of Measure Increment.
For example, if an electrician has a four-hour minimum:
Minimum = 4 hours
Increment = 1 hour
The labour will therefore start at four hours and increase in one-hour increments.
Select Save and Close when you're finished.
Import assemblies from Excel
If you need to create a large number of assemblies, you can import them from an Excel spreadsheet.
The appropriate Excel template is available from the assembly import process.
Important: Use the correct template for your region. The North American template uses Assembly, while the Australian, New Zealand, and UK template uses Recipe.
When completing the spreadsheet, the most important fields include:
IsRecipe — identifies the start of a new assembly.
Description — the assembly name or item name.
Linked Item Catalogue — links an item to an existing item catalogue.
Cost Item Type — identifies the type of item, such as material or labour.
Quantity — the quantity of the item required for one unit of the assembly.
Unit Cost — the cost of the individual item.
Category — the category for the assembly or item.
Subcategory — an optional subcategory.
Order — controls the order of items within the assembly.
The template also includes optional fields such as minimum quantities and increments.
Import the spreadsheet
Go to Catalogues.
Select Create New.
Select Assembly.
Enable Import items from Excel.
Select Create and Import.
Select Start Import.
Select your completed Excel file.
Review the field mapping.
Confirm any additional mapping questions.
Review the import preview.
Any errors will be highlighted in red. Correct these before continuing.
Once everything is correct, select Import and Edit to create the catalogue.
Large imports may be completed in the background while you continue working.
Save an assembly from an estimate
You can also create a reusable assembly from an assembly you've already built in an estimate.
Open the estimate.
Open the assembly you want to save.
Select Save As at the bottom of the screen.
Select the assembly catalogue where you want to save it.
Enter or confirm the assembly details.
Save the assembly.
Save As adds the assembly to your catalogue while keeping it in your current estimate.
If the assembly catalogue dropdown is empty, you'll need to create an assembly catalogue first.
What's next?
Once you've created your assemblies, you can reuse them in future estimates instead of rebuilding the same combination of materials and labour each time.