Price Lists

A Price List is a time-bound representation of market context — material unit prices, labor rates, and logistics assumptions captured for a defined place and time. Price lists are separate from module logic, so you can recalculate an estimate under new market conditions without rewriting your cost structure.

1. What a Price List Contains

Each price list includes:

Material prices — unit prices for catalog materials, optionally with the supplier, quote date, and quote reference behind each line
Labor rates — hourly rates for labor trades
Expense pricing — fixed or percentage-based overhead and logistics costs
Transportation assumptions — delivery and handling costs
Currency context — the currency denomination for each priced item

2. Base vs. Project Price Lists

Darwin supports two levels of price lists:

Base Price Lists

Reusable market baselines that capture a specific region and time period:

“Costa Rica — Retail — 2026-01”
“US — Southeast — RSMeans baseline — 2026-Q1”
“UAE — Dubai — Supplier Set A — 2025-12”

Project Price Lists

Each project has its own project-specific price list, derived from a base list plus project context. This allows location-driven pricing while preserving the original baseline as a reference. Changes to the project price list do not affect the base list.

3. Maintain Price List Rates

Use the Materials, Labor, and Expenses tabs to maintain a price list’s rates. You can edit individual values, adjust all rates in one category by a percentage, update reference prices, or import/export Excel for a larger update.

The list remains editable until you finish it. Use project Price Review when you need an AI-assisted market refresh and a review of proposed changes before they are applied.

4. Finish or Clone a Price List

The catalog uses a green checkmark for a finished price list and a clock for one that is still editable.

Finish a list only after its rates are ready to be relied on. From the current screen, finishing is a one-way lock: it disables editing, bulk adjustment, imports, reference-price updates, and the Finished control itself.

To begin a new period or market update, clone a prior list and review the copied rates before saving it as an independent list. This preserves the source list and its history.

5. Creating a Price List

To create a new price list:

Go to Catalog → Price Lists
Click New Price List
Enter a name following a place + time convention (e.g., CR-SJ | Baseline | 2026-01)
Set material prices, labor rates, and expense values
Save the price list

6. Applied vs. Priced — How Prices Actually Move

An estimate carries two price-list references, and they do different jobs:

Applied price list — the price list the estimate refers to: the recipe or market baseline in context. Changing this reference does not move a resolved price.
Priced price list — the price list actually materialized into the estimate at the last explicit recalculation, stamped with the date it was priced.

Prices move only when you explicitly recalculate. Selecting a price list, saving it, or opening a page never re-prices anything in the background. This is deliberate: it keeps an approved figure stable until an estimator says otherwise. When you review proposed price changes in Price Review, Darwin shows what would change before anything is applied.

7. Applying a Price List to a Project

Open your Project
Navigate to Price Review
Select the price list to apply
Verify exchange rates if multi-currency
Confirm — the estimate recalculates with the new pricing

8. History

Each price list carries its own history — where it came from, and whether it’s a clone. Each price list carries a record that indicates whether it is:

ORIGINAL — first creation
CLONED — copied from a source price list, with an operation note recording why

Cloned price lists preserve a reference to their source, enabling clean delta analysis: when an estimate changes, you can determine whether the movement came from market conditions, logic changes, quantity differences, or decision parameters. The price list’s Lineage tab shows the source and derived lists in the clone chain.

9. Best Practices

Use descriptive naming — encode place and time in the name (e.g., US-FL | Q1 2026 | Supplier Mix A)
Create a new price list for each new period — editing a single price list repeatedly destroys history. Create a new list per period or major market shift
Keep modules price-free — modules store logic; price lists store cost values
Review before commitment — validate pricing before finalizing a proposal or requesting approval
Finish only after review — a finished list cannot be reopened from the current screen
Use Price Review for market refreshes — review AI-assisted proposals before applying them to project pricing