What custom items are
Custom items are priced line items your company creates inside ZeroCount, under Templates Custom Items. They exist for the products your supplier catalogue does not cover: a fabricated bracket, a subcontracted allowance, a rate your company applies to a particular kind of work.
Unlike the other three sources, custom items are the one place in ZeroCount where figures are actually worked out. Each item carries a Material List Price and a discount, from which Material Total is calculated; a Plant Cost; and Labour Time multiplied by Labour Rate to give Total Labour Cost. Those add up to an Item Total. They are unit rates for the item itself — nothing multiplies them by the quantity you have counted.
See Custom items for creating and editing them, and Importing custom items from CSV for bringing a set in from your estimating software.
Linking a group to a custom item
- 1
In the sidebar, click the group's grey link button. On an Annotation group, use Link Item in the menu.
- 2
In the table toolbar, open the dataset dropdown and choose Custom. The line under the heading changes to Company custom items.
- 3
Type into Search custom items.... Search here covers the code, the description, the category and the manufacturer, which is wider than the other views.
- 4
Narrow further with the Category, Manufacturer, Heading, Group or Take Off filters.
- 5
Double-click the row you want. The window closes and the link is applied.
The columns
| Column | What it holds |
|---|---|
| Code | The item code your company gave it. |
| Description | The item description. |
| Category | Category, as set on the item. |
| Manufacturer | Manufacturer, as set on the item. |
| Heading | Mid-level heading. |
| Group | Sub-group within the heading. |
| Take Off | How the item is measured: Unit, Linear or Area. |
| Material Total | List price less the discount, calculated when the item was created. |
| Total Lab Cost | Labour Time multiplied by Labour Rate. |
| Meta data | Any tags on the item, joined with a middle dot. |
The Take Off pre-filter
Components and assemblies use a unit-of-measure code, and Contractors Choice uses a Linear flag. Custom items use Take Off, and it is the only one of the four that covers areas. That makes the Custom view the one place an Area group is narrowed for you.
| Group type | Take Off pre-filter |
|---|---|
| Count or Detection | Unit |
| Linear | Linear |
| Area | Area |
| Annotation | none |
The pre-filter shows as a chip in the toolbar. Clear it if the item you need is classified differently. It is cleared and reapplied every time the window opens, so it always matches the group you opened it from.
The Recent view
The Recent view lists the last 30 items you linked, from any of the four sources, newest first. It is kept per user in your browser, so it follows you between projects on the same machine but not between machines.
| Column | What it holds |
|---|---|
| Type | Which source the item came from: CMP for a component, CC for Contractors Choice, ASM for an assembly, CUST for a custom item. |
| Code | The item's code, or its ID code for Contractors Choice. |
| Description | The item description. |
| UOM | The unit of measure where the source has one. |
Double-click a row to link it, exactly as in the source view. The Recent view is the only one that is never pre-filtered, so it is also the quickest way to reach an item whose classification does not match the group you are linking from.
Where a job uses the same twenty items over and over, work through the first drawing from the source views and then link everything afterwards from Recent. It removes the searching and the filter-clearing from every link after the first.
What the group row shows afterwards
- The row's link button turns blue .
- The group's menu shows the code in violet, the description, and any metadata tags joined with middle dots. An button with the tooltip Unlink custom item sits beside the code.
- In Review mode the code and description are laid out to the right of the row, with a Remove button whose tooltip reads Remove linked custom item.
The link keeps its own copy of the item's details, so editing or deleting the custom item later does not change what an already-linked group shows.
Custom-item links are not written into the Code and Description columns of the Excel workbook, and they do not fill the Code and Desc columns of the cross-drawing Total tab. A group linked to a custom item still shows a Link button there, and is not counted by Hide linked. Where the codes have to reach the workbook, link the group to a component, Contractors Choice item or assembly instead.
Custom items on group templates
A group template is a set of empty groups — colours, sizes and links already set — that you drop onto a drawing and take off into. Templates can carry component, Contractors Choice and custom-item links, so a custom item you use on every job can be attached once and arrive with every new drawing.
- 1
Go to Templates Groups and open the template.
- 2
Add a group with Add Group if the one you want is not there yet.
- 3
Click Link on the group row.
- 4
Switch the dataset dropdown to Custom and double-click the item.
Assemblies cannot be attached to a template — the Assemblies view is read-only there. Link those on the drawing itself.
See Group templates for building and importing templates.
Common issues
The Custom view is empty
Nobody has created any custom items yet, or the list has not loaded. Click in the window header, and check Templates Custom Items for what exists.
The item I want is missing from an Area group
Custom items are the only source that filters by area, so if the item's Take Off is set to Unit it will not show for an Area group until you clear the chip. If it should be an area item, correct it on the item itself rather than clearing the filter every time.
Next steps
- Custom items — create and edit the items this article links to.
- Group templates — arrive on a drawing with links already in place.
- Linked Takeoff — pick the item first, then count or measure.
- Group costs and totals — where linked items do and do not show up.