How quoting and estimating work in Monterra

Required role: Any · Tier: Base

Every Monterra project rolls up to a single customer price by combining four cost streams (material, labor, other one-time costs, permits) with percentage adjustments, taxes, and rebates. This article explains what feeds each piece and the order the math runs in.

The big picture

Each line item on a project carries up to three costs:

• Material cost, equipment and parts
• Labor cost, hours times a labor rate
• Other cost, everything else attached to that item (freight, miscellaneous fees)

Each cost has its own taxability and markup percentage, so a line's price is (unit cost x quantity) + tax + markup. Summing every line gives the project's pre-adjustment total.

The rollup then applies in a fixed order:

1. Blended adjustments (percentage markups on total cost or total price) allocate back across lines.
2. Fees and discounts (flat or percentage) hit the pre-tax total.
3. Tax applies, either on cost or on price depending on the project setting.
4. Permits add as a single one-time cost.
5. Rebates subtract from the customer total.

The number a customer sees is whatever survives that sequence.

What feeds material cost

Material cost on each line comes from one of three sources:

• Price Book catalog entries. Every equipment row carries a unit material cost, labor hours, markups, and taxability. New projects inherit those values.
• Assemblies. Reusable bundles (a parent item plus its typical children, or a conduit run with its wires) drop in as a single click and contribute each child's costs to the rollup.
• Supplier pricing from RFQs. When you send an item out for quote, the vendor's lump-sum response replaces the catalog price on that line.

A generic fallback row covers any item without a specific catalog match.

What feeds labor cost

Labor cost on a line is labor hours per unit x quantity x labor rate. Three things drive it:

• Labor hours per item, stored on the catalog row and editable per project
• The project's labor rate. Usually a crew's blended hourly rate, picked from the Price Book. The default crew applies automatically. A flat global rate is an alternative.
• Raceway estimation method. For conduit and wire, the Estimating settings choice (per-assembly or per-wire) controls how raceway hours are spread across the components in a run.

Install methods (e.g. trenching vs. directional drilling) are catalog entries with their own labor hours, so swapping methods on a circuit changes the labor side of the rollup directly.

Percentage adders, fees, and taxes

Adjustments come in three flavors, applied in this order:

• Blended adjustments. A percentage on total cost or total price (e.g. an overhead or general-conditions adder). The dollar amount is reallocated proportionally back to each line, so per-line prices reflect the bump.
• Fees and discounts. A flat dollar amount or a percentage of the adjusted pre-tax total. Discounts subtract.
• Tax. Each line carries material, labor, and other tax rates plus a taxable flag. Project tax mode picks whether tax computes on cost (folded under markup) or on price (added after fees and discounts).

Defaults for all three come from the Price Book and apply only to new projects.

Permits, rebates, and the final number

Two more line items sit above the rollup:

• Permits. A single project-level cost. Adds after tax.
• Rebates. Each rebate's dollar amount subtracts from the customer total.

The final customer price is line items + blended adjustments + fees and discounts + tax + permits - rebates. Margin reports against the original total cost so you can see how the adders moved the bottom line.