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%, tile 7-10%, pattern-matched tile or 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.

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, tile installers on mosaic vs rectified format.