Setting Up Material Costs

This article covers how to add and manage material rates in Stimaro, and how those rates feed the cost of materials on your item sheets.

Where material rates live

Material rates are stored in the Rates tab. Open a project, click Rates in the top bar, then click the Material sub-tab. Every material you price on a job — riprap, pipe, concrete, lumber, hardware — should have a rate here before you build item sheets.

What you see on the Material tab

Each row represents one priceable material, with these columns:

You can change which columns are shown using the Summary, Cost, and Full presets above the grid. Full shows everything including vendor and tax detail; Cost shows code, description, U/M, rate, and total; Summary shows just code, description, and total.

How Total is calculated

The Total column is the effective per-unit cost that flows into your item sheets:

Total = (Rate − Discount) × (1 + Tax %)

For example, a material with a Rate of $100, a Disc % of 5%, and a Tax % of 8% gives a Total of $100 × 0.95 × 1.08 = $102.60 per unit. Sales tax applies to the discounted rate, not the base rate. If a material has no discount or tax, leave those fields at 0 and the Total equals the Rate.

Adding a material rate

1. On the Rates tab, click the Material sub-tab.
2. Click + Add in the toolbar. A new row appears with a generated code and the description "New Material."
3. The cursor drops into the first editable cell. Type a Code, then press Tab.
4. Fill in Description, U/M, Rate, and — if they apply — Disc %, Tax %, and Vendor.
5. Press Enter or click away. The row saves automatically and the Total updates.

If your Material tab is empty, you'll see an Add Material Rate button in the center of the screen that does the same thing.

Editing a material rate

Click any cell to select it, then double-click (or press F2) to edit. Type the new value and press Enter or Tab. Changes save automatically and the Total recalculates.

Renaming a material code

Renaming a code updates every item sheet that already uses it — you don't have to re-link anything. Right-click the row, choose Rename Code, type the new code, and confirm. You can't rename a code to one that's already in use.

Deleting a material rate

Select the row (or several, using the checkboxes) and click Delete in the toolbar, or right-click and choose Delete. An Undo option appears briefly. If a rate is currently used on an item sheet, the delete is blocked and you'll see a message naming the rate — remove it from those items first.

Setting tax or discount across all materials at once

Use Global Setup to apply the same tax or discount to every material rate in one step:

1. On the Material tab, click Global Setup.
2. Enter a Sales Tax %, a Discount %, or both. Leave a field blank to leave it unchanged.
3. Review the preview, then confirm. An Undo option appears.

Importing material rates from a spreadsheet

1. Click Import in the toolbar.
2. Choose your Excel or CSV file and select Material as the rate type.
3. Map your spreadsheet columns to the Stimaro fields (Code, Description, U/M, Rate, Discount %, Sales Tax %). Stimaro auto-matches by column header where it can.
4. Choose how to handle conflicts (skip, overwrite, or rename incoming).
5. Review the preview and confirm.

You can also copy material rates from another project using Other Jobs in the toolbar.

How material rates connect to item sheets

On the Items tab, when you click Add Resource and choose the Material category, you'll see your material rates. Selecting one brings its Total (the after-discount, after-tax per-unit cost) in as the unit cost for that resource line. To override the rate for a single item, check Manual Rate and type a one-off price — it affects only that line and leaves the material rate unchanged.

Shortcut: on the Material tab, right-click any rate and choose Use in item to jump to the Items tab with that rate pre-selected.