Materials & Inventory

Free Web App

Materials and Inventory are two related resources that keep your bid pricing accurate:

• Materials — the catalog of what you buy or sell. For each material you list every vendor you can buy it from and their price.
• Inventory — the stock you actually have on hand, per location, with current quantity and reorder thresholds.

Both are available on every plan. Owner and Manager roles can edit the catalogs; field roles see read-only views with financial fields hidden.

Materials catalog

Go to Resources → Materials in the web app.

Material fields

• Name — e.g. “3/4” Gravel”, “Class 5 Base”, “Topsoil”.
• Category — free-form grouping, e.g. “Aggregate”, “Fill”, “Sand”.
• Default unit — Ton, Yard, or Each.
• Sources — a list of vendors who sell this material, each with a per-unit price. This is the key pricing data the AI uses.

Adding a vendor source

1. Click into a material to open its edit dialog.
2. Under Sources, click Add source.
3. Pick a vendor (from your vendors list) and enter their price per unit at today’s quote.
4. Add as many sources as you have vendors for that material.
5. Save.

The price is snapshot at save time — if a quarry changes their rate, come back and update the source.

More sources = better AI bids

The AI bid chat receives your full materials list including every source’s pricing. The more sources per material, the better it can pick the cheapest (or closest) supplier when proposing a bid.

Inventory on hand

Go to Resources → Inventory in the web app.

Inventory records are separate from materials — they track what’s physically in your yard or on a job site right now.

Inventory fields

• Name — what the item is (can match a Material record or be specific to a location).
• SKU — optional identifier.
• Category — grouping label.
• Unit — Ton, Yard, Each, etc.
• Location — which yard or site holds it.
• Current quantity — how much is there now.
• Last purchase price — what you paid per unit last time.
• Notification threshold — optional low-stock alert level. When quantity drops below this, Low Inventory alerts fire if configured.
• Notes — free text.

Purchases and consumption

• Purchases — each inventory item keeps a purchase history subcollection. When you log a new purchase, quantity and lastPurchasePrice update automatically.
• Consumption — field crews can log materials used on project records or timecard tasks (link the inventory item + quantity consumed). This is captured for reporting but does not auto- deduct from currentQuantity yet — you still adjust inventory manually.

How materials flow into bids

• AI Bid Chat: receives your full materials list with vendor sources. When bidding a job that needs, say, gravel, it compares your vendor prices and proposes the best source automatically.
• Manual Bidding: the form has a single Material cost number you enter. Pull costs from your catalog as a reference.
• Haul Logs: each haul logs a materialId and quantity — connects the catalog to field operations.

Low-inventory alerts

If you set a notification threshold on an inventory item and enable Low Inventory Alerts under Smart Notifications, you get an email when the quantity drops below the threshold. Useful for aggregate piles you don’t want to run dry on.

What’s not here (yet)

• Automatic inventory deduction when materials are consumed on a project or timecard. Consumption is logged, but you still adjust inventory manually.
• Purchase orders with vendor send/receive. Purchases are logged after the fact.
• QuickBooks item sync — materials and inventory stay in Excavation Expert; only customers and vendors round-trip with QB.

Next steps

Vendors Vendors are the 'sources' on each material.

Haul Logs Hauls reference materialId for tracking.

AI Bidding Chat See how materials + sources drive AI cost picks.