Adding direct and indirect costs to your quotation

Direct costs are costs that are fairly easy to assign to a project, quotation or site. These are, for example, the costs of materials, raw materials, hours worked, use of equipment, travel costs, etc.
Indirect costs cannot be assigned to one project straight away. These are, for example, overhead costs, the rent for your office/warehouse, your electricity bill, etc.

Adding direct costs to the quotation

You can record the cost price of material, labor and equipment on the item file. A margin is set on this cost price in order to arrive at a selling price. If necessary, the cost price, the margin and the selling price can all be adjusted on the quotation.

Apart from that, it is possible to add a direct cost to the quotation.
There are 3 ways:

1. add an extra quotation line with the direct cost. This line will be visible to the customer.
2. add a line with the direct cost in the line detail of an existing quotation line or post. This line will not be visible to the customer, and will be included in this post. It therefore also becomes visible in your recalculation.
3. in your quotation, go to the "direct costs" tab (only on calculated quotations). Add a fixed amount (or several) to the quotation here. This amount will be distributed across the quotation lines, depending on your settings. This amount is not carried over as a cost to your recalculation, but it is included in the financial overview.

Distribution of the direct costs across the quotation lines

If you choose the last method, you can add a fixed amount to the quotation so that it is distributed across the quotation lines.
There are various ways of choosing that distribution:

1. Proportional distribution according to the quotation lines: the direct costs are divided by the number of quotation lines, and the same amount is added to every quotation line.
2. Distribution depending on the price: the direct costs are distributed relatively across the quotation lines according to the total price of that line (quantity * unit price).
3. It is also possible to set per quotation line what % of the direct costs may be added to that line. The remainder of the direct costs is then distributed across the other lines according to the distribution chosen in the settings.

An example makes this clearer:
My quotation contains 2 lines, the total price of the quotation is €100.

I now add €100 of direct costs to the quotation. The total price of the quotation becomes €200.
Proportional distribution: €50 is added to each line: 50% to line 1, 50% to line 2.

Distribution depending on the price: the direct cost is distributed according to the total price of the line: 10% to line 1, 90% to line 2.

Setting a % per quotation line: for a quotation line you can decide what % of the direct costs should be on that line. Suppose you want to add 50% of the total direct costs to a particular line, you do this on the 'parameters' tab of the post at the 'cost allocation percentage' setting. The remaining amount of the direct costs is distributed across the remaining lines according to one of the options above.

Adding indirect costs to a quotation

If you know how high your indirect costs are on an annual basis, you can calculate them as a percentage of your revenue. This is then the % of your revenue that is needed to cover the indirect costs.
It is possible to add this percentage to a calculated quotation, via the "margins" tab. At "indirect cost margin", determine how much % margin you want to add in order to cover your indirect costs. You can set this separately per cost type.
This margin is added on top of the margin on cost price that is already present and that was determined on the item file.

This is mainly useful if you already fill in this indirect cost margin in the quotation template, and consistently draw up quotations before you invoice.

Other options:

• adding a commission
• discounts and surcharges

Updated on: 04/09/2026