Alternate Products are one way to provide options within a project, not to be confused with Optional Items.

Use Alternates when you want to give your clients a choice between products. Alternate products are only displayed on Proposal reports, and their pricing is not factored into any totals on the report. A product can have multiple alternate products.

Alternates can be added to multiple items at a time within the Product Explorer and Labor Items Explorer interfaces and within Project Editor.

Select the items you wish to add alternates to and from the Tools tab, click Alternates, and then choose Selected or All.

This will open the Update Alternates form.

Here you can click the Add button to select an alternate item. You can also paste any Items that you have previously copied.

There are two options when adding alternates in bulk.

When adding alternates in the catalog, the "parent" products will also automatically be added as an alternate to the selected alternate(s).

You can also add alternates to products within a project, which is very similar to the method above.

In Project Editor, there is no option to add to "All," so you first select the products that you want to add alternates to, and then from the Tools menu, click Update > More > Alternates.

In Project Editor, alternates are displayed beneath the selected product.

The default color of an alternate row is shown above, but you can change this via the Application Settings in the Control Panel.

Under the Layouts tab, you can choose whether or not to display alternate products in your project grid.

There are additional functions within Project Editor to Promote Alternates or to Discard Alternates.

You can also add alternates to an individual product via the Alternates tab when the product is open for editing.

When the Add Products form opens, it may be filtered by category and subcategory, but you can click the Reset button on the ribbon to clear the filter and view your entire product list.

There is a Project setting if you want to remove this pre-filter.

The only reports that display alternate products are the Proposal reports. Alternates display beneath the "selected" product titled "Alternates."

The price displayed is the difference in price between the alternate and the "selected" product.

You can change the wording and color for alternate products via Report Settings.

On the Reports tab, you can choose not to display alternates on your proposals.

You can also choose not to include alternates on a proposal via a parameter within the report definition.