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Creating and Loading Assemblies/Recipes
Creating and Loading Assemblies/Recipes

Assemblies/Recipes can be used to add a prebuild of items to a project, including materials and labor. They're also called composite rates.

Dan C avatar
Written by Dan C
Updated over a week ago


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 recipes that can be used as they are or amended to suit the project. You can also create your own.

There are three ways to create a recipe:

  1. From the catalogue area setting up the recipes manually

  2. From the catalogue area loading recipes in bulk

  3. From the estimate area saving recipes you've built

1. From the catalog area setting up the recipes manually

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. Click "Create"

This adds your recipe to the list of Recipe catalogs, click on the one you just created to open it

9. Click "Add Category"

10. Name the Category

11. Add a "Subcategory" (optional)

12. Click "New Recipe"

13. Name your recipe

14. Give your recipe a unit of measure

15. Click the + button to add items

16. Choose items from the price list, or free type in the items, add quantity needed for the unit of measure in step 11, unit of measurement, and cost

17. Click ''Save & Close"


2. From the catalog area loading recipes in bulk

Before beginning we recommend you review this recipe loading template. It will help 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.


3. From the estimate area saving recipes you've built

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.

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