Background
With supplier pricing, you can choose a supplier while drafting or editing a bid, and Beam's AI Assistant will look for matching products as it builds out the estimate.
Now you'll see a suppliers button right below the text input box. By clicking it, a popup will appear where you can select the supplier(s) you'd like to include.
What happens?
When you have a supplier selected, Beam’s AI Assistant will look for matching products from the selected suppliers while building out the line items within your draft or edit.
When supplier pricing is selected, it may break the scope down into more specific line items than usual. That’s because each line item can only have one supplier product link attached to it. So instead of grouping several materials into one general scope, the Assistant may separate them out so each item can point to the right product. Some lines may not have supplier logos at all, it is dependent on how to scope is packaged.
Supplier pricing is designed as an internal tool for review or purchasing. The supplier logos/links are visible to you in Beam, but they are not shown to the client on the bid.
This is especially useful for subcontractors or anyone who wants more itemized material pricing. And if you like the more granular breakdown and extra product links, but don’t want to show that level of pricing detail to your client, you can go to the Estimate Preview tab and toggle off subgroup pricing.
Once a bid is approved, you can always return to the Estimate tab to review the line item breakdown and access those product links again. We’ll continue expanding supplier support over time.
How does the search work?
Supplier pricing uses a general web search of active product pages on the supplier’s main website, using the project address to help surface location-relevant results; it does not pull pricing from connected supplier accounts, such as Home Depot Pro or Lowe’s Pro.