How to price a multi-contractor job without sharing your rates

The master-spreadsheet problem

Big plant and mine work is priced by several companies at once: an electrical crew, a mechanical crew, a rigging sub. Their numbers arrive by email, WhatsApp and PDF, and someone retypes them into a master workbook the night before the tender closes. Every retype is a chance to ship the wrong number, and every revision that lands after the master was built is a chance to quote off a stale one.

The fix isn't a better spreadsheet. It's letting each company's number stay where it was priced, and rolling it up instead of retyping it.

Decide what each party gets to see

Price disclosure on a shared job is a business decision, so make it explicitly, per share. Three levels cover the real cases: the total alone (the default posture between companies that compete elsewhere), line titles without prices (enough for the main contractor to check scope coverage), and the full breakdown (for a partner you price openly with).

Whatever you choose, the level should be enforced by the tool, not by trust - a total-only share should never even contain the line prices.

Let every company price from its own book

A subcontractor pricing inside the main contractor's system prices without its own catalogue - its rates, its crews, its markups - and that's how numbers get guessed. Each company should quote in its own account, from its own price book, exactly as it would on its own work. The collaboration is the sharing, not the merging.

Roll the numbers up, don't retype them

The main contractor imports each sub's shared quote as a line on its own quote, adds its own labour and products, and sends the end customer one branded document. The sub's number arrives as data - to the cent, at the disclosure level the sub chose - and if the sub re-shares a revised price, the main sees the line is stale rather than silently quoting the old figure.

Cascade the billing the same way

The invoicing on a shared job should follow the same chain as the pricing. When the main contractor issues a 30% deposit milestone to the end customer, each sub should be prompted to bill the main contractor the same 30% of its own agreed total - as a draft the sub reviews and issues, never an invoice raised in its name automatically, and never for more than its own outstanding balance.