All Collections
FAQ
Catalog
What are Products, Labor, Allowances, and Packages?
What are Products, Labor, Allowances, and Packages?

The differences between products, allowances, and packages in the Catalog

Kimberly Craven avatar
Written by Kimberly Craven
Updated over a week ago

The Catalog provides four ways to manage the materials and labor you sell to your customers: 

  • Products

  • Labor

  • Allowances

  • Product and Labor Packages

  • Labor-Only Packages

Products

Products are Brand and Model-specific items (aka equipment) that you sell, and they typically make up the bulk of your Catalog. Examples include speakers, cameras, and cable.

Labor

Labor is the time required to complete the tasks in the Projects you are tracking on D-Tools Cloud. Labor is a fee you charge your customers in addition to the price of the products supplied as part of the project.

On D-Tools Cloud, labor is associated with a ‘Labor Type.” Labor Types determine the rate and cost for any labor of the specific type. Labor associated with a Type “inherits” the values of its type - saving you time and effort when quoting labor.

Just like equipment (Products), labor can also be associated with a specific phase of the project. For example, Consultation labor in the Design or Rough-In phase and Installation labor in the installation phase.

You can manually add labor for all products and tasks in a project or use our curated labor estimates.

Allowances

Allowances are a placeholder for materials that would otherwise be included as a Product. Unlike their Product counterpart, they do not have a Brand or a Model and instead have only a name. Allowances are great for estimating and include a feature that allows the price of the Allowance to be calculated based on the condition of an opportunity you define. This feature is unique to Allowances and is not available on Products. Examples include "Large television" or "Lighting Control System Allowance."
Learn more about allowances

Product and Labor packages

A Package is a group of items you want to combine, like a box of items or a standard configuration you frequently install. Using Packages, you can have the items in the package shown as one item or list out the package items independently in the proposal so your customer will have no idea it was in a package.

You can create two types of packages on D-Tools Cloud—Product and Labor Package and Labor Only Package. Product and Labor packages can accommodate both products and labor requirements added as Labor Types.
Learn more about packages

Labor Only packages

Labor Only packages can contain only labor requirements, such as for the Services offerings in your business. For example, a Site Supervision package with labor for Site Surveys, Quality Checks, and Cleanup conducted by different contractors but offered as a single Labor package.

Did this answer your question?