Estimate to Budget

Phase budget for Knowify

The takeoff file is Knowify's other import: Phase, Item, Qty, Cost, Type. Each concept's share of a phase is spread over its estimate lines in proportion to each line's total; a line kept whole keeps its own quantity and unit cost. Its labor is one Tradesman row in hours at the file's labor rate. It adds up to the phase box below to the cent.

Description	Materials budget	Labor budget	Subcontractors budget	Equipment budget	Miscellanea budget	Phase total	Status

Estimate materials and labor are read from the export's own detail lines; a line carries money only when no deeper line follows it, so an assembly is never counted twice. Levels come from the indent of column A (newer layout) or the name column (older layout); the Budget Code is not used. Labor saved as a formula with no value is worked out as hours times the rate in that formula. Contract total is the estimate plus the adjustment; the budget is the contract less the profit margin.

Settings

Templates Standard matches groups to the nine categories by name and gives each its default phase and split. SNF and GOC are the rule sets carried over from the converter workbook for those jobs. The three built-in templates cannot be changed or deleted. Your own templates start from Standard and keep the answers you give on the Review screen.

A template decides how an estimate's groups become phased concepts. With one of your own templates picked, the answers you give on the Review screen are kept in it, so the next estimate using it fills them in and only asks about names it has not seen.

Template

Default adjustments How adjustments are typed on a newly loaded estimate. You can still switch for one estimate above its table, on the Contract total figures.

Default Profit Margin % The profit margin every row of a newly loaded estimate starts with: 20 budgets 80% of the contract. On the Budget figures you can change it for the estimate, or for one row.

App decimals How many decimal places every money figure in the app is carried and shown to: the concepts, splits, adjustments, contract and budget. The estimate's own lines can carry more; 2 rounds everything to the cent, as before. Changes the figures at once.

Knowify decimals How many decimal places what goes to Knowify uses: the phase box, Copy for Knowify, the Knowify view and the takeoff file (amounts, labor hours and unit costs). Knowify itself keeps 2 unless set otherwise and takes at most 6; this starts at 6 (Spot, 28-Oct-2026). The rounding is carried from figure to figure, so the box still adds up to the app's total at these places.

Export layout Kept for later. The app detects the layout from cell A1 (Cost item = newer, Date = older); this forces one if a file is ever not recognised.