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A bid grid type feature is direly needed as many companies perform takeoff in-house and often receive subcontractor pricing that proves to be more advantageous, requiring the removal of the in-house takeoff. Currently when faced with this scenario, the only way to remove in-house take off is to delete it or go to each and every single line and zero out the quantity however, the bad part of that is that it is gone forever... Not good when it is later revealed that the subcontractors scope is not exactly complete and you need to recall certain parts of or even all of your takeoff.

We have found the Alternates Tab to be useful for use as a bid grid of sorts. We can either build the bid package related takeoff in an alternate or insert them from the estimate. (the insert from estimate feature need work to by the way, see previously submitted enhancement request). We can then post or retract the takeoff items as needed without losing the take off quantities and the estimate reflects the correct costs, labor hours, etc. The only problem with using the Alternates tab for this is that it is labeled as an alternate and when some projects can contain more than 20 alternates, it provides for confusion.

With the absence of a bid grid type feature, the quick fix suggestion is to basically copy the Alternates Tab and all of its functionality and rename Bid Packages, Bid Grid or something along that line!