Companion add-on

A companion add-on is a pre-configured item that belongs with something already on an estimate — factory start-up for a piece of equipment, a commissioning visit, a first service year — offered to the estimator on the lines it actually applies to. It is defined once, centrally: a name, optional scope wording, a price expressed either as a fixed amount or as a percentage of the line it attaches to, an optional cost so the margin is real rather than assumed, the business unit that should earn the revenue, and the product categories or trades it should be offered beside. The problem it addresses is a familiar leak: attached services are easy to forget on a bid day and, when they are remembered, are often booked to whichever division wrote the estimate rather than the one that performs the work. Add-ons are offered rather than inserted automatically — an estimator accepts one deliberately — and an accepted add-on becomes an ordinary labor line beneath its parent, owned by the division named on it, so revenue lands where the work does.

Related term: Job costing