Finding your way around

Every page in SmarteBuild is laid out the same way. Learn it once and you will never be lost in a module you have not opened before.

The two things every page needs to know sit at the top of the left-hand menu.

Company is the first row. Most people belong to one company, and then the row just names it. If you belong to several, click it and pick the one to work in.

Project is the card under it: the project you are in, its status, and how many defects are open on it. Click the card and a list opens:

Find a project at the top narrows the list as you type.
Recent is the three projects you opened last.
All projects is everything you can see, with archived ones greyed.
Filter by folder at the foot opens the project filters, and All projects takes you to the Projects List.

Pick a project and the page reloads on it. Escape, or a click anywhere else, closes the list without changing anything.

The first entry, Dashboard, is where you land after signing in: your recently opened projects, this week across every job, the next claim dates and a handful of charts. See The Dashboard.

Down the left. Company-level entries sit at the top: Dashboard and Projects List. Below them the modules are grouped in the order you meet them on a job, and each group opens and closes with a click:

Group	Modules
Pre-construction	Leads, Project Details
Estimating	Documents, Take-Off, Cost Codes, Bill of Quantities, Colour Selection, Tenders & Quotes, Purchase Orders
Construction	Variations, Progress Claims, Expenses, Schedule & Booking, Site Diary, Timesheets, Checklists & Safety, Defects, Messages

The group holding the page you are on is open when the page loads; opening another group folds it, so only one is open at a time and the menu stays short. A folded group shows a count when something inside it needs you: unread messages, or open defects on the project.

Some of these may be greyed out or carry a padlock — see What is in each plan.

The hamburger button at the top left folds the menu to a narrow strip of icons when you need the width, which is worth knowing on a wide Bill of Quantities. The company and project become two small chips at the top of the strip; click a chip to open its list, or hover a group icon to see its modules.

The top bar

Across the top, from left to right:

The page title, which tells you which project and estimate you are in. Check it when a number looks wrong — being in the wrong estimate is the most common explanation.
Activities (the pulse icon) — notifications and recent activity across your projects. It holds two kinds of thing. To-dos, such as an order waiting for your approval, stay until the work is done, then clear by themselves. Notices, such as an order that has been sent, count as read once you open the list. Nothing older than 60 days is counted.
Integrations — Xero and QuickBooks settings, and connecting Outlook, Office 365 or Gmail.
Your account menu — your profile, the Help Centre, the Admin panel if you are an administrator, and Logout.

The Admin panel

Your plan, your invoices and your card live in a separate site, not in the module menu — which is why people hunt for them. It opens from your account menu, and only administrators can get in.

That is where you change plan, update the card, download invoices and cancel. See The Admin panel.

Choosing a project and an estimate

Most modules need to know which job you mean before they can show you anything. Open one without a project selected and you get a “Select a Project to open” screen.

Modules that work at the estimate level — Bill of Quantities, Take-Off, Cost Codes — will then ask you to Select an Estimate. If that surprises you, read Company, project, estimate; it is the hierarchy asking which priced version of the job you want.

Once you have chosen, SmarteBuild remembers. Moving between modules keeps you in the same project and estimate until you change them.

Project filters

The Project Filters panel narrows the project list down to the jobs you care about — by status, by client, by who is on the team, by date. It is worth setting up properly if you carry more than a dozen live jobs, because it applies everywhere the project picker appears.

List views

Several modules come in two flavours: a detail view for working on one record, and a list view for seeing everything at once.

Look for the floating List View button at the bottom right of a detail page — on Purchase Orders, Progress Claims, Variations, Expenses, Tenders and Quotes. It switches you to a grid of every record in that module, which you can sort, filter, group and export.

Going the other way, clicking a row in a list view opens that record in the detail view.

Column pickers

Some grids let you choose which columns you see — Colour Selection and the Projects list among them. Look for the column or settings icon in the grid header. Your choice is remembered against your login, so it follows you between sessions without affecting anyone else.

The Enter key

Enter means “OK” for whatever you are working in:

In a window (editing a defect, adding an item, a new tender): Enter presses its main button, usually Save or Add.
In a search box: Enter runs the search.
In a row you are editing in a grid: Enter saves that row.
In the project list at the top of the menu: Enter opens the first project that matches what you typed.
In a window that only shows something (a PDF, a report, a history): Enter closes it.
In a box that holds several lines, Enter starts a new line as usual.

Some buttons always need a click, because they can’t be taken back: anything that deletes or removes, anything that sends (an email, an order, a notice to a supplier or client), approvals, awarding a tender, and exports to Xero. In those windows Enter does nothing, so a stray key press can’t send or delete anything.

In Messages, Enter sends your message and Shift+Enter adds a new line.

The same goes for the Admin panel (plan, users, billing) and the sign-up pages. In the Admin panel, pausing your subscription, confirming a plan purchase and granting or removing all permissions always take a click.

Getting help

The Help Centre link in your account menu opens this site at the article for the module you are currently in.