How you structure your template library follows how you build. A volume builder putting up the same four designs every year wants something different to a custom builder where no two jobs share a floor plan. This guide sets out the three approaches and who each one suits.
The three approaches
One template per house type. Your Ashford, your Belmont, your Carlisle each get their own selection template covering the whole house exactly as you deliver it.
A base plus add-on packs. One base template covering the house as you normally deliver it, plus small packs for the optional extras: an alfresco pack, a theatre pack, a butler's pantry pack. You append the base and whichever packs the job takes.
Segmented parts. Rather than a base, you build a set of templates by section of the house, and assemble the ones a job needs. A single storey template, a second storey template, a wet areas template, a landscaping template.
All three are possible because area and selection templates append, so a job can carry several of each. Item templates and task templates do not, which is covered further down.
Which one fits your business
Volume builders with standardised designs. One template per house type is usually right. If the Ashford is the Ashford every time, a single template that puts the whole house on the job in one click is the fastest thing you can do, and there is no assembly decision to make on each job. You will often still want two or three packs for the genuine options you sell, but the house itself stays as one piece. The thing that makes this work is that your designs are settled. If the Ashford's specification is stable enough to print in a brochure, it is stable enough to hold in one template.
Builders with a range plus options. This is where a base plus packs earns its place, and it covers most builders. If your jobs are recognisably the same house with different extras bolted on, the base carries what every client gets and each pack carries one option. It is the approach we would suggest first if you are not sure which group you fall into, because it handles a standard job in one click and an optional area in two.
Custom and knockdown rebuild builders. Segmented parts tend to suit better, because there is no standard house to base anything on. What repeats across your jobs is not the house, it is the pieces: bathrooms are still bathrooms, kitchens are still kitchens. Building templates around those sections and folding in the ones a job needs gives you the reuse without pretending to a standard product you do not sell. Expect to add some decisions by hand on each job, and treat that as normal rather than as a sign you have set things up incorrectly.
Builders doing a mix. Pick per product line rather than for the whole business. A builder running a fixed range alongside occasional custom work is well served by one template per house type for the range, plus a set of segmented parts for the custom side.
Making the choice stick
Two questions settle it for most people.
How much do your jobs vary? If you can predict what is on the selections schedule before you open the file, you are in whole-house territory. If every job is a conversation, you want smaller pieces.
Where do you want the work to sit? A whole-house template puts the effort into building and maintaining each one, and almost none into setting up a job. Segmented parts put very little into any one template and a couple of minutes of assembly into every job. Neither is wrong, but it is worth choosing deliberately rather than ending up somewhere by accident.
Where your pricing lives, and what that means for item templates
Item templates deserve separate thinking, because upgrade prices live in them. When you add a product to an item group in a template, the upgrade price and any Price on Application flag come across onto every job you clone it into. That makes an item template your published upgrade price list. It also means you probably want fewer of them than you think, because every extra one is another place your prices can drift out of step.
Most builders are best served by one item template covering everything they offer, cloned onto every job, with per-job adjustments where a particular client is being offered something unusual. The other scenarios is to align your item templates to your ranges. If you offer the same items across 2 ranges, one with base inclusions + upgrades and another with all items included, then those would be two templates. Item templates do not stack. You clone exactly one into a job, so it has to cover every selection type your selection templates use. If you split item templates by range, each one still needs full coverage.
Getting the base right, if you are using one
The test for what belongs in the base is simple. If more than about eighty percent of your jobs have it, it belongs in the base template. Anything less becomes an add-on
For a typical residential builder that means the base covers bedrooms, bathrooms, kitchen, living, laundry and exterior, because essentially every build has them. It excludes the alfresco, the theatre, the butler's pantry, the pool surrounds and the granny flat, because most jobs do not. The judgement call is usually the study or media room. If two thirds of your clients take it, putting it in the base and deleting it on the third who do not is less work than appending a pack on the two thirds who do.
How many is right
There is no single number, since it depends on which approach you landed on. What follows is a sensible shape for each.
Running a base plus packs: one base selection template per genuinely distinct product line, which for most people is one or two rather than four, plus three to five packs covering your actual optional areas. Two house types with the same standard specification do not need two templates, they need one.
One template per house type: one selection template per design you actively sell, plus a pack or two for the options you offer across the range. If you have retired a design, retire its template with it.
Segmented parts: one template per section of the house that recurs across your jobs, which usually lands somewhere between five and ten. If you are creating a new one for a job rather than assembling from what you have, that section probably belongs in the template permanently.
The other four types are the same regardless. One item template. One or two area templates, since areas are easy to manage. One or two task templates, per build type rather than per house type. One inspection template per inspection type you run.
Consolidating later is safe from a job perspective, because deleting a template does not touch the jobs already using it, which hold their own copies.
Naming them
You will be picking these from a dropdown that shows nothing but the name, so the name has to carry the whole meaning. Name whole-house templates for the design or the build: "Ashford", "Standard Single Storey", "Knockdown Rebuild". Name packs so they sort together and read as optional: "Pack, Alfresco", "Pack, Theatre", "Pack, Butlers Pantry". Name segments for the section they cover: "Wet Areas", "Second Storey", "Landscaping". Avoid dates and version numbers, since a template is a living thing and "v2" tells you nothing about whether it is current.
What to do next
Building add-on template packs is the practical build guide if you are going with a base plus packs, and it is also the mechanics you use to assemble segmented parts.
Related articles
How templates work in HomePulse
Building a Selection Template
Building add-on template packs
Cloning templates into a job
Keeping templates up to date as your standard spec changes