Set Up Cost Pools for Product Pricing

One path across two modules: define the pools on the accounting side, file their rates, then price with them. Do it in this order — a proposal snapshots the rates that exist when it is created, and only Refresh rates changes that snapshot.

Step 1 — Define the pools (Accounting → Cost Pools)

Create one pool per distinct indirect cost behavior. A typical manufacturer: MOH manufacturing overhead on direct manufacturing labor dollars; EOH engineering overhead on direct engineering labor dollars; MH material handling on material and subcontract dollars; GA G&A on total cost input. Give each a start date on or before the fiscal year you will price. See the Cost Pools controller guide for every field.

Only active pools reach Pricing.

Step 2 — File the rate set (Admin → Pricing Rates)

File the fiscal year: rate basis, fringe (non-SCA and SCA), overhead, G&A, and health-and-welfare. Once Step 1 is saved, the form also lists Overhead pool rates — one input per overhead-type pool. Enter each pool's rate as a percent. A pool left blank is not offered on proposals; the single overhead rate applies instead.

M&H is on this card alongside fringe, overhead, G&A and H&W — file it here with the rest of the rate set rather than per proposal.

To carry fringe inside a departmental pool, file fringe as 0 and carry it in the pool's own rate.

The same card carries Target gross margin (%), the target every margin in Pricing is colored against. Leave it blank to track the business: its trailing-twelve gross margin, plus one point.

Step 3 — Create the proposal

A new proposal copies the filed rate set — the four rates and every pool rate — into its own snapshot. Filing a new rate set later does not move a priced proposal.

Step 4 — Assign pools

On the Positions tab, set the OH pool column on every row. On the Deliverables tab, set the OH pool on every touch-labor component. The picker shows only pools that are active and carried in this proposal's snapshot. Leaving a row on "— proposal rate" uses the single overhead rate.

Step 5 — Refresh when rates change

When the filed rates change, press Refresh rates on the proposal. It re-copies the current rate set into the snapshot and reprices. It refuses — and changes nothing — if the new rate set lacks a pool that a position or component on this proposal is assigned to; map that pool on Admin → Pricing Rates first, or clear the assignment.

Step 6 — Check the result

Open a position's or component's trace. The step Overhead Pool Applied names the pool and the rate that burdened that row. If it names the proposal rate instead, the row's pool was not set.

Each pool is applied on the base it declares in Step 1. A pool you defined on total cost input burdens on total cost input; one defined on material and subcontract dollars burdens on those. The declaration you make when you create the pool is the one Pricing uses, so it is worth getting right there rather than compensating downstream.