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Product Catalog

The product catalog is the library of materials, labor, and assemblies — with units, descriptions, and regionally-adjusted pricing — that ContractorScope AI draws on to build and price your estimates. When the AI generates an estimate, every line item and its cost come from this catalog, so your numbers reflect real, current, professional pricing instead of guesswork.

This page explains what the catalog is, where its pricing comes from, and how to browse and search it.

The catalog is read-only

The catalog is maintained by ContractorScope AI and is not edited by companies. You browse and search it, but you do not add, edit, bulk-update, import, or delete catalog items yourself. This keeps everyone's pricing consistent and sourced from a professional cost book rather than hand-entered numbers that drift out of date. If you need catalog content tailored to your brand and pricing, see Custom Catalogs below.

What Is the Product Catalog?​

The product catalog is a searchable library that prices your estimates. Every item in the catalog has:

  • Name — What the item is called on your estimates.
  • Description — Detail shown to the customer or kept for internal reference.
  • Unit — How the item is measured and priced (each, sq ft, linear ft, hour, square, etc.).
  • Unit cost — The trade cost for this item, resolved from the sources described below.
  • Category — How the item is organized in the library (demolition, plumbing, tile, fixtures, finishes, labor, and so on).

ContractorScope AI ships with a professionally-authored catalog. Today the catalog is focused on bathroom projects — the AI builds complete, priced bathroom scopes end to end. Kitchen and basement catalogs are being authored and will follow. (Manual and AI-suggested line items still work for any project type.)

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The catalog is shared across your company account. Everyone on your team sees and prices from the same catalog, so estimates stay consistent no matter who builds them.

Where Catalog Pricing Comes From​

You never set catalog prices by hand. ContractorScope AI resolves each unit cost from the best source available, checked in order, and uses the first one with trustworthy data for that item:

  1. Professional cost book (primary) — An industry-standard, maintained labor-and-material cost book (Craftsman costbook data), adjusted to your region. This is the primary source ContractorScope AI prices from, and it covers both labor and material, so the whole line reflects real, local pricing.
  2. Your own actuals — As you log real jobs, the platform collects your actual costs (about 5 or more samples for an item) so pricing can be tuned toward the way you price for items the cost book does not cover.
  3. Region-adjusted baseline — A seed price adjusted for your geography when the cost book does not cover the item.
  4. Market index — A pricing index that keeps baseline numbers current.
  5. Provisional fallback — A last-resort catalog price, flagged for you to verify, used only when nothing better is available.

For a deeper walkthrough of how a resolved unit cost then flows into markup, client price, and totals, see Understanding Your Estimate.

Browsing the Catalog​

Opening the Catalog​

From the sidebar, click Catalog (shown as a box or grid icon, depending on your theme).

Category Navigation​

Items are grouped into categories. Click any category to filter the catalog to that category only, or view everything at once. Categories reflect the phases of the work — demolition, plumbing, tile and stone, fixtures, finish carpentry, paint, labor, and so on.

Sorting and Filtering​

Within a category, use the controls at the top of the item list to sort by name or unit cost, and to filter by unit type (for example, show only items measured in square feet).

Searching for Items​

The search bar at the top of the catalog searches across item names and descriptions.

Tips for effective searching:

  • Search by material type: "cement board", "shower pan", "wall tile".
  • Try a shorter search term if you cannot find something — searching for "tile" returns wall tile, floor tile, and tile trim, whereas a very specific phrase may not match if the item was named slightly differently.

Results highlight the matching text so you can quickly confirm you found the right item.

Searching the product catalog by material name

How the Catalog Feeds Your Estimates​

You do not add catalog items to estimates one at a time. When you generate an estimate from a scope, the engine selects the right items from the catalog automatically and prices them using the sources above. You then review the generated line items, adjust quantities, and override any individual price for that specific job without changing the catalog.

If a job needs something the catalog does not contain, you can add a manual line item directly on the estimate. Manual line items live on that estimate only — they are not added to the shared catalog.

For the full estimate-building walkthrough, see Creating Your First Estimate.

Custom Catalogs​

If you want catalog content built around your own brand, suppliers, and pricing, a custom catalog is available as a service. Open the Catalog page and click Custom catalog to learn more and get in touch. Custom catalog content is configured for you by ContractorScope AI — it is not self-service editing.

Next Steps​

With an understanding of the catalog, here's what to explore next: