5. Controlling Pricing and Layout
5.1 Design — Choosing a Pricing Layout
The Design panel controls how the pricing is broken down and how much scheduling detail is shown alongside it. Toggle on the layout you want the client to see — more than one can be active at once, for example Section together with Show Resources.
Layout | What the client sees |
|---|---|
Lump Sum | Presents the quote as a single total price with no itemised breakdown — use this when the client only needs to see the bottom line. |
Section | Breaks the pricing down by section rather than the full bill. Use the drop-down next to the toggle to choose which section or grouping level is displayed. |
Client Schedule | Shows a client-facing schedule of items without exposing internal sub-schedules or supporting worksheets. |
Full Schedule | Shows the complete schedule, including all sub-schedules, for a fully transparent, itemised breakdown. |
Show Resources | When enabled, displays the underlying resources (materials, labour, plant, subcontract, etc.) that make up each priced item, rather than just the item total. |
Current Claim | Job Cost view only. Shows the value being claimed in the current progress payment. |
Progress claim summary | Job Cost view only. Displays a running progress-claim summary instead of, or alongside, the standard summary. |
Lump Sum, Section, Client Schedule and Full Schedule are alternative levels of detail — pick the one combination that matches how much pricing detail the client should see, rather than enabling all of them at once.
5.2 Standard Summary
Below Design, the Standard Summary section expands to reveal the toggles that control the financial summary shown at the foot of the quote, above the final total.
Toggle | What it adds to the summary |
|---|---|
Profit | Toggle to include your profit margin as its own line in the summary. Click the small edit icon next to it to adjust how profit is described or calculated. |
Other Totals | Toggle to include any additional total lines you’ve configured beyond the standard subtotal. |
Material Tax | Toggle to add a tax line calculated specifically on the materials portion of the quote. |
Other Taxes | Toggle to add further tax lines beyond the material tax — click the edit icon next to it to select which resource section (for example Materials) a percentage tax applies to, and to describe each tax. |
With everything in Standard Summary switched off, the quote still shows a basic Estimate Summary table with a SubTotal, Total and Estimate Total. Switching these toggles on adds the corresponding line items above that total.
5.3 Options
The Options panel fine-tunes how the pricing table and the exported document are formatted.
Option | What it changes |
|---|---|
Auto Items | Automatically numbers each row in the pricing table, following the section/item hierarchy (for example 1, 1.1, 1.2, 2, 2.1). |
Show Alternate | Highlights any alternate items included in the quote, so the client can clearly see optional or substitute pricing. |
Show Styles | Applies text styling — bold section headers, coloured section and item rows — to the pricing table so it’s easier to scan. |
Show Icons | Displays the small row icons (for example the document icon) next to each item and section in the pricing table. |
Negatives -1,000 | A formatting rule for negative values in the pricing table, shown here at its default threshold of -1,000. |
Landscape | Switches the PDF export layout from portrait to landscape — useful for wide pricing tables with several columns. |
Show Logo | Shows your company logo in the quote header. Click the small upload icon next to the toggle to upload your own logo in place of the default Methvin logo. |
PDF font | A drop-down to set the font size used in the PDF export, shown here at “100% (default)”. Increase or decrease it to fit more or less content per page. |
The colours and text styling that Show Styles applies to the pricing table come from the Style Presets in Preferences (Section 3.5).
5.4 Section Order and Table Columns
Section Order
Below Actions, the Section Order list controls both the order and the visibility of every block in the finished document: Page Meta, Header, Title, Scope of Work, Inclusions, Exclusions, Tags, Notes, Pricing Table, Summary, and Terms & Conditions.
- Drag a section using the handle on its left to move it up or down the document.
- Click the eye icon on the right of a section to show or hide it — a crossed-out eye (as on Tags and Notes by default) means that section is currently hidden, independently of its Commercials toggle.
- Click Reset, top-right of the panel, to restore the default section order and visibility.
Changes to section order and visibility are saved automatically to the quote’s report settings — there’s no separate save step.
Table Columns
Underneath Section Order, the Table Columns panel controls the pricing table’s columns: Item, Description, Final Quantity, Unit, Selling Rate, Selling Amount, and any custom columns you add.
- Drag a column by its handle to reorder it.
- Edit the text box under a column’s name to rename it — for example, renaming “Gross Rate” to “Selling Rate” for a client-facing document.
- Use the width controls (−, a percentage figure, and +) to set how much of the table’s width each column takes up. Description is set to “auto (remaining %)” so it automatically fills whatever space is left.
- Click the eye icon next to a column to show or hide it without removing its configuration.
- Use the Add column field at the top of the panel to insert an additional column into the pricing table.
- Click Reset, top-right of the panel, to restore the default column layout.
Because column widths are percentages, increasing one column’s width will need a matching decrease elsewhere — keep an eye on the Description column’s remaining space as you adjust the others.
Edit Content (Section 3.4) also lets you show, hide, rename and resize table columns directly on the quote, with a tick box, name and width for each column. Use whichever is quicker for the change you are making.