An item template holds the products you offer, grouped by selection type, with the upgrade price against each one. It is the other half of a selection template: one holds the decisions, the other holds what your client can choose.
This is also where your upgrade pricing lives. Prices you set here carry across onto every job you load the template into, so an item template is your published upgrade price list as much as a product list.
Before you start
You need your selection types set up in Settings and some items in your catalogue. If your catalogue is thin, Adding your first items comes first, and if you have a price list in a spreadsheet, send it to us and we will load it for you.
Have your selection template open in another tab, or a list of the selection types it uses. You are going to work through that list, and it is much easier with it in front of you.
Create the template
Go to Templates, then Item Templates, and click New Item Template.
Most builders need only one, covering everything they offer. If you offer multiple pricing ranges, then this is where you can build out distinct templates for each.
Add an item group for each selection type
The template opens with an empty sidebar and the link Add an item group at the bottom of it. That opens a dialog titled New item group with one field, a selection type.
Pick a type and create the group. The sidebar row shows the selection type's name with a count of the items inside, and the panel beside it fills with that group's contents.
Work down your list of selection types and create a group for each. If your selection template uses Tapware, Basins, Tiling, Cabinetry and Shower Screens, you need five groups.
Add products to a group
With a group selected, click Add Item. The dialog is titled Add item to whichever selection type you are in.
It gives you a search box and two filters, Category and Supplier, over fifteen items a page. Tick the products you want and press Submit. Items already in the group come up pre-ticked, so you can reopen the dialog later to add more without disturbing what is there.
This is where your item categories earn their place. A catalogue tagged by category turns this from scrolling into a two-click filter, which matters once you are past a couple of hundred products.
The table lists what you have added, with columns for the item, SKU, supplier, categories and upgrade price.
Set the upgrade price
Each row has a pencil icon that opens a dialog titled Edit upgrade price.
The Upgrade price is what your client pays on top of their contract for choosing that product. Leave it blank for anything included in the contract price, and your client sees no badge against it, which is how they tell an inclusion from an extra.
Price on Application
In that same dialog there is a Price on Application (P.O.A.) checkbox, for anything you cannot put a number against until you have quoted it.
Tick it and your client sees a P.O.A. badge instead of a price, with a note that you will confirm it. Those items stay out of their running upgrade total, and their total panel shows a separate count of how many P.O.A. items they have chosen.
Put the products in order
Drag the rows into the order you want your client to see them, and put your standard inclusion first. The groups themselves can be ordered in the sidebar as well.
Check it against your selection templates
Before you use this on a real job, go back through every selection template you have built, list every selection type used anywhere in them, and confirm this item template has a group for each one.
This matters more than it sounds because item templates do not stack. You load exactly one onto a job, so the single template has to cover everything your selection templates and any add-on packs introduce.
Make it a habit: whenever you add a decision of a new type to a selection template, add the matching group here in the same sitting.
What to do next
Combining templates to produce a working selections portal puts your area, selection and item templates onto a job together.
Related articles
How templates work in HomePulse
Building a Selection Template
Combining templates to produce a working selections portal
How upgrade pricing works
What makes a good item record