Everything Stringline does for you.
We've packed a lot into Stringline, and this is all of it in detail. Start with whichever part you need the most.
You enter the dimensions. Stringline works out the quantities and prices them.
Every kind of measure-up asks for the handful of dimensions you can take with a tape. Stringline turns those into the quantities and prices each one off your own price book, so the same work comes out at the same price on every quote, whoever wrote it.
That's the painting measure-up. Stopping, fencing, heat pumps and flooring have their own. The other trades quote on the general shape, an area, a length or a count, with their trade's usual price book categories suggested. Which is which, by trade.
Rates in minutes: per square metre, per lineal metre, or each.
A rate is how long the work takes you for one square metre, one lineal metre or one door, and what that time costs you. Change what you pay your crew and every quote you write after that is right, without touching a single line.
- Ceilings, two coats
- 5.0 min / m²
- Skirting, two coats
- 3.0 min / lm
- Door, both faces
- 25 min each
These are just examples. You set your own rates, and correct them as you go.
- Materials you buy and sell on, at a margin or a fixed price
- A customer can sit on their own set of prices, so trade and retail both come off the one price book
- Standing charges like the vehicle and the callout, on every new quote
- Quote templates for the jobs you do every week
- A price book read out of your old quotes, for you to approve
Your own enquiry form, landing on your board.
Three ways to take enquiries, and the first of them needs no website at all. Whichever one you use, what the customer typed arrives at the front of your leads exactly as they typed it.
A hosted page
Your own enquiry page, on our servers, ready the day you sign up. Put the link on your Facebook page, your Google listing, or a QR code on the back of the van.
An iframe
For a website builder that lets you paste HTML but strips out scripts. One line, and the form is on your page.
A script
For a site you can add a script to. The form picks up your page's own fonts and colours.
It can price itself, too. Mark a rate "offer it on your enquiry form" and the customer can pick that work and say how many: an annual service, a mixer replaced, a downlight. Show them a running total as they pick, or keep the prices to yourself. Accepting the lead turns it into a draft quote for you to check.
The two that go on your website only work on the domains you name, so nobody else can put your form on theirs.
A new enquiry emails your business address straight away, and whoever wrote in gets a reply saying you have their message. Accept the lead and if Stringline recognises the details as an existing customer it'll link them so the same person enquiring twice stays one customer with one history.
A quote that prices itself, in your own branding, with options to take or leave.
The price comes off your price book, with the charges you add to every quote and your usual discounts already on it. Mark any item on the quote as an option and your customer decides whether to include it, with the total changing as they pick. Your customer gets an email with a link to the quote and the PDF attached, both with your own logo and numbering.
- Sent Tue 4:10pm A link with your name on it. The PDF is there too.
- Opened Tue 7:42pm You know they've read it, and when.
- Chased Fri 9:00am The schedule you set once, sending itself.
- Accepted Sat 8:05am Marama Kingi, with her name recorded on the quote.
- Reminder Mon 9:00am Never sent. Accepting the quote stops the reminders.
Extra work is priced and agreed before it gets done. "Can you do the bathroom while you're here" is a button on the job: what they asked for, the price, and the hours if you want them.
The extra work sits as a draft until you send it, and your customer accepts it online the same way they accepted the quote. Once they have, it is on the final invoice and its hours are added to the job's estimate. Work your customer didn't take, an upgrade they left or extra work they declined, is kept and goes onto a later quote without being built again.
An accepted quote becomes the job, and the job goes on the board.
The scope, the price and the work all come across from the quote, so you don't have to type any of it again. All you add is when it happens and who is on it. That's the board.
