Unlocking the Power of Prebuilds

Prebuilds are awesome.

Let me list the ways:

• They help quickly and reliably estimate required parts and labour.

• They standardise your offerings.

• They embed your knowledge and make it available to the rest of the organisation.

• They can be fixed price.

• They can have dynamic pricing which automatically adjusts based on your catalogue and labour prices.

• They can have allowances for labour and/or materials as well as specific parts.

• They allow you to build detailed estimates without showing your workings to the customer.

• They can be linked to asset servicing in order to automate billing for planned maintenance work.

• They can be edited for each quote or job without affecting the rest of the system.

• They can be used for contractor piece rates.

• They can be used for quoted contractor works.

• They can be used for day rates.

• They can be used for easily ordering sets of related items.

• They can have solar rebates (like STCs and VEECs).

• They can have customised commission rates in order to reward upsells.

• They can have negative quantities of catalogue items (for switching out individual parts).

• They can have add-on pricing (discounted rates for upsells).

• They can have part numbers.

• They can have images.

• They can have rich text descriptions.

• They can have private notes.

• They can have custom fields.

• They can have links.

• Part numbers, images, descriptions, notes, links, and custom fields can all display on Form Builder templates.

• They can be used in take-off templates.

• They can be used in simPRO Takeoffs.

• They can be used third-party applications like Groundplan.

• They can be accessed via API.

• They can be exported.

• They can be imported.

• They can be reported on in BI Reporting.

We can't explore all the use cases in the space of a single article, so let's look at some of the greatest benefits of using prebuilds.

What is a Prebuild?

SimPRO defines a prebuild as:

An assembly of materials and / or labour to be added to a quote or job as a single billable item.

So a prebuild has a "front end" and a "back end". The front end is what the customer sees - usually the part number, name, description, maybe a photo, and a price. This is the "single billable item" part.

The back end is the "assembly" part of it: this is the parts and labour that make up your billable item. Think of it like a restaurant menu. If you order a hamburger, the restaurant doesn't bill you separately for meat, bread, lettuce, tomato, cheese, ketchup, and the time it took to prepare it. As the customer we don't care about what goes into it; we just want to satisfy our hunger. In fact, sometimes maybe we'd prefer not to know!

When we order the hamburger we are ordering a result, not a process, so the menu and the bill describe the outputs, not the inputs: "Hamburger: $25". That is their promise to you.

Which leads us to benefit number one:

Prebuilds Allow You to Sell Results, Not Just Parts & Labour

All businesses are different. And sometimes you really do have to list all your parts and labour, especially if you are operating a 'do & charge' model, or working under a contract that stipulates it.

That is the personal chef model. But most businesses are not like personal chefs, they are like restaurants. So, generally, it is better to sell a result.

Here's how prebuilds can help do that.

Your quotes and invoices are clearer

If your itemised quote shows Powerpoints x 3, there won't be any confusion as to what you are offering or whether the outcome was delivered when you send your invoice - they can see them on the wall. But if you display a list of cable, outlets, time, and other materials, and haven't delivered on your customer's expectations, you are inviting a dispute. Prebuilds allow you to sell an outcome, not a process.

Your estimating is consistent

Not only internally consistent - that is, for each salesperson or estimator, but consistent to your customers. Due to loss aversion, consistency is a key contributor to purchasing decisions. Which is another way of saying people try to avoid getting stung.Imagine you're a property manager. One of your properties needs a new water heater, so the owner asks you to organise a replacement. You have two high-quality plumbers on your books. One charges on a case-by-case basis. Sometimes they're cheap, but sometimes the job blows out.  The other has supplied you a fixed price for water heater replacement, and always delivers the promised outcome without surprises. Who would you call?

Itemised quotes and invoices become easy 

Without prebuilds, you're always dreading that customer question: "Could you itemise that for me?" Yes, job descriptions and scripts can help, but that's just text, which is not connected to the parts and labour, and requires error-prone typing.And if you need to do an itemised progress claim? Out comes the calculator, then more typing!

