A reusable bundle of price book items that expands into a full set of lines — and scales itself off what you measured.
What An Assembly Is
A window install isn't one line. It's the window, the trim, the flashing, the caulk, the labor, and the haul-away. An assembly bundles all of that under one name so you add it once instead of six times.
Each component records how many of it you need per one unit of the driver. A bundle that needs two tubes of caulk per window stores exactly that, and multiplies it out when the assembly expands.
- One named bundle of price book components.
- Each component stores its quantity per driver unit.
- Expanding creates real, editable line items.
- Lines land grouped under the assembly's name.
Scaling Off The Takeoff
An assembly can name a tag category as its driver — Window, for instance. When you expand it, the measured quantity from the takeoff for that category multiplies every component. Twelve windows on the drawing means twelve windows, twelve sets of trim, and twenty-four tubes of caulk, without you doing the arithmetic.
An assembly with no driver category is a fixed bundle: it expands at whatever quantity you enter, defaulting to one.
- The driver is a tag category, and its takeoff quantity scales everything.
- No driver means a fixed bundle at a manual quantity.
- The driver label reads naturally — "per Window".
Pro tip: Build your three or four most common assemblies first. They pay for themselves on the second estimate, and they make every estimate consistent — the same job never gets quoted two different ways.
Prices Stay Live
An assembly stores references to price book items, not copies of their prices. When you raise a price in the book, every assembly that uses it prices at the new rate the next time it expands — there is no stale bundle quietly quoting last year's cost.
Because of that, an assembly is pinned to the price book it was built against. That keeps an identically-numbered item in a different market's book from silently changing the scope while leaving the prices live.
- Components are references — prices and costs stay live.
- The assembly is pinned to its owning price book.
- Expansion uses the estimate's chosen price tier.
Readiness
An assembly is only as good as its links. A readiness check reports how many components resolve to a live product, how many point at something inactive, and how many resolve but carry no price — so a broken bundle announces itself in the library instead of at the customer's kitchen table.
If a component's product is missing when you expand, it's skipped and flagged rather than crashing or silently pricing at zero.
- Readiness counts resolved, inactive, and unpriced components.
- An assembly with any problem is flagged as needing attention.
- Missing components are skipped and reported, never zero-priced.