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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, or the signed total is under your shop's threshold Filed — ref: …, Not required for this state, or Not required — bid total under $…

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 (the signed total, including any options the customer chose) 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.

Recording the deposit also emails the customer a receipt. It shows the amount, the date, your reference, the signed total and what's still to pay, plus a line on what happens next. The card says whether it went. If it didn't (for example, no email on the job, or a delivery failure), the card says why and offers Send receipt, so you can fix the address and try again.

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.

When you click Record deposit, the page reloads with a Deposit cleared message at the bottom left, saying the amount recorded and whether the receipt went ("Receipt emailed to …", or why it didn't send). A message about a failed receipt stays until you close it.

A dollar threshold for small jobs

A shop can choose to skip the pre-lien notice on small jobs: below a dollar threshold, the notice isn't worth filing. When your shop has a threshold:

  • A signed bid under the threshold passes the pre-lien gate by itself. The card reads Not required — bid total under $1,000 (with your figure), and there's nothing to record.
  • A bid at or over the threshold needs the notice, as usual.
  • Flow compares the signed total: the starting total plus every option the customer included. A $900 bid with a $400 option the customer took is $1,300, so it needs the notice under a $1,000 threshold.
  • Until the bid is signed there's no signed total, so the gate stays closed. If a signed bid has no frozen total at all (some older bids), Flow requires the notice rather than guess.

The threshold is your shop's policy, not your state's law. Set it no higher than what your state allows. It starts at $0, which means every job needs the notice. Set it in Settings → Business → Pricing & bid terms → Pre-lien notice from. A change of more than half asks you to confirm first.

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, where an Advanced to provisioning message ("Materials ordering is next") confirms the move.

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.

When the deposit was paid outside Flow: override

Sometimes the deposit was paid in a way Flow can't record, like a cashier's check you deposited yourself. Once the bid is signed and the pre-lien notice is recorded, an owner sees Override the deposit… under the cards.

  1. Click it. The window names what's still missing.
  2. Pick a reason: deposit paid outside the app, or Other (which needs a note).
  3. Add a note if it helps, and click Override and advance.

The job moves to provisioning, and you land on Stage 4 with a Gates overridden message. The job's History shows it as Overridden, with your reason and note. Nothing is filled in for you: the deposit card keeps showing what's actually recorded.

Starting work before the pre-lien notice is filed

Normally work can't begin until the pre-lien notice (the preliminary notice) is recorded. If your attorney filed it, or the job doesn't need one, record that on the pre-lien card: Record filing, or check Not required in this state.

When work truly has to start first, ask for an override on the pre-lien card:

  1. Click Request an override….
  2. Pick a reason and say why it can't wait.
  3. Tick the box that says you understand the risk: if the notice isn't filed in time, the shop can lose its lien rights, and that can't be undone.
  4. Click Request override.

An approver then signs off. Approvers are your owners, and anyone you grant Approve a pre-lien override in Settings → People. They see Override requested by … on the card, with Approve override and Decline… (declining needs a note). You can't approve your own request, unless you're the only approver in the shop: then the button reads Override and approve, and your request is approved as you send it.

Once approved, the card reads Overridden — approved by … and still says no notice is filed. File it before your state's deadline. The request, the reason and the approval are all in the job's History.

The deposit override above never skips the pre-lien notice.

An override never replaces a signature. If the customer signed on paper, record it with the signature card's own form.

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.
  • Overrides are the owner's. Owners can override a deposit and approve a pre-lien override; anyone else needs Override a gate or Approve a pre-lien override granted in Settings → People. Managers don't get either automatically.

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.