Field tool
Local Price Index
Log the prices you are actually quoted and watch how they move — the spread between suppliers, and how far the latest quote has drifted from your own average.
- Your own dataWhat it works from
- Any deviceBrowser storage
Log a price
Your data: back it up, or move it to another device
Everything
Everything you save lives in this browser, and in your own Google Drive too if you turn on Save with Google below. The backup itself uploads nothing: the file is written straight to your downloads folder. Clearing your browsing data would take everything here with it: your projects, your prices, your saved estimate versions and your job history. The file below holds all four.
Projects, saved presets, calculator entries and your price journal, in one file. Restoring merges — nothing already here is removed, so the same file can be imported on a phone and a laptop and both end up holding everything.
Prices as a spreadsheet
CSV is how a merchant’s price list actually arrives. Export the template, fill it in against a quote and import it back — importing the same file twice changes nothing, because rows are matched on the material, the date and the price rather than being appended blindly.
How to use the Local Price Index
Pick a material
Choose a common material, listed in the units of the measurement system you are reading in, or name one of your own.
Enter the price you were quoted
Use the unit shown. A delivered price and a collected price are different numbers — be consistent about which you log.
Build up a few entries
One quote is an anecdote. Several across suppliers and weeks is a market position.
Read the spread and the drift
Each material shows its lowest and highest logged quote, and how far the latest sits above or below your own average.
Carry the price into your estimates
Put the price you will actually pay into the price book on My Project, where it prices every project that uses the material.
Where this tool stops
This is your own journal, not a crowd-sourced average. With no server there is no way to pool data between users, and implying otherwise would misrepresent where the numbers come from.
Local Price Index — frequently asked questions
- Is this a crowd-sourced price index?
- No, and it is important to be straight about that. The site is fully static with no server and no database, so there is nowhere to pool entries from different users. This is a private journal held in your browser. Calling it a community average would imply data that does not exist.
- Why is there no national average to compare against?
- Because no average is right for your job, and a figure the site supplied would be a price asserted on your behalf. An earlier version compared every quote with built-in national ranges; they named no source and were removed. What you can trust here is the spread between your own suppliers and the movement in your own quotes.
- How many entries before the figures mean anything?
- Three or four for a single material starts to show a pattern; a single quote tells you about one supplier on one day. Prices for timber and steel in particular move enough that a stale entry is worse than none.
- Where is my data stored?
- In this browser's local storage on this device. It is not transmitted anywhere. Clearing site data, or using a different browser or device, loses it unless you have exported it — there is no account to sync it to.
- Should I log delivered or collected prices?
- Either, as long as you are consistent. Delivery on aggregates and concrete can be a large share of the cost, so mixing the two produces a spread that reflects your logging habits rather than the market.
- Does the logged price change the calculators' results?
- No. The journal is a history; the price you use in an estimate belongs in the price book on My Project, which applies it to every project that uses the material. Rewriting estimates from a handful of journal entries would make the figures unreproducible and hard to check.
- Can I export my journal?
- Yes. The panel below the journal exports it as a CSV you can open in any spreadsheet, and imports one back, merging rather than duplicating entries you already hold. The site-wide backup on the same panel carries the journal along with your projects.
- Why are gallon and litre prices listed separately?
- Because a price per gallon and a price per litre for the same paint are different numbers, and averaging them together would report a price nobody was ever quoted. The list follows the measurement system you are reading in, and each unit keeps its own history.