Waste and material costs

Two settings - waste and material pricing - decide how the app turns a measurement into a quantity you can actually order. Set them on each component once and every quote stays consistent.

Waste

Fencing waste is usually small but worth setting:

• Palings / planks - 5-8% covers cuts to length at end posts and corners.
• Rails (timber) - 5% for end cuts and butt-joins.
• Sheet panels - either a small percentage, or a fixed allowance per run for awkward corner cuts.
• Wire and mesh - 3-5% for tensioning slack and joins.
• Posts and gates - zero. You buy what you set.

Set waste against each component so it applies automatically every time you use that component.

Material price and pack sizing

How a product is sold determines how the app converts measurement to order quantity. Get this right and you stop over- or under-ordering.

• Pack by length - the standard for fencing. Panels and rails sold by lineal metre, palings sold per length.
• Pack by area - sheet panel material sold by m² for clad systems.
• Pack by count - posts, gates, latches, hinges sold as discrete items.
• Single unit - per-post, per-gate, per-fitting pricing.

For palings, factor in the spacing (e.g. 90mm palings at 100mm centres = palings per metre × waste).

A worked example

35 lineal metres of 1.8m colorbond fence with one corner and one gate post:

• Plan length: 35 m
• Waste at 3%: 35 × 1.03 = 36.05 m
• Panel pricing: $78/m → 36.05 × $78 = $2,812 material
• Posts (separate component, count): 1 corner + 1 gate + intermediates at 2.4m spacing → 16 posts
• Labor: 35 m × $42/m = $1,470 install + 16 × $55/post = $880

Set the panels as a Lineal component with 3% waste and the posts as a Count component with zero waste, and the quote breaks down cleanly.

Related

• Plan vs Actual
• Creating a component