Review Prices and Exchange Rates

Price Lists are a fundamental part of Darwin’s cost intelligence model.
While modules and direct cost lines define how something is built, price lists define how much it costs today.

Reviewing prices ensures that your estimation reflects current market conditions — whether you’re updating material costs, labor rates, expenses, or currencies — before the estimate becomes a financial commitment.

This chapter explains how to:

• review price lists applied to a project
• update project rates directly or in bulk
• request and apply a market-price refresh
• refresh exchange rates for multi-currency projects
• understand how prices flow into your estimations

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1. Why Price Lists Matter

In Darwin:

• Modules and direct lines store construction logic
• Price Lists store market conditions

Separating these two worlds allows you to:

• reuse modules across projects
• review the effect of current rates on this project’s estimate
• maintain consistent assumptions
• compare costs over time

A price change updates the pricing used by this project’s estimate. Use Estimation Comparison when you need to review the effect between revisions.

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2. Accessing Project Price Review

To review price settings for your project:

1. Open your Project.
2. Open Price Review from the project summary or the estimation’s pricing context.

You will see:

• project-scoped Materials, Labor, and Expenses tabs
• the rates currently used by the project
• bulk percentage adjustment and Excel import/export controls
• market-price refresh controls and results
• applicable exchange rates, if the project uses multiple currencies

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3. Review and Update Project Rates

Use the appropriate tab to review materials, labor, or expenses. You can edit individual rates, adjust a set of rates by a percentage, or use Excel import/export for a larger update.

Check the affected estimate after an update. The cost logic and quantities stay intact; the rates are what change.

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4. Refresh Market Prices

To check current market pricing:

1. Request a Price Refresh.
2. Wait for the refresh run to finish.
3. Open the results and review each proposed change and its certainty factor.
4. Apply individual changes, a selected group, or the eligible high-certainty changes.

The refresh can be Running, Completed, Partially Applied, or Failed. Only completed or partially applied runs can be applied. Low-certainty items are excluded from the default bulk selection, so review them deliberately before applying them.

Once a proposed change is applied, Darwin marks it as applied and prevents it from being applied twice.

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5. Refresh Exchange Rates

For multi-currency projects, Darwin allows you to refresh rates by clicking:

Refresh Exchange Rates

This updates the project’s exchange rates and recalculates currency-dependent pricing.

This is especially useful for international suppliers or Latin America–US workflows.

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6. Finish the Review When Pricing Is Settled

When the project’s pricing is final, you can finish the price list. This is a one-way lock from the current screen: it disables direct editing, refresh, and apply controls. Confirm that all intended changes are applied before finishing it.

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7. How Price Changes Affect Estimations

When you update project rates:

• every module cost updates
• every direct material, labor, or expense line updates
• summaries and breakdowns change accordingly

Nothing needs to be rebuilt. The structure (modules, direct lines, and quantities) stays intact — only prices change.

This is Darwin’s core idea:
Logic stays stable. Prices stay dynamic.

If you want to see exactly how much a price or margin change moved the total, Estimation Comparison puts two estimation revisions side by side and shows the sell-price delta and a system-level cost breakdown between them.

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8. When Price Review Is Most Important

You should review prices — and margins — when:

• starting a new estimation
• comparing design alternatives
• preparing a proposal
• updating supplier quotes
• refreshing market data or exchange rates
• revising a monthly or quarterly estimate

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9. Next Step

With prices reviewed and everything current, your estimate is ready for the moment that matters:

➡️ Request Approval