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Best Practice - Option Activities

Revised December 19, 2008

The following Best Practice was provided by Dave Bell, Wendi Pannell, and Noelle Marshall of BuildTopia. To share your best practices visit our user forum @ http://groups.google.com/group/buildtopia

When 'building' your options within BuildTopia you go through the process of selecting the trades associated with building that option. While the user building the options within BuildTopia might not be familiar with the specific cost associated, that user can quickly tell anyone what Trades are involved. The following best practice takes this into consideration making 'building' your options in BuildTopia easier then telling the homeowner 'No'.

Creating the activities

If you are just getting started in BuildTopia your professional services manager will walk you through this process. They utilize a software script to create an additional activity for each trade. Basically they take the trade number + a delimiter + '99' to get the activity number. An activity is created for every trade that might be utilized in the building of an option.

Example

Advantages

• When adding activities to an option code it is very easy to filter through all activities for '99' or the word 'Option' to find all option activities and then associate each trade applicable to the building of that option.
• The Purchase Order states Foundation Option in addition to stating the option name so that the trade quickly recognizes that this is an addition to the base house.
• Many times activity descriptions used on the base house are too specific for the option, or simply don't fit the option

Additional Considerations

With this method additional activity codes are created.