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

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 reviewed price change updates the project price list. Explicitly recalculate an editable estimate to use those rates; changing the list alone does not replace existing estimate prices. Use Estimation Comparison to review the effect between revisions.

2. Accessing Project Price Review

To review price settings for your project:

Open your Project.
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

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.

After updating rates, open the editable estimate and explicitly Recalculate when you want to use them. Review the result: recalculation can also refresh module recipes, so check recipe and charge-basis changes rather than assuming every difference is a price change.

4. Refresh Market Prices

To check current market pricing:

Request a Price Refresh.
Wait for the refresh run to finish.
Open the results and review each proposed change and its certainty factor.
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.

A refresh run covers materials and labor rates. Expense and transportation values are not proposed by the market-pricing engine.

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

Applying refresh results updates the price list; existing estimates keep their recorded prices. Check the item’s source, unit, currency, and tax/labor basis before accepting it. A review-only estimate is not a verified sourced price; where confirmation is offered, you must review the final amount and provide the required confirmation details before it becomes eligible. Do not treat high certainty as a substitute for checking evidence.

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. It is separate from market-price refresh and does not replace the explicit estimate-recalculation step.

Project Summary’s Exchange Rates tab is for inspection; edit and refresh controls are here. Draft summaries can reflect current rates when opened even while their unit prices remain stored. Check converted totals after a rate change.

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

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.

Finishing the list is separate from marking the project reviewed. After inspecting the calculated estimate, the designated reviewer records review on Project Summary. Another user can request it through a price-refresh request assigned to that reviewer. Reviewing assisted analysis does not complete this price sign-off either.

7. How Price Changes Affect Estimations

When you explicitly recalculate an editable estimate after reviewing project rates:

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

You do not need to rebuild the estimate by hand. Review the result dialog for prices, recipe quantities, charge basis, and added/removed components; it explains what actually changed.

Existing prices and module recipes are preserved on an ordinary estimate save. New lines use the estimate’s pinned price basis. Prices are resolved on the first calculation and when you explicitly Recalculate, not when you open a page, select a list, or save price-list edits. An estimate carries both the applied price list (its reference) and the priced price list (what was actually used at the last recalculation, with its date) — see Price Lists.

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.

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

9. Next Step

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

➡️ Request Approval