- A week across, one row per person, and the jobs nobody is on yet in a strip above them
- Drag it sideways for another day, up or down for another person, or drag an edge to make it run longer
- Built for a thumb: a drag saves when your finger comes up, and a tap opens the booking
- A job stopped for the weather or a colour match stays on the board, and your crew can still clock time to it
- The crew clock on and off from their phones, and the hours land against the job
- Before and after photos kept with the job, where the next person on it can see them
- A pre-start checklist at clock-on, one for each person each day
- Each person's bookings in their own calendar, on a private link that Google, Apple or Outlook will take
Write a checklist once, "Prep and protection", "Handover", or whatever you want, and put it on as many jobs as you like. A pre-start one goes to each person as they clock on. Doing the work, in detail.
What you installed comes back as the next job.
Every unit you install is recorded against that property in Stringline: what it is, where it is, make, model, serial, when it went in and when the warranty ends. Set how often it needs a service and Stringline tells you when one is due.
- The same equipment list on any job at that address, so whoever turns up sees what is there
- Your crew add what they installed, and record a service from the job they are on
- Record a service and the next date moves on by itself
- When a service falls due, Stringline emails your customer or puts a task on your list, whichever you've chosen
- Quote the service opens the next quote off your own rate, and ticks the task off
- The service history under each unit, so you know what was done and when
Your own vans and tools
Your gear has a register of its own: vans, ladders, scaffold, plant and the expensive tools, with who has each one, which job it is on, the rego, the serial and the model. What counts as a kind of gear is yours to name, each with its own icon and the dates that kind is usually due.
Put its dates on it: WOF, COF, rego, RUC, a service, test and tag, calibration. Each one lands on the task list a fortnight ahead, against whoever has the item. Mark it done and the date moves on to the next one. Owner and office keep the register; your crew only see the task.
Take it out and bring it back and the log says who had it, when, and which job it went to. Gear with a charge on it, a scissor lift at $180 a day say, bills from how long it was out, at a rate in your own price list by the day, by the hour or each time. On a quoted job it bills off the gear tab, so the quoted number stays the quoted number.
Out of range, still working.
With no signal, Stringline still clocks your crew on and off, takes photos and does the measure-up. It all goes up when you are back in range.
- Clock on and off, each kept with the time it was tapped and sent in that order
- Photos sent up one at a time, so losing signal halfway means resending one rather than ten
- A measure-up from scratch for a customer you type in on site, or more rooms on a draft
- Measurements, the work, notes and photos, room by room, the way you would with bars
- Prices worked out when you are back in range, off the same rates
- Nothing lands twice: a phone that sends the same clock-on again after a dropped connection changes nothing
Deposit, progress, final. All from the quote.
Bill a percentage, bill the work you've finished, or bill the lot. Each one knows what has already been invoiced, so the last one is the remainder worked out for you.
- Stages on the quote, so a claim is a percentage of work the customer already agreed to
- Your customer's purchase order number, from the quote onto every invoice and into Xero
- Overdue reminders that send themselves, and stop when it's paid
- Your bank details on every invoice, and a direct credit, cash or cheque recorded against it in part or in full
- Card payments on the invoice page, beside the bank details, straight into your own Stripe account
- The card fee is yours to wear or pass on, and your customer sees it before they pay
- Deposit, 30%
- $2,940.00
- Progress claim
- $4,410.00
- FinalThe remainder, worked out for you
- $2,450.00
Claiming by stage shows its working on the invoice: each stage, how far it is, what that is worth and what earlier claims took. The deposit comes back through the claims the way the quote said. In New Zealand a claim can go out under the Construction Contracts Act with Form 1 attached. Retentions are not in it.
Invoices go to Xero. Payments come back.
Connect your Xero and every invoice you send goes across by itself, with your own invoice numbers on it. An invoice you are still writing stays with us until you send it.
Payments come back
A payment Xero's bank feed reconciles lands here, so the invoice closes itself and the reminders stop chasing somebody who has already paid.
Your account codes
You pick which codes sales and payments post to, and nothing syncs until you have. No guessing, no surprise in the GST return.
No extra charge
It's in the one price, like everything else.
The clock shows you which rates are wrong.
