Guides

Send your first bid package

Invite trade partners by email, level the bids in one grid, award with an accounting code.

A bid package belongs to a project and a category. You pick the trade partners to invite from Contacts, and each one gets an email with the package. Reminders go out on their own until a bid comes in.

A trade partner can reply to that email with a PDF and never make an account. BuilderLevel reads the number off the PDF and asks you to confirm it. A trade partner who wants more can create a free account, and the same package shows up in their Bids tab.

Bids level in one grid. When you award, you pick an accounting code and the number lands on that line of the budget. The bid PDF files itself into Specs. Awarding also asks whether to notify the trade partner, and your company setting decides the default answer.

Set up the client portal

What your client sees, what they approve, and how a change order updates the budget.

Add the client under Participants and they get their own portal: Home, then Stay updated (Schedule, Job Log, Photos, Inspiration, Plans), Your decisions (Selections, Change Orders, Contracts), Talk to us (Messages, Book a meeting, Shared files), and Money (Budget).

Selections list the decisions waiting on the client in your build order. A change order shows its budget impact, takes an e-signature through DocuSign or PandaDoc, and updates the budget when it is approved.

Clients see only the messages and files you share with them. Bids appear for a client only when you choose to share one, and then read-only. You can open the portal exactly as the client sees it from any project.

Run the schedule around weather

Gantt or list, predecessors that cascade, and a weather delay inserted in one step.

Build the schedule from a template or import it from a CSV or Excel file. Every task can have predecessors, so moving one date moves the ones that depend on it. Switch between the list and the Gantt view, and color bars the way your team reads them.

The Overview shows the seven-day forecast and workable days for the job site. The Job Log fills the weather in on its own each day.

When rain costs you a day, insert a weather delay. It pushes the tasks behind it and keeps the record of why. Make Current re-baselines the plan when the delay is real.

Run one thread per job

Visibility pills, email replies from trade partners, and the GC-only note.

Every project has one conversation. Each message carries a visibility pill: your team, the client, a trade partner. A GC Team pill is locked, so a note meant for your office never leaves it.

Trade partners can reply from their inbox. The reply lands in the thread, attributed to their company, with the attachment. They never have to sign in to take part, and they can if they want to.

Quote a message to answer it, react to it, or attach a file. The client sees only what was shared with them.

Connect QuickBooks Online

Spent and Paid columns in the budget, with writes gated per company.

Connect QuickBooks Online under Settings, Integrations. The budget gains Spent and Paid columns fed from QuickBooks, so job cost is visible next to the plan without double entry.

Writes back to QuickBooks are switched on per company. Until you turn them on, BuilderLevel only reads.

Dropbox syncs both ways, CompanyCam brings photos in, and DocuSign or PandaDoc handle signatures. You keep the tools you already pay for.

Move off your current software

The import wizard, what comes across, and what we check with you.

BuilderLevel ships with an import for Co-Construct exports and a migration wizard for the rest. Projects, budgets, and specs come across into the same twenty categories the app runs on.

We go through the result with you before you go live, category by category. Your data leaves in full whenever you want it.