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What is a Recipe and how do they work?

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[Note - recipes are part of Estimating, available on the MyConstruct Pro and Studio plans]

Recipes are a group of inventory items that are used to quickly estimate an area, length or item with many components. Also commonly referred to as "compound inventory".

Once you use a recipe you can explode the recipe and all the items within it are added to your estimate. 

A simple example would be a recipe for a 2400 high external wall, instead of having to work out each individual item such as the plaster, paint, studs and labour you can create a recipe which has each component per lineal metre (the height is fixed). The recipe would be " 2400h - 70mm stick-built external walls per m" with a unit of measure (UOM) of ‘LM’ (per lineal metre).

Each inventory item within the recipe then has a divisor based on how many of those items are required per metre, below is how this recipe might look in the real-world scenario:

 

2400h - 70mm stick-built external walls per m

Cost

Unit

Quantity

Chemically treated films - perimeter up to 500mm wide

$18.00

lin m

1

Carpenter (Tradesperson) - hourly rate

$55.00

per hour

13.6

Structural pine MGP10 - 70 x 35mm

$2.32

lin m

2

Structural pine MGP12 - 70 x 35mm

$3.16

lin m

2

Structural pine MGP12 - 70 x 35mm

$3.16

lin m

7.68

Square washer M12 50 x 50 x 3mm (each)

$0.29

EACH

0.55

Hex nut M12 each

$0.09

EACH

0.55

Threaded rod M12 x 2700mm

$5.13

EACH

0.55

Chemical masonry anchor 400ml

$34.05

EACH

0.02

Nails: striated concrete 4.0 x 63mm (box of 100)

$6.73

EACH

0.01

 

Once you have a recipe built you can simply trace the walls from your floor plan and then enter the length using your recipe as an item within the estimate (or use GTO), when you are happy with the estimate and want to breakdown all the quantities (see BOQ) or for the purpose of ordering all the materials (see Orders) you can simply click on the recipe icon (insert icon) and select “Explode” this will move all the items from within the recipe into their linked Cost Centres and you’ll be able to proceed with ordering or generating BOQ with more detail.

tips.png Tip: Recipes can be used for anything, for instance you may have a set of standard costs for every estimate, you could simply combine all these costs into a recipe and explode it for each new job to save the time of adding the same items over and over.

It is also possible to have negative values within Recipes ie: minus bricks and then plus windows etc.

Build, copy and update recipes in bulk

You build recipes on the My Recipes page: pick a cost centre and unit, add your inventory items with the quantity needed for one unit of the recipe, and add notes for the whole recipe or for single lines. Prices always come from your inventory, so a quick Reprice keeps every recipe up to date.

Got a lot of recipes? You can export them to a CSV file, change quantities, add or remove items, or copy a recipe to a new code in Excel, then import the file back. MyConstruct shows you which recipes are new and which will be replaced before anything is saved. See Manage Recipes for step-by-step instructions and a worked example you can download.

Already have recipes in Databuild? They come across 1:1 with Bridge and keep their structure. See Moving from Databuild to MyConstruct with Bridge.

 

 

 

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