Every job compares what you priced against what it took, rate by rate. It names the one that is out: walls are taking you twenty per cent longer than the book says, on every job, all year.
That's the loop the whole thing exists for. Quote off a rate, do the work against it, and the rate gets truer. Most people find out they were right about one trade and badly wrong about another.
The peg is the rate you quote off. Right of it is time you did the work and never charged for.
What the job cost you
Every job has an orders tab. Start an order and the materials off the quote are already on it, with the supplier most of them come from. It goes out as a PDF with your own order number on it, so their invoice comes back with the same number on it.
Add your supplier's invoice to the job and Stringline reads the number, closes the order off and puts what you paid beside what you quoted.
What came in, what is owed, and where the work is slipping.
The first thing you see when you log in is the morning check: what came in and what is still owed, the jobs on today, the invoices that need chasing and the quotes nobody has answered. There is nothing to set on it, because it is there to be read at a glance.
The second screen is the one you sit down with. You pick a period, every chart on the page reads that same period, and the numbers can be held against each other.
What it shows you
- Invoiced and collected, month by month
- Aged debtors, so you know what is thirty, sixty and ninety days out
- Your pipeline by stage, in money
- Win rate over time
- Jobs booked against jobs finished
- Quoted hours against clocked hours, job by job
- Where the estimates slip, by rate
- Materials allowed against what the job cost you
- Where the materials slip, by category
It is the same figures the rest of Stringline runs on, so a number here and a number on a job are the same number. Connect Xero and what has actually been paid comes into it too.
A login each, and you decide who sees what.
A login costs you nothing, so everyone who needs one gets one. You choose what each person can open: the jobs and the board, quotes and prices, your price book, the invoices and payments. Start from one of the six roles we've set up (Admin, Office, Estimator, Accounts, Foreman and Crew), change it to suit, or make one of your own.
The team's conversation
The whole team talks in one place, and every job has a conversation of its own. What gets said about a job stays on the job, where the next person on it reads it. The people on that job get an email for the first message, and nothing more for the next half hour, so a busy morning is one email rather than twelve. The rest are there on the job when they open it.
Hours out to payroll
Export the hours from the jobs list. You get a spreadsheet with a row for each person for each day, and the jobs they were on. Xero Payroll, iPayroll and MYOB all read it. Overtime and pay rates stay in your payroll app, which knows the contract.
Take your data out when you like
Export the lot yourself, any time, without asking us. Your photos and documents are copied to a second place, so one of them going down doesn't lose them. Your rates stay yours.
AdminEverything, including the price book, the team and the account.
OfficeLeads, quotes, jobs, invoices, payments and Set up. Not the price book, the team or the account.
EstimatorLeads, customers and quotes, with jobs to look at. No invoices or the price book.
AccountsInvoices, payments, Xero and card payments. No quotes, jobs or the price book.
ForemanJobs, the work board, tasks, gear and customers. No prices anywhere.
CrewClock on, the work board, and the jobs and tasks they are on. No prices.
A tick can change it, a faint tick can only look, and a dot is their own work only.
You're reading the roadmap. You also get a vote on it.
There's a wishlist board inside Stringline, and it's one board shared by every business that uses us. Put up what you need, vote on what everyone else has put up, and make the case for it in the comments.
An idea moves Open, then Will do, then Working on it, then Done, and a status never changes without a note to the people following it. Follow for status changes only, or for the comments as well. If something gets a Won't do, we'll tell you why.
It's the only screen in Stringline where one business's words reach another, so you choose how each post is signed: your name and business, just your first name, or anonymous if you're shy.
Pick one, and it follows you to the next screen.
Every screen comes in both. Which one you choose is saved against your login so the dark you picked on your phone is the dark you get on the office laptop. If you would rather it followed the daylight, "match my device" is the third answer.
All those features are in the one plan. There's no "PRO" upsell.
Every feature on this page is in the one price. The first 14 days are free and you don't need a card. Questions most people ask before they start are answered here.