Getting an accurate price in front of a client is everything. Price it wrong and you either leave money on the table or lose the job. Your Cost Book is one of the best tools for keeping those numbers clean and consistent — it’s your saved, reusable library of what materials, labor, and services actually cost.
But a lot of the work you do isn’t just labor or just materials. A single line of work — say, “Install tile” — often has a labor cost and a materials cost that you want to track separately. That’s exactly what multi-cost-type rows are for, and now you can build them right into your Cost Book.
What’s a Multi-Cost-Type Row?
A normal Cost Book item is a single line with one cost type: it’s either Labor, or Materials, or one of the others.
A multi-cost-type row is one item that holds more than one cost type at once, each on its own sub-row underneath. So “Install tile” can carry a Labor sub-row and a Materials sub-row, each with its own unit, unit cost, and markup — but they live together as a single item in your Cost Book.
Think of it like a folder with a couple of labeled receipts inside. From the outside it’s one line of work. Open it up and you can see exactly how the labor and the materials each break down.
If you’ve already used the breakdown view when building a scope on a project, this is the same idea — now saved into your Cost Book so you don’t have to rebuild it every time.
Still rolling out. Multi-cost-type rows in the Cost Book are being released gradually, so you may not see the option to add a second cost type to a row just yet. If you’d like early access, reach out to us through the chat or contact us and we’ll get you set up.
Why This Helps
One clean line, accurate underneath. Your scope reads as a simple list of work, but the labor and materials behind each line are priced separately and correctly.
Reuse instead of rebuild. Save the split once in your Cost Book and pull it into any estimate. No re-entering the same labor-plus-materials math job after job.
Better margins, less guessing. When labor and materials are broken out, it’s much easier to see where your money is going and set the right markup on each piece.
The Cost Types You Can Use
When you set the cost type on a row, you’ll see these choices:
Labor
Materials
Labor and Materials
Other
Delivery
Rental
A multi-cost-type row is simply one item that combines two or more of these — most commonly Labor and Materials — with each one on its own sub-row. Each cost type can only appear once within the same row, so you won’t end up with two “Labor” lines fighting each other inside one item.
Building One in Your Cost Book
Head to Resources in the left navigation and open your Cost Book Setup.
Add or open the item you want to break out (for example, “Install tile”).
On the item’s Cost Type, set the first type — say, Labor — then fill in its unit, unit cost, and markup.
Add another cost type to the same row using the + next to the cost type. Pick a second type — say, Materials — and give it its own unit, unit cost, and markup.
Repeat for any other cost types you want on this line. That’s it — the item is now a multi-cost-type row in your Cost Book, ready to drop into any estimate.
How It Behaves in an Estimate
Multi-cost-type rows are designed to act as one tidy unit so nothing gets split up by accident:
It comes in as a whole. When you pull a multi-cost-type item into a scope, all of its sub-rows come in together. If the item has Labor and Materials, you get both — you can’t bring in just one half.
It moves as a whole. When you drag the row to reorder your scope, its sub-rows travel with it. They can’t be separated from each other.
Quantities are per sub-row. Each cost type carries its own quantity, so you can have, say, more square feet of materials than hours of labor. They don’t share a single quantity.
It can collapse to one line. If you choose to show the row as a single line, the price you see is the combined total of all the sub-rows underneath it.
It locks once it’s in a scope. When the row is sourced from your Cost Book, its sub-rows are locked to what the Cost Book defines, so your saved pricing stays consistent across projects.
A Few Things Worth Knowing
Using a Cost Book at all is optional — plenty of contractors price from memory or past quotes. But if you do use one, multi-cost-type rows are a great way to keep labor and materials honest on the same line.
Multi-cost-type rows are part of Eano Pro’s advanced estimating tools, and they’re still rolling out. If you don’t see the option to add a second cost type to a row, it may not have reached your account yet — reach out and we’ll help, or check your plan.
This is the same breakdown behavior you may already use when building a scope directly on a project — the Cost Book just lets you save it once and reuse it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I have to use multiple cost types on every row? No. Single-cost-type items still work exactly as before. Multi-cost-type is there when you want to split a line of work; use it only where it helps.
Can I split a row into more than just labor and materials? Yes. Labor and Materials is the most common pairing, but you can combine any of the available cost types on one row, as long as each type appears only once.
Can I edit just the labor part of a row once it’s in a scope? When the row comes from your Cost Book, its sub-rows are locked to the Cost Book’s values to keep your pricing consistent. Make changes to the saved item in your Cost Book, and they’ll flow through next time you use it.
What happens to the quantities when I add the row to a project? Each sub-row keeps its own quantity, so you set labor and materials amounts independently.
Where do I find my Cost Book? Open Resources in the left navigation and choose Cost Book Setup. For help getting one started, see How to Setup Cost Book.