Doing the work.
The price is agreed, so the job runs. The hours land against the work that priced them, and nothing gets added to the job without your customer agreeing to it first. Steps five to eight of how it works.
The accepted quote becomes the job, with everything already on it.
One action on the quote opens the job with the customer, the property, the lead it came from and the hours the rates worked out already on it. The quote stays where it is as the record of what was agreed.
The quoted hours are copied onto the job rather than read back through the quote. That is what makes the comparison at the end mean anything: revise a quote after work has started and the hours your crew clocked are still measured against what was agreed on the day.
Tick a checklist once as one that goes on new jobs and Stringline adds it to every job from then on, without you thinking about it again. The job gets its own copy, so rewording a template next winter never changes what a finished job was signed off against.
A day, a week or the month. Your crew open the same board you do.
A week across with one row per person, and the jobs nobody is on yet in a strip above them. Drop to a single day when the week is too busy to read, or out to the month to see what is coming. Your crew open it with their clock-on login and see where they are; moving, stretching and adding a booking is the office's.
Moved by you
Sideways for a different day, up or down for a different person, an edge for a longer booking, out of the strip to put somebody on. It saves when your finger comes up. Tap it instead of dragging it and the booking opens.
Rained off is a state of its own
A job waiting on weather or materials is neither scheduled nor being worked on, so it's held: still on the books, still visible, and your crew can still clock time to it. Held keeps it in front of you, so it comes back the day the weather does.
Your words for your stages
Job statuses are yours to name and reorder. Rename "Complete" to "Signed off" and the filters, the invoicing action and the price book's learning all keep working, because none of them match on the word.
Two taps, on site, between jobs.
The clocking screen is built for where it gets used: opened on site, with the work waiting. Big buttons, your jobs for the day, two taps and done.
- The jobs you are booked on, as buttons you tap
- One running entry per person, so a second clock-on is refused rather than quietly closing the first
- Photos, files and checklist answers on the same screen, kept with the job
- An entry can be corrected afterwards to the hours the foreman agreed, and it keeps that figure
- Job
- 14 Mahoe Street
- Person
- Wiremu
- What were you on?Offered, never required
- Walls, two coats
Three taps, and those hours now sit with the item that priced them.
Hours on the job tell you the job ran long. Hours on the item tell you it was the walls, and that is the bit you can do something about. Your crew are asked when they clock off, while they still remember, and they can skip it: a wrong answer here moves the wrong rate.
Materials, gear and the job's own conversation.
Ordering the materials
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. The order goes out as a PDF with your own order number on it.
The bill closes it off
Add your supplier's invoice to the job and Stringline reads your number off it, closes the order and puts what you paid beside what you quoted.
Gear out of the yard
Vans, scaffold, plant and the expensive tools have a register, with who has each one and which job it went to. Gear with a charge on it bills from how long it was out.
The whole team shares one conversation, and every job has one of its own. What gets said about a job stays on the job, so the next person on it reads it there.
What you installed stays on the property too, with its make, model, serial and warranty. Set how often it needs a service and the next visit turns up on your task list when it is due. Servicing and gear, in detail.
Agreed before it's billed, without anybody standing around waiting.
Price it on the phone in your hand, standing in front of the thing your customer has just asked for, while they are still there to say yes.
Recording it and asking for it are separate. Recording is one screen on the job: what the customer asked for, the price, and the hours if you want them. It saves as a draft. Asking is a link the customer taps whenever they get to it, on the same page they accepted the quote on. Nobody waits for anybody.
- Bathroom ceiling$420 · not sent yet
- Draft
- Second coat, hallway$260 · sent Tuesday
- Waiting on them
- Garage door$560 · accepted Friday
- Agreed
Amber anywhere on the tab means work has been promised and nobody has agreed to pay for it.
- Until your customer accepts it, nothing moves: no invoice, and no change to the job's estimate
- Once they do, it goes on the balance and its hours are added to the job's estimate
- Extra work is extra to an accepted quote. A callout with no quote behind it is an invoice of its own instead
A finished job tells you whether the rate was right.
Mark the job done and the hours your crew clocked are compared with what the price book expected of each item they were clocked against. It tells you which rate was wrong and by how much: your walls rate is a third light.
Three jobs before it says anything
One job proves nothing. It rained, or the house was worse than it looked. Stringline waits until the same rate has run over on at least three jobs before it says a word.
It moves part of the way
A rate never jumps to the new number in one go. It moves some of the way there, and the next few jobs move it the rest.
You approve it, or you don't
Nothing changes until you say so, and saying no is a fair answer: sometimes the job ran long and the rate was right. See what the clock tells you.
Certificates sit on the job too: a certificate of compliance, an ESC, a record of inspection, each with its number, the date and the licence it was signed under, copied at the time so a renewal never changes what an old certificate says. Stringline keeps the document; writing one is your certifier's own software.