Your Rates, Not a Price Book: Building a Rate Register AI Can Use

Ask where your rates live and the answer is “everywhere”. Last month’s spreadsheet. A supplier email from March. Labour allowances in the estimator’s head. Markup depends on who priced the job.

The fix isn’t a bigger price book. It’s a register of your own rates that a person or AI can price from, showing where every number came from.

What is a rate register in estimating?

One list of every rate you price with: materials, labour, hire, testing and allowances. Each rate gets its own line with:

• what it is, in your BOQ’s words
• the unit it’s priced in
• the cost
• where it came from
• when you got it, and how long it holds

It’s not a quote or a price book. It’s what things actually cost you, in one place instead of five.

Why doesn’t a generic price book work for a subcontractor?

Price books aim to be roughly right for everyone. Your price must be right for you. It depends on:

• Your trade prices. What suppliers charge your account, not the website figure.
• Your crew. How long your team really takes per light, metre of tray or unit.
• Your rules. Markups, allowances and minimums settled over years of wins and losses.

Price from a generic figure and you’re too high to win or too low to profit. You find out which when the job’s done.

What should every rate in the register carry?

Each field earns its place:

Field	Why it matters	Example from our sample register
Rate key	Links the rate to the BOQ line it prices	Workshop/13
Part number	Matches the supplier list and your BOQ	SE-TRAY300
Description	Says exactly what’s priced	300mm heavy duty cable tray
Unit	Stops a per-metre rate applied per length	m
Material and labour cost	Kept apart, so you see where the money goes	34.00 material, 65.00 labour
Source	Shows where the number came from	Supplier price list A, issue 2026-09
Date and valid to	When it was right, and when to recheck	2026-09-01, valid to 2026-12-31
Status	Confirmed, or a gap that needs a price	confirmed

Most spreadsheets leave out the source column. It matters most. A rate with no source can’t be checked. An undated rate from three tenders ago is a guess dressed as a number.

Sample data. One register holds supplier list prices, hire quotes and your own business rules, and every line shows its source and date. This is from our fictional electrical demonstration job.

How do you set up labour rates and markups?

Most of a price’s judgement sits in labour. Write the rules down instead of working them out on the night:

• Labour per unit. Hours per item or metre, times your hourly rate. If height, access or ceiling type changes it, make that a rule.
• Allowances. Testing, commissioning and certification are often priced by rule, not counted. In our sample, testing is a dated business rule.
• Markups. Decide markup or margin, and say so on the sheet. 20% markup on 100 sells at 120: a 16.7% margin. Mix them up on a big job and the price moves more than you think.

In our setups, your labour rates and markups are rules in the pricing template, so every job is priced the same way. The internal workbook shows the workings. The draft quote on your letterhead keeps costs and markups off it.

How do you keep the register current?

Rates go stale. Copper moves, suppliers reissue lists, hire day rates change. A few habits keep it honest:

• Date every rate. Old ones show at a glance.
• Give list prices a valid-to date. Once it passes, recheck before use.
• Record supplier quotes against the job. A one-off switchboard quote isn’t a list price. Log it with its quote number.
• Never fill a gap with a guess. No rate? Mark it a gap and get a price.

If supplier prices hold your quotes up, see how to send supplier RFQs the same day the tender lands.

How does AI use a rate register?

Without one, it doesn’t use your rates at all. That’s the problem in can ChatGPT or Claude do construction estimating: a spreadsheet in seconds, but the rates aren’t yours. So you redo it.

So we set up the whole process: a custom estimating plugin in your own Claude or ChatGPT account, set up around your trade, BOQ layout, pricing and quote. The pricing stage reads from your register:

1. Measure. It lays out the BOQ your way, each line showing its drawing, page and revision. Unclear items are flagged, never guessed.
2. Approve. Your estimator signs off the BOQ before pricing.
3. Price. Your rates, each with a source and date. Missing rates are listed for you to fill. You get an internal pricing workbook and a draft quote on your letterhead.
4. Addenda. Addendum in, change schedule out, with before-and-after excerpts and the price difference.

What if you don’t have a proper pricing sheet?

Plenty don’t. Rates sit across supplier emails, old jobs and memory. That’s fine. We set it up from what you have: three quoted jobs, your pricing sheet and your quote template. Messy is fine. No pricing sheet? We make one with you, and you confirm every figure.

How do you know the prices come out right?

We prove it on three of your priced jobs first: one run with you, two blind. The target is every row and the price matching to the cent. Where it differs, we fix the rules, never the answer.

Is it worth setting one up?

If your rates live in three places and one person knows how pricing works, yes. A trusted register makes every price easier to check, by hand or with AI. If you want us to set it up with you, it’s a fixed setup fee, confirmed on your call.

See how our estimating plugin works, and bring your pricing sheet, however messy, to the call.