3.2 Bill structure

The bill can be structured in 2 ways to reflect the requirements of the project and workflow:

1. Simple
The bill is simply a flat list of items, i.e. no categories. This may suit smaller projects or workflows that only price a subset of possible items or trades. Items are displayed with a standard icon under the Project Bill:

2. Hierarchical
Items in a large BoQ are easier to manage when grouped into categories in a tree structure, potentially multiple levels deep. In addition to making it easier to find a specific item, categories group similar items together and provide sub-totals when scheduled. Categories are displayed with a folder icon and arranged in a tree structure similar to standard file systems:

The content of a category can be revealed or hidden with the adjacent arrow. Note that Quantities provides an option to omit the categories in some views, displaying just the items in a flat list.

The full key of any item in a hierarchy is automatically prefixed with the keys of any parent categories, e.g.:

The bill structure has no effect on other software functionality and can be changed at any time. Note that although bill item keys include the keys of parent categories, it is possible to omit any part of the hierarchy by manually adding category keys, e.g. an item in a flat list could be directly assigned the key ‘10.24.73’. These different approaches can be mixed, e.g. creating a partial hierarchy and manually prefixing the keys of any omitted categories to the child items.

Also note that bill items are exported to CSV with calculated quantities in a flat list irrespective of the structure, suitable for import to a spreadsheet and conforming to standard headings of item number, description, unit, quantity, rate and total amount (see section 5.2.5 for more detail).