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
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. 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

7. 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

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.

8. 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