Guide for design firms
From the first request to sign-off.
What your firm and your designers will do, in the order you will do it. Set-up is once. After that, every project runs the same four steps: accept, acknowledge, fix, sign off.
Set up, once
Your firm and your team.
Apply with your UEN
Sign up as a firm and upload your BizFile. We check every firm by hand against it, so you hear from us by email rather than instantly.
Add your designers
From your firm’s admin page, under People. Each designer gets a public page with their own grade, and it goes live once they have verified their account. Homeowners can only link a designer who is live.
Try a practice project
Before a real one arrives, run a practice project from your firm page. Nothing in it is real, counted towards a grade, shown publicly or billed. Clear it when you are done.
Take someone off the team
When a designer leaves, take them off under People. Their record stays with the projects they worked on; their access does not.
1. Accept
A homeowner asks you to join.
The request arrives
A homeowner links your designer to their project. It shows in your projects and under Waiting on your team until someone answers it.
Answer within 14 days
Accept or decline. A request nobody answers lapses after 14 days, and the homeowner is free to ask someone else.
Accepting is what makes a project billable
A project is billed once, when you accept the request and its details are complete, and your firm’s owner is told at that moment. Never twice for the same project, and never for one that doesn’t start. The charges arrive together on one invoice a month.
2. Acknowledge
Say you’ve seen the list.
Tick what you’ve seen, then Acknowledge
Pick one defect or the whole list. The homeowner can see when you acknowledged each one, so do it the day the list arrives.
Give a date if you have one
A date you mean to fix it by. It is optional, but it answers the homeowner’s first question before they ask it.
Reply on any defect
The homeowner sees your reply. The public never does. You can’t edit or delete what they wrote.
Print a checklist per trade
On the website, each project has a checklist for every trade with the photos attached: carpentry on one sheet, painting on another. Hand it to whoever is holding the tools.
3. Fix
Send the fixes in one pass.
Open Upload fixes
Every open defect on the project is a row. You never leave the list to fix one.
Drop a photo on each row you fixed
On the phone, each row has its own camera. A photo on a row claims that defect fixed. A row left empty is untouched.
Send the fixes for approval
One submit sends the lot. The homeowner accepts or sends back each fix on its own, so one disputed item never holds up the rest.
If one comes back
It returns with the homeowner’s note on what is still wrong. Fix it and send it again, or ask them to settle it privately. A settled defect costs you nothing on your record.
Anything acknowledged and not fixed for 14 days shows as overdue under Waiting on your team, oldest first.
Raising your own
Found something yourself?
Tap + to raise a defect
On the phone, + raises a defect and does nothing else. Fixing it happens in Upload fixes, like any other.
It is never held against you for being honest
A defect you raise and fix is left out of your figures entirely. It only counts if you leave it unfixed.
Raised it by mistake?
You can delete a defect you raised yourself, until the project is signed off. The homeowner is emailed and notified every time, so do it only for a genuine mistake.
4. Sign off
Close the project with a date on it.
Request sign-off
When the list is done, ask the homeowner to sign off. Only they can.
The record ends the argument
It states the sign-off date and exactly which defects were still open at that moment. Anything raised after it is visibly a new list.
Late defects don’t count against you
Anything raised in the last two weeks before sign-off and left open is dropped from your grade. You can’t be marked down for a defect you had no real chance to see.
Your grade updates overnight
Grades are worked out once a night, from the record, and need three finished projects before a letter appears.
Stuck?
Ask us.
If a screen doesn’t match this guide, or your team needs something it doesn’t have, write to us. A person reads every message, and during the pilot, what you tell us decides what gets built next.