Proposals for more than $50,000 or so are typically broken into work-packages or WBS to better manage the work in smaller sub-projects. Different people or groups or departments can estimate the cost for different WBS elements. The WBS is normally your company's internal view of how to deliver the program.

WBS structures are created in your project structure/WBS tab, either by copying from a library template, from another proposal, uploaded from Excel, or input manually.

The WBS tab in the cost/price workbench is similar to the proposal WBS, showing the same structure with the same columns available. You can only view, not edit, WBS data in the cost/price workbench.

To access this screen open the Costing Workbench from the main menu and click on the WBS tab (highlighted below).

1. The WBS structure is shown as an expandable "tree" on the left. Click on the arrows to expand and collapse each WBS i.e. to show/hide its children WBS elements
2. WBS elements in your proposal are often mapped to SAP projects and WBS elements in SAP, in order to transfer baseline costs to SAP when a won proposal is being planned as a delivery project
3. The total estimated cost for each WBS is shown in the "cost" column. This includes all costs i.e. labor, material, travel, other direct costs as well as indirect costs such as fringe, overhead and general admin. (G&A) costs. Only estimates which are allocated directly to this WBS are costed in this column
4. The rolled-up cost is the total cost for this WBS plus its lower level subordinate WBS elements. The rolled-up cost represents the summarized cost  total cost for this "leg" or "branch" of the WBS. It is useful to compare to the Design-to-Cost or DTC
5. The status of each WBS which is where costs are estimated represents where they are in their workflow e.g. has the estimate been submitted, approved etc.

Other columns are available such as:

• Who approved the estimate
• Whether this WBS is a billing element, work-package or control account (in SAP)
• The design-to-cost or 'DTC', rolled-up or summarized DTC of children WBS and variance of summarized DTC vs. user input DTC target
• The start and end dates
• The labor cost, material cost, travel cost, other direct cost, and indirect costs: fringe, overhead and G&A
• The total hours for labor estimates and make parts assigned to this WBS, as well as the summarized or rolled-up hours from WBS below
• The estimating strategy
• The Primavera P6 WBS code if schedules are transferred between Primavera and this application
• What type of WBS this is - WBS, estimate, scope item, activity or task
• The work-stream or focus area and sub-workstream (workstream / sub-workstream provide a common classification across your different project structures)

Another example of WBS rolled-up cost with columns for direct/indirect costs, risks and opportunities (stretch goal = estimated cost + risks - opportunities) is shown below.