Cost database: items

Items are material (and similar) rates: a description, a unit and a rate stored as a decimal string.

Open the Items tab. Search or walk the category tree.

Each row shows where the rate came from (MPL, tenant, or project).

Edit creates a tenant version. The MPL row is not overwritten.

Rates are money. They travel as text with four decimal places, never as a JavaScript number.

Material details record the physical facts behind the unit — a 4.8 m piece length on timber sold per nr, a 2.4 × 1.2 m sheet, bricks per m². With those in place, linking the item to an assembly line measured in a different unit converts automatically (whole pieces by default), with the working shown.

Every item carries a material family (bricks, plasterboard, admixtures…). It is derived from the description and shown as such; change it on the item when the wording misleads — a new version, and the Linking Assistant re-checks the lines waiting on it. The Linking Assistant only offers an item for lines of the same family, so an item without one is never offered; Settings › Cost database lists those with a one-click Set family.

Review with AI on one item fills material details from the description plus cited web research. Review items with AI does the whole library in the background as pending suggestions, grouped by material under Material facts approval. Each card shows where every fact came from, which units now convert, and the prices the facts imply; edit the facts before accepting if a figure is wrong. Confirm corroborated applies only rows whose every fact is read from the description or backed by a second page and whose every demanded unit converts — the rest wait for you. AI never touches a rate.

Export downloads the live library (your items plus inherited published items) as CSV or Excel. Import the same headers back: unmatched or blank codes are referenced, new items get a code, and previous prices stay under Settings → Cost database. The template's Guide sheet lists every unit the importer reads and every Material details field by class. A unit the vocabulary cannot place still imports as written, but the review lists it under Units not recognised with a suggested unit, because no conversion can use it until it is fixed.