Import Assemblies from Excel

Your team’s unit-price breakdowns (assemblies) hold years of estimating judgment. Import from Excel brings them into the catalog as modules. You fill in Darwin’s template, or send your workbook as it is, and Darwin reads it into a draft. You then review every resource and every total before anything is saved.

Nothing reaches the catalog until you click Import. Imported modules start Unverified, so a verifier still reviews each one before your team relies on it.

Before You Begin

Set up the systems, currencies and units of measure your assemblies use.
New materials need a category, a supplier, a tax rate and a handling cost. Have at least one of each ready.
Percentage lines such as small tools or waste need an expense type of the matching kind (for example, “% of labor”).
Start with a few assemblies you know well. You can import the rest in later steps from the same file.

1. Download and Fill In the Template

Go to Catalog → Modules and click Import from Excel.
Under Use the Darwin template, click Download template.
Read the Instructions sheet. It has a worked example that adds up to its own total.
Fill in the first sheet with one row per recipe line:
- Write the module code on every row of the same assembly. The name, unit, system and description only need to be on its first row.
- Quantity is per one unit of the module, before waste. Put waste in the Waste % column.
- For crews and equipment, you can give a count and a yield (module units per day) instead of a quantity.
- Unit price is the price in your file.
- Add the direct unit cost in your file for each assembly. Darwin uses it to check its own rebuild of the assembly.
- Leave out profit, overhead and AIU. You set those on each estimate, not inside a module.

The template works in English, Spanish and French: Darwin reads its columns the same way in any language.

2. Upload It

Drag the filled template into the Use the Darwin template area, or click it to choose the file. Darwin reads it and opens the review.

Only Excel .xlsx workbooks are read. If your file is an older .xls, open it in Excel and save it as .xlsx first.

If Your assemblies Aren’t in the Template

Send your file as it is reads a workbook in its own layout: one assembly per sheet, assemblies one under another, or an export from your estimating software. It uses AI assistance. If your Darwin instance doesn’t offer AI features, use the template.

Choose the Currency of the file and, if you like, a Default system.
Drag the workbook into the Send your file as it is area.
Darwin reads it in the background. The page shows each step: reading the workbook, finding the assemblies, reading the recipes, and checking every value against its cell. You can leave and come back from Recent imports.

What to expect from this way in:

Every value comes with its cell. The AI reads each assembly and notes the cell of every name and number. Darwin then checks each value against that cell. If they don’t match, the line shows, for example, “Cell C7 holds 0.02, not 0.2”, and the assembly waits for you to correct it. View in file shows the cells.
An assembly Darwin couldn’t read shows Failed with its sheet and rows. Exclude it, or add it with the template. The rest of the file is not affected.
Profit, overhead and AIU are set aside, as with the template.
It uses your AI allowance.
Your file isn’t kept. The workbook is read by an AI model in Darwin’s Microsoft Azure AI Foundry deployment. If the server restarts while it is being read, upload the file again.

From the review on, everything works the same as with the template.

3. Review the Import Settings

At the top of the review, Import settings apply to the whole file:

Currency of the file and the default system for assemblies without one.
Hours per workday, used when a crew is priced by the day and the labor rate is per hour (or the other way around). The default is 8.
New materials: the category, supplier, tax rate and handling cost to create them with.
Exchange rates, which appear when an assembly mixes currencies. Darwin converts only with a rate you enter here, and shows it next to the converted totals.

Click Apply settings after changing them.

4. Decide Each Resource Once

Open the Resources tab. Each cement, sand or trade in your file appears once, however many assemblies use it. For each, choose one:

Use catalog item: pick it from Darwin’s suggestions or search the catalog.
Create new: Darwin creates it with the price from your file. You can edit the name, price and category first.
Decide later.

Some decisions are made for you, with a label that says why:

Label	What it means
Darwin code	Your template named the catalog item exactly.
Same name	A catalog item has the same name in a compatible unit.
Remembered from a previous import	Someone chose this item for the same wording before. Check it: remembered choices repeat on every import until someone changes them.

Bulk actions help with long files: Accept suggestions ≥ 90% and Create all undecided as new.

Prices of items already in your catalog never change. When the file’s price differs, the difference is shown so you can review the price list separately.

5. Check Every Assembly

Open the Assemblies tab. Each assembly shows its status and a check of its total:

Check	What it means
Matches	Darwin rebuilt the assembly from its lines and your file’s prices, and the result is within 0.5% of your file’s total.
Doesn’t match	The rebuild differs. Expand the row to find the line, fix the quantity or unit, or click Accept difference and write why.
Not checked	Your file has no total for this assembly, a line has no price, or the lines mix currencies without a rate. This is not a match.

Expand an assembly to see its lines and what Darwin did with each one:

Waste. When all materials of an assembly share one waste %, Darwin adds one “material waste” line on the module’s materials. When rates differ, each line’s quantity includes its own waste.
Crews and equipment. A crew of 1 mason and 2 helpers with a yield of 12 m² per day becomes one line per trade: 1 ÷ 12 and 2 ÷ 12 days per m². Darwin shows this arithmetic on the line.
View in file opens the rows and cells of your workbook that each value came from.

An assembly is Ready when every resource is decided, its unit and system are set, and its total matches or the difference is accepted. Needs mapping and Total mismatch tell you what is left.

6. Import

Select the assemblies you want, or leave none selected to import every Ready assembly.
Click Import N ready.
Review the summary: how many modules, which new items will be created, and which existing items are used.
Choose the price lists to add the new items to. Lists used by open projects are selected for you. Projects price estimates from their price list, so new items must be there before an estimate uses these modules. Existing rows in a list are never changed.
Click Import.

Everything in one import is saved together: if anything fails, nothing is saved. You can come back to the same import later for the assemblies that weren’t ready. The import stays in Recent imports until every assembly is imported or excluded.

Check the Result

The new modules appear in Catalog → Modules as Unverified.
Each module’s Lineage tab says which file, sheet and rows it came from, and how your file’s total compared with Darwin’s rebuild.
Ask a module verifier to review the modules your team will use first. Importing a module is not the same as verifying it.

Good to Know

Importing the same file again starts the assemblies already imported as excluded. Including one again creates a new module; it does not update the existing one.
Remembered mappings are listed under Remembered mappings on the import page. Administrators can remove a wrong one.
Discard deletes an import’s review. Modules already imported from it stay in the catalog.
Darwin doesn’t keep your file. It stores only the cells it imports, and deletes them when the import is complete or discarded.
Send your file as it is needs AI features in your instance. If it isn’t available, use the template.

Next Steps

Modules: how imported modules are used, reviewed and verified
Price Lists: review the prices your new items were created with
Capture Your First Module: build one module by hand to learn the recipe structure