Prebuilds also open up the door to making mobile quoting easier, with a standard range of billable items for estimators and customers to choose from.

You don't have to reveal your recipe

No customer wants to pay more than they have to. And no contractor wants to charge less than they can. If you want to provide itemised quotes, but don't want your customers picking them apart and making you justify each line, prebuilds allow you to do that.There is nothing dishonest about it - most other industries do not tell customers their input costs. And because the customer is agreeing to an outcome, not cost-plus markup, there is very little room for dispute. If the customer is willing to pay your price and you can increase your margin, everyone wins.

Prebuilds Make Your Knowledge Available To Your Whole Business

You may not think of yourself as particularly wise, but if you've built a business, you will undoubtedly have a huge wealth of expertise in your head. Think of all the things you've learned the hard way: when the all the materials arrived except for the screws you forgot to order. Or the time you ordered twice as much cable as you needed, and of the wrong type. Or when you found a supplier who could manufacture a custom part at half the price of the big names.

Now think of all the time you spend making sure the other people in your business don't make those same mistakes.

If you can set aside some time to create prebuilds that have all the correct descriptions, time estimation and parts, you can begin to free yourself from that workload and reap the benefits of your hard-won knowledge.

No more reinventing the wheel.

No more decision fatigue.

No more being the bottleneck through which all pricing and billing decisions have to be made.

Capturing your business's 'secret sauce' and formalising it in things like prebuilds allows you to build a business system that can grow, instead of creating ever more jobs for yourself.

You can also get skilled people in your business to create prebuilds in their area of expertise, making their knowledge available for the benefit of everyone.

Examples of Prebuilds

Nearly every business sells the same things over and over again.

If you think prebuilds won't work for your business because every job is different, try breaking your estimating up into smaller, modular sub-units. You'll probably find that there are just a few dozen that form your business's core offerings.

Examples:

Roofing Prebuilds

Wrong ❌

• Metal roofing per sqm

Why: There are many different material types and components to a single roof. Some are a mess of hips and ridges while others have only a single ridge. Using one flat rate will not capture that variability, and won't allow you to estimate parts, time, or prices with accuracy.

Right ✓

• Colorbond sheeting per sqm (includes sheets, screws, labour, maybe battens)

• Colorbond roll top ridge flashing per l/m (includes ridge flashing, screws, labour, silicone)

• Colorbond valley flashing per l/m (includes valley flashing, screws, labour, silicone)

• etc

Why: This is better because each element (ridges, valleys etc. are standardised). Continue to work your way through the elements of a roof (gutters, downpipes, flues etc) until all standard roof components are captured. These can then be assembled for accurate takeoffs.

Fencing Prebuilds

Wrong ❌

• Chainlink fencing per l/m

Why: As with roofing, there are two many variations (height, ground surface etc) and subcomponents (corners, fences, gates) to account for.

Right ✓

• 2400H chainlink galvanised fencing per l/m - soft ground (includes mesh, posts, cross-bars, brackets, concrete, fixings, labour)

• 2400H chainlink galvanised stays - soft ground (includes stays, brackets, fixings, labour)

Continue to add prebuilds for different gates, end caps etc.

Copy these and create variations for different surfaces, heights etc.

Plumbing Prebuilds

Wrong ❌

• Supply and install water heater (there are many different types of water heater with different prices)

Right ✓

• Supply and Install Rheem 125L Electric Water Heater (HWU, labour, quickie kit, other fixings and consumables)

• Supply and Install Rheem 160L Electric Water Heater (HWU, labour, quickie kit, other fixings and consumables)

Copy the prebuild, switch out the details that are different and continue until all models are taken care of.

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This article has mainly focussed on the why of prebuilds. In the next post I'll unpack the different types of prebuilds, how to set them up correctly, and how to get the most out of them in different scenarios.