Estates should represent your major development entity. An estate must exist directly under and as part of a company. You first need to create your company before you can create an estate. The estate code will be required to be supplied after choosing your company when reporting, posting transactions, making sales etc.
There are no limits on the number of estates you can have within a single company. As with companies you can look at your stock, sales, expense, etc. reports at an estate level. For instance, you can ask for a report that will give you a Budget Analysis Listing for a single estate, or a consolidated group of estates. The Estate Code is a 5 Character Alpha Numeric.
Cost of Sales Percentages are generally set at an Estate level, although you do have the option of setting them by stage if that is more appropriate to the way you operate.