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Creating a job

A job in Flow starts with intake — one form that captures the customer, the site address, what you saw on site, and the scope of work. Fill it in, create the job, and Flow lets you push it into the bid builder once three requirements are met.

Start from Jobs → + New job, or the + New job button on the empty jobs list. The form has three sections — Customer, Site assessment, and Scope — followed by a row of status pills and the Build the bid button.

The rhythm: Create job, then it saves itself

Intake happens in two phases, and the switchover matters:

  1. Before the job exists, nothing is saved. You can type freely; walking away leaves no half-job littering your jobs list. A panel at the bottom of the required fields tracks whether there's enough to keep — "Not enough to save yet — Still needed: …" — and its Create job button enables once there is: a customer name, a contact name, an email or phone, the site address, and at least one measurement with something written in it.
  2. After you click Create job, every change saves automatically. A status line under the heading tells you where you stand — Saving…, Unsaved changes…, or Saved 3:12 PM. Auto-save fires a couple of seconds after you stop typing; a Save button in the header is there if you want to force it right now. There's no save step to forget on a ladder.

A created job appears in your jobs list with the status Intake, and its draft can be reopened and continued any time. Nothing goes to the customer at this stage.

Customer section

This is who you're doing the work for and where the work happens. Customer and site address are captured together here.

Field Required? Notes
Name Yes The customer or account name — e.g. Reyes Residence.
Contact name Yes The person you deal with.
Email See below Marked "email or phone required".
Phone See below Marked "email or phone required".
Address Yes Street line of the job site.
City No
State No Two-letter code; defaults to UT.
ZIP No

Email and phone are "one of the two." The Customer complete requirement (see below) only turns green when you've entered a name, a contact name, and at least an email or a phone number — the customer has to be reachable. Worth knowing: the email on the job is where Flow sends the bid when you eventually click Send, so capture it when you can.

The State feeds the pre-lien step later in the job, so correct it if the site isn't in Utah.

The job's name is generated for you from the customer name and street address (for example, Reyes Residence — 1234 Oak St). You don't type it separately.

Site assessment section

This is where you record what you found on site.

Site condition flags. Three toggles let you mark conditions that affect pricing:

  • Existing finished surfaces
  • Pre-1980 panel
  • Insulated ceiling

In v1 these flags are informational — they're kept with the job, but they don't change the price by themselves and aren't required to move forward.

Measurements. Click + Add measurement to add a row. Each row has a Room / area field and a free-text Notes, dimensions field. Add as many as you need; the × removes a row.

Photos and video attach to each measurement. Under every measurement row are two buttons: Choose from library (pick shots you've already taken — several at once) and Take a photo or video (opens the camera on a phone or tablet). Attachments show as thumbnails under the row, each with an × to remove it. They're optional, always — no gate counts them — and they become available once the job exists; before that the row says "Save the job first to attach photos or video."

You need at least one measurement to create the job and to build the bid.

Scope section

This is the list of work the job involves, pulled from your configured scope items.

Type in the Search tasks… box to filter by label or code, then click a result to add it as a scope line item. Each item can be added once — Flow ignores a duplicate. The × on a line removes it.

You need at least one line item to build the bid.

At intake you're only choosing which work applies — no quantities or hours here. Intake captures the shape of the work; the bid puts numbers on it. The scope you pick does real work downstream, though: the bid opens pre-seeded with the work phases those scope items run through.

The three requirements to build the bid

The pills above the → Build the bid button show what's still needed. All three must be green:

  • Customer complete — name, contact name, and an email or phone.
  • ≥1 measurement — at least one measurement row.
  • ≥1 line item — at least one scope item.

These are checked twice: live in the form as you type, and again on the server the moment you click Build the bid — so a half-finished job can't slip through. When all three pass, Build the bid moves the job to bidding and takes you to the bid builder.

One thing to know for later: once a bid has been priced from this intake, the measurements and scope lock. You can still fix a contact email or phone — a wrong email usually surfaces when a bid doesn't arrive — but the scope the bid was priced on stays what it was.

What's not in v1 yet

Being straight with you about intake's current limits:

  • No structured measurements. A measurement is a room label plus free-text notes — Flow doesn't parse dimensions or counts out of it.
  • No quantities at intake. You pick which work applies; the hours and pricing live in the bid builder.
  • One address, site only. Intake captures a single site address. There's no separate billing address, no second address line, and no map/autocomplete — you type the fields in.
  • No customer reuse. Every intake creates a new customer record; you can't yet pick an existing customer to start a second job for them.
  • Site flags don't price anything. The three condition toggles are kept with the job but raise no premium on the bid.