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The customer bid link

Every bid in Flow has its own private web page your customer can open from their phone — no login, no app, no PDF to download. It lives at a long, unguessable link (a tokenized URL) that is unique to that one bid. Send the link to your customer, and they see a clean, mobile-friendly summary of the work you've proposed and the total price.

Being straight with you up front: today this page is view-only. Your customer can read the bid and text you back, but they cannot sign or pay on the page yet. Signing and deposit collection are the next things being built (see What's not built yet). Until then, the link is how you show your customer the bid — you close the deal the way you do now.

Each bid gets its own private link the moment it's created. The link never changes for that bid, and it points only to that bid — a new revision gets a brand-new link, so an old link never shows stale pricing.

The link is a bearer link: anyone who has it can open the bid, the same way anyone holding a movie ticket can walk into the theater. There's no password. So treat it like you would a bid you emailed — send it to your customer, not to a group thread. The link itself is long and random enough that nobody can guess their way to it.

Heads up — this is where v1 is thin. Flow does not yet send the link for you, and there is no "copy link" button in the app. The "Send to customer" button in the bid builder finalizes the bid (locks in the totals and moves the job to Ready to send); it does not email or text the customer. Automatic delivery is on the roadmap, not here yet.

Until that lands, deliver the link yourself — paste it into a text or email to your customer, the way you'd send any link. Your customer opens it on their phone and sees the bid.

What your customer sees

When your customer opens the link, the page shows, top to bottom:

  • Your business name and the customer's name and site address, so they know it's the right bid.
  • "Where we are" — a short progress tracker (Site visit → Pricing the job → Sent to you → Sign & deposit → Work begins) with the current step highlighted, so they can see where the job stands.
  • Proposed work — each line of the bid by its plain-English label (for example, "Panel upgrade") with a price, then any Adjustments, then the Total. The bid version is shown too.
  • A "Text [your name]" button that opens a text message to the phone number on the job, so a question is one thumb-tap away.

Your costs stay private. The customer sees only the descriptive line labels and the prices — never your labor rates, hours, materials cost, markup, or margin. None of the internal math leaves your shop.

If a bid has been voided or has expired, the link stops working and shows a plain "not found" page — it doesn't reveal that a bid ever existed there. Nothing leaks.

For your customer (Carla's view)

Share this section with a customer who asks what the link is.

You got a text with a link to your bid. Opening it is safe and takes a few seconds:

  • You don't need an account or an app. Tap the link and the bid opens in your phone's browser.
  • It's built for your phone. Scroll to read each line of work and the total price. What you see is what you'd pay — the price won't change unless your contractor sends you a new version and you agree to it.
  • You can't sign or pay on this page yet. For now the page is just for reading the bid. If it looks right, or if you have a question, tap the Text button to message your contractor directly.
  • Your link is private to you. It's a long, random web address meant just for your bid, so keep it to yourself the way you would any personal document.

You will not be asked for a password, a login, or a payment on this page.

What's not built yet

Being honest about the current limits:

  • No e-signature. Your customer can't accept or sign the bid on the page. There is no signature step in the product today. It's on the roadmap.
  • No online deposit. There's no card or Apple Pay / Stripe checkout on the page yet. Deposit collection comes with the signing flow.
  • No PDF. Your customer can't download or print a PDF from the link — the bid lives as a web page only.
  • Flow doesn't send the link for you. No automatic email or text, and no "copy link" button in the app yet. You share the link yourself.

When signing and deposits ship, the "Sign & deposit" step in the customer's progress tracker becomes the real thing — a recognizable e-sign and a trusted checkout, on the customer's phone.