Clients and jobs

Adding a client

Clients → New client. The name is the only thing required; everything else can wait.

Worth filling in before you invoice them:

• A billing contact with an email address. An invoice cannot be sent without one.
• The address that should appear on invoices.
• Categories and rates — see below.

Categories are where the rates live

A category is a kind of work, and it carries what you charge that client for it. "Labour" at $95/hr, "Emergency call-out" at $140/hr, "Equipment" as a flat charge.

You need at least one before anybody can log time, because every time entry says what kind of work it was. That is what lets one job bill at three different rates without anybody doing arithmetic.

Categories belong to the client, so the same work can be priced differently for a national insurer and a local builder.

Flat-rate categories

A category set to a flat billing type charges the same regardless of hours — right for equipment on site, wrong for labour.

Creating a job

Projects → New project, or from the client's own page, which saves choosing them.

A job needs a client and a name. The name is what everybody will search for, so use what the crew calls it — the address usually beats a claim number.

Fill in the site address if it differs from the client's. Restoration work usually happens somewhere other than the client's office, and that address appears where it matters.

Project types

If you set up project types under Settings → Project types, choosing one when you create a job seeds its task list and its contact roles. A water loss and a fire job do not have the same checklist, and this is where that lives.

You do not need them to start. A job with no type still works.

Contacts on a job

Beyond the client, a job usually involves other people — an adjuster, a property owner, a building inspector, a subcontractor. Add them under the job's Contacts.

These are records, not logins. Adding an adjuster as a contact does not give them access to anything.

Finding things later

Search is at the top of every screen (Ctrl+K). It searches clients, jobs, invoices and estimates together.

Every list screen also filters, and filters survive a reload — so a filtered view is something you can bookmark and come back to.

Next

Tracking time — the part everybody uses every day.