Handbook / Getting your bearings
The example: Eleanor Harlow
A 1926 colonial kitchen in Amherst. Every section from here on picks this job up where the last one left it.
On a Tuesday morning Eleanor Harlow rings the office. She wants the kitchen of her 1926 colonial gutted: new layout, the wall to the dining room opened up, custom cabinetry, and a mudroom off the side entry. She has photographs of the existing kitchen and says she will email them over.
That call is where the job starts, and it is the only point in the whole process where anybody types Eleanor's details from scratch. Everything after this - the estimate, the proposal, the contract, the work orders, the invoices - inherits from what was written down that morning.
How the job unfolds
| Stage | What happens | Where it lives |
|---|---|---|
| The call | Written down as a lead with the address and a budget range | Leads |
| The visit | Priced line by line against the price book | Estimates |
| The offer | A proposal with scope, exclusions and payment terms, signed online | Proposals |
| The contract | The lead becomes a client, a property and a live project | Projects |
| The work | Work orders raised straight from the signed estimate | Work orders |
| The surprise | Knob-and-tube found in a wall - a change order, priced and signed | Change orders |
| The money | Deposit, progress billing, final payment | Invoices |
| The end | Punch list, closeout checklist, warranty period | On the project |
The demo data has this job already run to the middle of construction - the header is in, the rough-in has passed, the drywall is being finished, and two change orders have been signed. Open it and read along.
Open the Harlow job