House Areas

Understanding House Areas

House Areas is a widely used part of the system. It is used to speed up selection, restrict what can be used where and generally to make a massive amount of data make more sense.

Note

House Area is most easily understood and defined by starting with two questions:

  1. “How do my Trade Contractors split up the areas in the house when quoting for or billing for work?”
  2. "When the home purchaser is making color chart selection for upgrades and extras; in how many areas in the home do they need to make a decision?"
Important

For Color Chart (a.k.a. Lot Selection Packages); you will be using the mix of House Area AND Construction Item Category. The purchaser will need to make a decision for each House Area + Construction Item Category mix.

Tip

Base Contract Construction Items typically only have one House Area. Most people create one House Area called "ALL". Color Charts is where your biggest focus should be.

You should expect that you have hundreds, if not thousands of Items and selections for the user to make. Carefully chosen House Areas will make using the system easier in the long run.

Note

House Areas have global scope, which means once setup in one company, they are available for use in all companies

Examples of House Areas

  • Internal for the unit: Master Bedroom, Stairs, Attic, Furnace Area.
  • External for the unit: The examples of exterior House Areas: Driveway, Roof, Porch. The whole house also can be represented by a House Area.
  • Common area (Complex Buildings or Condominiums): Gardens, elevator, floor structure.

See the Demo Database for more examples:

Examples of How House Areas can be used for restrictions:

  • You might create a House Area called "Cold Room" and assign it to the Construction Item Category "AC Units". When you create a Construction Item, for example called "AC Model 99-10" and assign the "AC Units" Construction Item Category to it; the House Area "Cold Room" is automatically assigned. If you do not have this House Area on the Model that you associate with a Lot then this Construction Item is not available for you to Pick.
  • You might create a House Area called "Kitchen" and assign it to the Construction Item Category "Appliances". When you create a Construction Item, for example called "Stove Model PA123" and assign the "Appliances" Construction Item Category to it; the House Area "Kitchen" is automatically assigned. If you have this House Area on the Model that you associate with a Lot then this Construction Item (and any other Stove in this category) is available for you to Pick.

Setup "Measurement Types" for Each House Area

Although not mandatory, setting House Area Measurement Types allows you to control pricing better when you get to setting up Vendor Contracts.

Start by setting up Measurement Types and then add them to the sub Page of House Areas known as the "House Area Measurements Page".

House Areas Follow this Route Through the System

  1. Start in Construction Item Categories.
  2. Copied to Construction Items.
  3. Copied to Models
Note

Each Time you Push a Construction Item to a Model, the House Area is automatically added to this Model.

Warning

You are not restricted to from manually removing the House Area from the Model however if you do this you will not see the Item on this Model listed in look up screens. Reporting will still work for any transaction already done with this Item prior to removal of the House Area

  1. Copied to Lot Planning Lines (not to Lot Budgets)
  2. Copied to Vendor Contracts - specifically the Contract Revision Items within the Vendor Contracts.
  3. Where applicable, copied to Lot Selection Choices a.k.a. Color Chart

Adding House Areas to Construction Item Categories

From the House Areas Page click on the Ribbon button "Add House Areas to Item Category". A pop-up is presented from which you should select the House Areas you would like to add to the Item Category and press "Add House Areas to Item Category".

Note

On adding House Area to an Item Category, the system does the following:

  • Add the House Area to the sub-categories of the Item Category.
  • Add the House Area to the Items of the Item Category or its sub-categories.

Removing House Areas from Construction Item Categories

In order to maintain data integrity, the process of removing House Areas from Item Categories is necessarily difficult. It is not automated as it can cause harm to your setup. We suggest that this is restricted to a system administrator to make sure you do keep your data clean and intact.

If you have just added the House Area and not processed much information through the system, this is not a big task. However, if you have been using the Item Category and/or House Area for some time, you should expect this task to be time consuming.

Warning

Deletion of a House Area is possible only if the combination of Item Category / House Area does not exist in Planning Lines or in Lot Selection Choices of Lot Selection Packages which are closed. On deletion of a House Area from an Item Category, the system does the following:

  • Delete the House Area from the sub-categories.
  • Delete the House Area, from the Items of the Item Category or its sub-categories.
  • Delete Model Item House Areas with the House Area and with the Items of the Item Category or its sub-categories.
  • Delete Color Selections with the House Area and the Item Category or its sub-categories.
  • Delete Lot Selection Choices with the House Area and the Item Category or its sub-categories from open Lot Selection Packages.