Each recipe in BeerSmith is a self contained archive. If you change your profiles (mash or equipment) within the recipe, that is the only place that is changed. In order to record that change in your master list of profiles, you will need to click on the disk icon next to the profile that you altered.
Likewise, if you change your profile outside of a recipe, it will not affect any recipes which are already designed and/or brewed. To effect the change in your recipe, you must click on the profile and re-select the changed profile.
For this reason, I append the last date of change to my equipment profiles, so that if I open a recipe that I created a while ago, I can see that it does or does not have the latest profile at a glance.