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Approvals, deposits, and pre-lien (Stage 3)

Stage 3 is the hard gate between "the customer said yes" and "we start provisioning the job." Before Flow lets a job move forward, three things must be true at the same time:

  1. The bid is signed.
  2. The initial deposit has cleared.
  3. The pre-lien notice is filed (or explicitly marked not required).

Only when all three are green does the Advance to provisioning button appear. Until then, the job sits in Stage 3 and cannot move. This is by design — it's a gate, not a reminder.

You'll find this screen at the job's Stage 3 — Approval page. At the top sits the Customer link card — the bid's private URL with a Copy link button, so you can text it to the customer if they haven't signed yet (and if the automatic bid email failed to deliver, a warning here says so and why). Below it are three cards, one per gate, and each unfinished card carries the form that records it.

The three gates, exactly

Each card turns green (✓) the moment its underlying record exists. Here is precisely what Flow checks:

Gate Passes when Shows
Signed bid The job has a bid whose status is signed v{n} signed and the signed date
Initial deposit The job has a deposit of kind initial whose status is cleared ${amount} cleared and the cleared date
Pre-lien filed The job has a pre-lien filing whose status is filed or not required Filed — ref: …, or Not required for this state

If a card is grey (○), that gate hasn't passed yet, and the card shows the action still outstanding — along with the form to record it.

A note on the pre-lien gate: "not required" counts as passing. Not every job in every state needs a pre-lien notice. When a job legitimately doesn't need one, marking the filing not required clears the gate the same as filing it would. Flow does not decide for you whether a filing is required — see the limits below.

Satisfying each gate

Signed bid. The normal path is that the customer signs on their bid page — the gate turns green by itself the moment they do. For the customer who signed on paper or in person instead, the card has a Record signature button that marks the bid signed from your side.

Initial deposit. When the deposit money arrives and clears, record it on the card: the form shows the job total and the expected deposit at your configured percentage (from Settings → Business), pre-fills the amount with it, and takes an optional check or reference number. Click Record deposit and the gate turns green with the amount and date.

Pre-lien filed. File the notice the way you do today, then record it: the State is pre-filled from the site address, add the filing reference if you have one, and click Record filing. If no notice is needed for this job, check Not required in this state instead — that clears the gate too, and the card says so rather than pretending something was filed.

Every one of these records is written to the audit log with your name on it.

What "Advance to provisioning" does

When all three gates pass, click → Advance to provisioning. Flow then:

  1. Runs the job through the state machine, moving it to ready for provisioning (the start of Stage 4).
  2. Writes an entry to the audit log recording the status change, who made it, and when — atomically, in the same database transaction as the status update. If the audit write fails, the status change is rolled back too.
  3. Sends you to the Stage 4 screen for that job.

The button disables itself and shows "Advancing…" while this happens, so you can't double-click it.

The state machine re-verifies the gate on the server before it lets the job move — the green cards aren't the only thing standing between the job and Stage 4. So even if two people had the page open, a job can't be advanced twice or advanced out of order.

What a blocked job looks like

If any gate is still grey, the Advance button is not shown at all. In its place you'll see:

Complete all three gates above to advance to provisioning.

and each unfinished card names what's outstanding and offers its form.

There is no override on this screen. If a gate hasn't passed, the job waits. (The underlying state machine does support an owner-only override with a written reason, but v1 does not expose that path from the Stage 3 screen — see below.)

Who can do this

Anyone on your team who can open the job can view the Stage 3 gates, record the deposit and filing, and advance the job once the gates pass. In practice this is your ops lead (Linda's job — she watches for the deposit clearing and the pre-lien getting filed) or the owner. Every action is attributed to whoever clicks it in the audit log.

What's thin or manual in v1

Being straight with you: the gate checks are real and enforced, and the forms above record each gate right on this screen — but the money and the paperwork themselves still move outside Flow.

  • Deposits are recorded, not collected. There is no Stripe checkout, no card payment, and no webhook watching your bank. The customer pays you the way they pay you now; the Record deposit form is you telling Flow the money cleared.
  • Pre-lien notices are filed by hand. There is no template editor, no PDF generation, and no filing tracker. You produce and file the notice the way you do today, and record the fact here. Flow also does not determine whether a pre-lien is required for a given state — a human decides and records filed or not required.
  • Owner override not surfaced here. The state machine can let an owner push a job past a failed gate with a structured reason code (written to the audit log as an override). The Stage 3 screen doesn't offer that button in v1; the only way forward on this screen is to clear all three gates honestly.

So think of Stage 3 today as an enforced gate over honestly-recorded facts. The enforcement you can trust; the collecting and the filing are still yours to do.