Proposal Item

Proposal Items are a central part of Kompass and control many financial aspects of the system.

Attributes

General

Project: each Proposal Item must be linked to one Project.
Name: Title of the Proposal Item. This will be included in the Proposal Document.
Description: describe the work that will be done including assumptions, notes, etc. This will be included in the Proposal Document.
Internal Notes: notes that will not be shown on the Proposal Document. It is usually used to explain any assumption the Estimator made when creating the Proposal Item.
Parent Proposal Item: group this Proposal Item with another one. Instead of showing separate Quote Items, the grouped Proposal Items will be shown as one. This is useful if, e.g., you want to split out the work into multiple Proposal Items (and Tasks) but want to show just one Proposal Item to the customer.
Visibility: sets if this Proposal Item should appear in the Proposal Document:
- Show: include the Proposal Item with price and description in the document. If it has been grouped with a Parent Proposal Item, then the title and description will be added to the title and description of the Parent Proposal Item and the price will be added to the Parent Proposal Item price.
- Add price parent (only available if a Parent Proposal Item has been selected): Only the price will be added to the Parent Proposal Item. Title and description will not be shown.
- Exclude from proposal: do not show the Proposal Item or price in the document.
Optional: when set, this Proposal Item will not be included in the Project price unless it is accepted. It can also be shown separately on the Proposal Document. If the Proposal Item has a Parent Proposal Item, then this option can not be selected and will be controlled by the Parent Proposal Item.
Accepted: date when this Proposal Item was accepted by the client.
Accepted By: customer contact who accepted the Proposal Item.
Tags: tags can be attached to Proposal Items. They can then be filtered by tags.

Staff

In this section staff resources can be added to the Proposal Item to build up the budget of planned costs. Resources generally have two types of costs (Site, Office) which are futher divided into cost per day and cost per hour. The types of staff resources and unit costs are defined in the administration area and are usually fixed for a financial year. They can only be changed by a Kompass administrator.

Quantity: how many to include
Site Days: how many site days to include
Site Hours: how many site hours to include
Office Days: how many office days to include
Office Hours: how many office hours to include
Total (read-only): the calculated total taking the defined costs into account.

Equipment

This section budgets the working equipment needed to perform the work of this Proposal Item. Rates are only divided by day and hour. Entries can be set as editable by the Kompass administrator to allow for equipment that the company needs but needs to hire in.

Name: generally fixed unless a resource has been set as editable
Quantity: how many to include
Days: how days the equipment will be required for
Hours: how hours the equipment will be required for
Rate per Day: generally fixed unless a resource has been set as editable
Rate per Hour: generally fixed unless a resource has been set as editable
Total (read-only): the calculated total taking the defined costs into account.

Subcontractor & Other Costs

This section allows to account for subcontractor and other costs that don't fall into the above two categories (Staff or Equipment). The attributes are the same with Equipment.

Financials

This section defines which department and service costs belong to and the price of the Proposal Item.

Department: select which Department will do the work
Service: if available, then select which Service of the Department this should Proposal Item be attributed to
Price Type: this decides how a Proposal Item's value is measured.
- Lump Sum: status is recorded as a percentage 0-100%. It's not possible to enter values above 100% or below 0%.
- Rate: the status is recorded as a quantity of the Proposal Item price. For example, if the price is £100 and the status is 5, then the value of the Proposal Item is at that stage £500. There is no fixed upper limit but a budget can be set; see attribute Quantity.
VAT Rate: what tax rate should be applied to this Proposal Item
Price: If it is changed, then the Gross Margin is calculated automatically taking the total Costs into account.
- if lump sum, then this is the total price of the Proposal Item.
- if rate, then this is the unit price. The total price is calculated by multiplying this price by the quantity.
Gross Margin (%): if this is changed, then the price is adjusted automatically. Offices, Departments and Services can have separate target Gross Margins and the field will highlight if a Price is below a certain Gross Margin. Note: Gross Margin = (Price - Costs) / Price
Budget: this field is available if the price type is "rate" and "Automatic" is unticked. It defines the budgeted quantity for this Proposal Item. If a status is recorded that is higher than this budget, then Kompass will highlight this in the Proposal Items list and the Project Status list.
Automatic: if enabled, then the Budget will be dynamically adjusted according to the latest Status record. If it is disabled, then the Budget will be seen as an upper limit for the Proposal Item and Status records that are higher than the Budget will be highlighted in the Proposal Items list and the Project Status list.