Set up your company

Company setup is the top level of the hierarchy. You do it once, and every project you ever create draws on it.

Three things are worth getting right before you price your first job.

Users and access

Who is in your business, and what each of them can do.

Access works on three separate levels, and they fail in different ways:

• The plan decides which modules exist for the company.
• Module access decides which of those a user can open.
• Project and costing permissions decide which jobs they can see.

A user can have full access to the Bill of Quantities and still see nothing, because they have no project permissions. Knowing which control is involved is most of diagnosing an access problem.

• Adding users
• Roles and access
• Email settings
• Your profile

Suppliers

Everyone you buy from or subcontract to. Held at company level, so a supplier added on one job is available on all of them.

The field that repays the effort is trades — it is what lets Tenders offer you the three roofers rather than all four hundred suppliers.

• Why suppliers matter
• Adding and editing suppliers
• Importing and merging

Price lists

Your rates. A structured set of descriptions, units and rates that BOQ items are built from, so the same work is worded and priced consistently on every job.

This is the highest-leverage thing to set up properly. An estimate built from a maintained price list takes a fraction of the time — and, more importantly, its rates can be refreshed in bulk when prices move. Rates typed by hand never can.

• What a price list is for
• Building a price list
• Categories and structure
• Products
• Keeping rates current

Subscription and billing

Your plan, your invoices and your card live in a separate site, the Admin panel, which only administrators can open. Billing is one flat subscription per company through Stripe — unlimited users, storage and projects on every plan — so there is nothing to meter and nothing to top up.

• The Admin panel
• Subscribing and changing plan
• Invoices, your card, pausing and cancelling

In what order

If you are setting up from scratch:

1. Users, so your team can get in.
2. Suppliers, with their trades filled in.
3. Price lists, built up over your first two or three jobs rather than in one sitting — see Building a price list.

Then price your first job.