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What does it mean to 'relink' catalog items in Buildxact?
What does it mean to 'relink' catalog items in Buildxact?

This article explains how to relink out-of-date catalog items from within the Estimate Costings page

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

What is relinking?

Relinking in Buildxact is the process of changing how a priced item in your estimate is connected to your price catalogs and consequently what price shows in your estimate. Relinking will work for both recipes and regular price items.

Why do you need to relink?

Price catalogs change, which means Buildxact users need to be able to change the prices they store and use. They also need to delete catalogs and create new catalogs, so Buildxact created 'relink' as a way of ensuring the right catalog items are attached to the right estimate costing items.

How do I use it?

1. When you have items that are linked to a catalog that has either expired, been deleted or the price has changed, you will see an alert (denoted by a red exclamation point) in your Estimate Costings screen,

2. Click on the catalog box next to the alert to see more info. If you're only fixing a single item you can use "Replace Item" or "Apply" to solve the problem.

3. To bulk update items that require re-linking head to the cog at the top of estimate costings

4. Then select “Update Linked Items”

5. This will launch the relinking screen. You will now see three columns.

  • Column 1 shows you which catalogs are being used in your estimate. We will use these catalogs to search for matching items.

    NOTE: the order of the catalogs is important. The one you want us to check first should be at the top, this is relevant when substituting items from other price catalogs.

  • Column 2 shows you the list of items with those little alerts from your costings that need to be updated.

  • Column 3 will show you which items we have found in another catalog that match your items in the estimate.

6. To find items in a different catalog, use the search to find the catalog you want to use and select it.

7. This will search that catalog for any items that match those from your estimate and show you the matches we found.

8. You can then update the items to be linked to the new catalog by clicking “Update New Links”. This will go through your estimate and update all of the cost items with those from the new catalog.


"Not required" categories

If you use relinking and have any categories in your estimate or template which are marked as "Not Required" relinking will give you the option of updating those or not.

When you go into the relinking screen there will be a toggle up the top.

When the toggle is off:

  • Not required category items will not be updated.

  • Not required category items will not be shown in the relinking screen and the total/difference dollar amounts will exclude them.

When the toggle is on:

  • Not required category items will be updated.

  • Not required category items will be shown in the relinking screen and the total/difference dollar amounts will include them.


See also the video in this article:

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