Vendor Cost Sync
Reads your own supplier invoices and receipts, matches every line to your price book, and shows what parts really cost now: items billed below cost, prices that no longer clear your margin, drift item by item. Then updates the book one confirmed item at a time. Interviews you once about your vendors and rules, and learns any vendor from one sample document.
The problem
Your price book was right the day somebody set it up. Supplier prices move every quarter; book costs move when somebody remembers - so the margin you believe you charge and the margin you earn drift apart, and a few parts slide underwater entirely, billed below what they now cost.
Housecall Pro has no supplier integration - nothing feeds what your vendors actually charge into your book. Your own invoices already hold the real numbers. This skill reads them.
What it gives you
- A two-minute setup interview, once: who you buy from, how their documents arrive, your margin floor and rounding habits. Remembered on your machine; no run ever asks twice, and "change my vendors" reopens it.
- Your supplier documents read as attached - emailed PDF invoices, e-receipts, a photo of the paper counter ticket. Format knowledge ships for Ferguson, SupplyHouse.com, Home Depot, Johnstone Supply, F.W. Webb and the Winsupply family; any other vendor is learned from one sample document and remembered.
- Every line matched to your price book by part number first - including the distributor-prefix and pasted-code tricks real books need - with the match rung named and no coin-flip ever costed.
- The findings ranked by money: items billed below their real cost, prices that no longer clear your floor at the new cost, drift item by item with dates, parts you buy repeatedly that the book does not carry, and cost fields the book left blank - fillable from the documents in hand.
- Then the apply pass: each material updated only after you approve its exact before and after. Never a batch yes.
What you need
| Tier | API Key Required |
|---|---|
| Reads | The MCP + your own vendor invoices |
| Needs | The free MCP plus a Housecall Pro MAX-plan API key you generate. Applying changes needs a full-access key. |
| Re-run | Monthly, and after any big restocking order. |
This one makes changes
Updates material costs and prices, one confirmed item at a time, exact before and after shown.
Every change is confirmed individually with the before and after shown. There are no batch approvals, because on a live book that is how a small mistake becomes a large one.
Your first ask
Once it is installed, this is the literal thing you type:
What it cannot do
- It cannot update services or flat-rate prices - Housecall Pro's API accepts material changes only. Services whose component costs moved come back as a worklist with the dashboard path. A limit of their API, not of this tool.
- It does not log into vendor portals or fetch documents for you - it reads what you attach. Most suppliers offer no export at all, which is exactly why it reads the documents themselves.
- Estimates and invoices already written keep their figures; updates change what the book offers next time.
- Requires the MCP (v1.15 or newer) and a MAX-plan API key. A read-only key covers everything except the final apply step.
Updates
Every purchase includes all future updates to this skill. Your book decays continuously, so the same job is worth doing again, and each version gets better at it.
The skill checks this site for a newer version when it runs. That request carries the product name and the installed version, and nothing else. There are no account details, no data from your book, no telemetry of any kind. If the check fails for any reason it says nothing and carries on.
Buying it
Sold in the Margin & Materials pack: $49 one time at half price while the shelf is new for all 5 skills in it. The pack is the unit because a home service company that needs this one usually needs the rest of it the same week. What is in the pack. Lifetime is $149 and covers every pack on the shelf plus every skill added to any of them afterwards.
Questions about whether this fits a particular book go to hello@hcpapi.com , including the question of whether it is worth buying at all.
Independent project. Not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Housecall Pro.