ImprovementSeptember 15, 2026

Alternates show their cost and profit, not just their price

An alternate has always shown one figure: its net price. Useful for the bid form, blind for the decision. A $10,000 add that carries $9,500 of cost is a different animal from one that carries $6,000, and the estimate wasn't saying which.

Now it does, in three places:

  • Alternates Summary — three columns on every row: Cost, Profit (with the margin under it), Price. The base bid row shows its own cost and profit, each alternate shows its net change to all three, and the Scenario Total rolls up the base plus the checked alternates.
  • Each alternate's header — the net price, followed by cost and profit in small type.
  • The footer — a Profit dollar figure next to Margin and Markup, for the base bid or the selected scenario.

Cost is the raw extended cost after sales tax, before overhead — the same basis the footer's margin has always used. Profit is price minus that cost, so it holds overhead and profit together, the way Gross Margin does on the totals card.

Nothing in the math changed. Credits still net negative, children still fold into their parent line, and a manual price override still counts at its typed value.

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