If you updated your budget for a new year and then added a new work area to an already-sold project, you may notice the labor rate and material prices on that new work area still reflect last year's numbers. Here's why — and what to do about it.

The short answer

Once a project is marked Sold, its pricing is locked in at the moment of the sale. That snapshot includes both labor rates and material prices from whatever budget was active when you sold it. Adding a new work area to that project after it's sold will pull the project's original locked pricing — not the currently-active budget.

This is by design. We don't want a job you already sold and quoted to suddenly re-price itself because you updated your budget mid-season.

Why it works this way

When you sell a project, your customer has agreed to the numbers on that proposal. The pricing on that job is a contract — it shouldn't silently change on you just because your costs went up in January, you raised your labor rate for the new season, or your suppliers bumped their material prices. So SynkedUP snapshots the budget-driven labor rate and the material prices onto the project at the moment it's marked Sold, and those snapshotted numbers stay with the project from then on.

How to tell if you're hitting this

The clearest signs:

You updated your budget, applied the new year, and one or more of your labor items in the item catalog got new costs — but when you add a new work area to an older sold project, the labor line shows the prior rate.
You bumped the cost on a material item (e.g., your supplier raised a unit price), saved it to the item catalog, and new/unsold estimates pick up the new cost — but a work area added to an older sold project is still showing the old material cost.

If you look at an unsold estimate or a brand-new project, those are pulling current rates and prices just fine. The difference is that one is sold and the other isn't.

What the blue refresh-arrows do (and don't) do

You may have seen the small blue refresh arrows next to line items on estimates. Those arrows pull the current pricing — labor or materials — from your item catalog into the line. They're built for unsold estimates, so that as you edit a proposal, you can make sure you're working with the latest numbers.

On a sold project, the blue refresh arrows intentionally do nothing on the locked rates and prices. That's not a bug — it's the same snapshot protection described above. If they did repull, you'd risk silently changing the price on a sold job.

How to apply current pricing to a new work area on a sold project

If you genuinely want the new work area to use your current rates and prices (not the project's snapshot), you have two overrides — one for labor, one for materials.

For labor

Use a Custom Labor Rate on that work area. Full walkthrough: How to use custom labor rates.

High level:

Open the sold project and go to the new work area.
Open the Catalog Browser and add the labor item you need.
In that work area's settings, open the Custom Labor Rate dropdown and pick the rate you want to apply.
Save.

For materials

Edit the unit price on the material line itself within that work area. Once the override is in place, that work area will use the new material price; the rest of the project stays on its original snapshot.

Neither override retroactively changes the rest of the sold project — they only affect the work area you're applying them to.

When should you override vs. start a new project?

Rule of thumb:

Same customer, same sold scope, you're just tacking on a related add-on: add a new work area to the existing project and use the labor-rate / materials-price overrides above if you want current pricing.
Materially different scope, separate approval, you'll want it to show up as a separate job: create a new project. That new project will pick up your current budget-driven labor rates and current item-catalog material prices automatically because it hasn't been sold yet.

"This still looks like a bug to me"

If the labor rate or material price you're seeing on a new work area doesn't match either (a) the project's original snapshot or (b) the override you applied, that's worth a second look. Shoot us the project name in the chat and we'll dig in with you.

Why Don't My Labor Rates or Material Prices Update on a Sold Project When I Add a New Work Area?