Wastage applied per material, not per project

Carpet broadloom waste is not vinyl plank waste. Tile waste is not hybrid flooring waste. AreaSum applies wastage at the material level — when you assign carpet to a room, it gets the carpet wastage percentage; assign vinyl plank to another room and that one gets the plank percentage. The project total is the sum of those material-level subtotals, each with the right buffer already applied.

That matters for jobs that mix flooring types across rooms (wet areas tiled, bedrooms carpeted, living areas in vinyl plank) which is the common shape of an Australian residential renovation. One wastage number for the whole job is wrong on every line. AreaSum’s trade-default wastage figures are calibrated per material; you can override any of them per project. The detail is covered in the wastage allowance glossary entry.

Indicative defaults the tool ships with: vinyl plank 7-10%, vinyl sheet 5-10%, broadloom carpet 8-12% (varies with roll width vs room width), carpet tile 5-7%, laminate / engineered timber 7-10%, parquetry 12-15%. The figures match Australian trade convention; if your shop runs to different numbers, override at the project level and they hold across the rooms you assign.

Tile is the exception: it does not take one figure per material. A tile room derives its wastage from the lay pattern instead, straight 10%, brick bond 12%, diagonal 15% and herringbone 20%, plus 2% where a tile has a side of 600 mm or more and 5% where the room is under 3 m². Any room can override the derived figure. The reasoning and the Australian retailer ranges are in the tile wastage by pattern entry.

The exported PDF report shows the raw measured area and the area-with-wastage side by side on every line. The customer sees the basis of the quote, the supplier order matches what gets installed, and the offcut bin behaves. Trade-specific examples: timber installers on parquetry waste, tilers and tile retailers on wastage by lay pattern.