After the sale — provisioning through closeout

Once a bid is signed, the deposit has cleared, and any pre-lien notice is filed, the job moves through four more stages: provisioning (Stage 4), scheduling (Stage 5), field execution (Stage 6), and closeout & lien release (Stage 7). Each stage is a single screen on the job, reached at /jobs/{id}/stage4 through stage7.

Be clear about what these are in v1: they are thin. Flow goes deep on intake, bidding, and signing (Stages 1–3), because that's where the money and the risk live. Stages 4–7 are a pass-through — enough structure to move a job forward, keep the audit trail unbroken, and stop a job from closing before it's actually paid. They are not a materials-ordering system, a crew calendar, or a lien-filing portal. Most of what each screen does is advance the job's status with a button and record who did it and when. Where that's all a stage does, this article says so plainly.

You can only open a stage's screen when the job is actually at that stage. Open Stage 6 on a job that hasn't started work yet and Flow sends you back to the job overview.

Stage 4 — Provisioning

The provisioning screen does two things: it shows you a materials list and it gives you two buttons to move the job forward. When you arrive from Advance to provisioning on Stage 3, an Advanced to provisioning message at the bottom left confirms the job moved.

The materials list is auto-generated from the signed bid: every part the customer signed for, rolled up by SKU, with waste included. Optional items the customer turned down when they signed aren't on it; the ones they accepted are. You get a read-only table — SKU, description, quantity, unit of measure, and unit price. There is no purchase order, no supplier ordering, and no editing the list here. If the signed bid has no parts, the table simply says so.

Below it, Crew and hours shows what the job needs from your crew: each labor rate's total hours (overtime and double time called out), the people the bid named, and the job's total. It's the same card the scheduling screen shows, so whoever books the crew doesn't have to read the bid line by line.

Then you advance the job in two clicks:

Click Mark materials ordered. The job status becomes "materials ordered" and the screen shows a green "Materials ordered" confirmation.
When the materials actually arrive, click Confirm materials received → Schedule. The job advances to scheduling and you land on the Stage 5 screen.

Both buttons are pure status advances — Flow records the transition (and who made it) in the audit log, but it does not track what you ordered, from whom, or a delivery date. You are telling Flow "this happened"; Flow is remembering that you said so.

Stage 5 — Scheduling

Scheduling is where you set a start date and record that the customer has confirmed it. The Crew and hours card at the top says who and how long the signed bid calls for. This is the one place in Stages 4–7 with real gating logic worth knowing about.

To schedule a job:

Pick a start date. It must be today or later — Flow rejects a date in the past.
Check Customer has confirmed this date once the customer has actually agreed to it.
Click Save start date.

If you save with the confirmation box checked, the job advances to "scheduled", Flow stamps the confirmation date, and it writes a job note recording that the customer confirmed. If you save the date without checking the box, Flow stores the date but keeps the job in scheduling — the customer's confirmation is a hard gate, so the job won't advance until you check that box and save. That's by design: no job starts work on a date the customer hasn't agreed to.

Once the job is scheduled, the screen shows the confirmed date and a Begin work → Stage 6 button. Clicking it moves the job into field execution.

If your shop has turned on Customer reminders (Settings → Business), the customer gets an email a few days before the confirmed date. Move the date and they're reminded about the new one. See Your business details and logo.

Export the start date to your calendar

This is a concrete, working feature. On a scheduled job, click Download .ics calendar event. Flow generates a standard iCalendar (.ics) file you can open in Google Calendar, Apple Calendar, Outlook, or any calendar app.

The event is an all-day event on the start date. Its title is the job name followed by the customer name (for example, Panel upgrade — Carla Nguyen), its location is the job's site address, and its description carries the Flow job ID so you can trace it back. Open the downloaded file, and your calendar app adds the event.

A few honest limits: it's a one-time download, not a live subscription — if the start date later changes, download the file again to get the updated event. It covers the single start day only, not a multi-day work window, and it isn't a shared crew calendar. It's a clean hand-off from Flow into whatever calendar you already use.

Stage 6 — Field execution

Field execution is a completion checklist. Flow lists every line item from the signed bid, and you check each one off as the work is finished on site. This is the screen Marcus and the crew use in the field, so it's built to be tapped, not typed.

For each line you see the task label and the quantity and unit. Tap the checkbox to mark a line complete; tap it again to un-check it if you marked it too soon. The change saves immediately — no separate Save button — and Flow records who completed each line and when. A running "3 / 7 complete" counter tracks your progress.

When every line is checked, a Foreman sign-off → Closeout button appears. Until then, Flow tells you to complete the remaining items first — sign-off is gated on all lines being done. Clicking sign-off moves the job to closeout.

Hours, when the phase is done

When you check a line off, Flow asks How long did it take?:

People starts at 1. Change it to the number on the crew.
In Hours each, enter how long each of them worked on the line.
Tap Save hours.

The hours go straight onto Labor actuals as one crew entry (for example "Journeyman crew × 2", 9 hours), priced at that role's rate. They count toward estimate-vs-actual with nothing else to enter.

Don't know yet? Tap Not now. The office can add the hours on Labor actuals later, or you can tap Add hours on the line whenever you're ready. Add hours also works for a second day on the same line.
Hours from here are recorded as straight time. If some of it was overtime, the office can correct the entry on Labor actuals.
Flow never shows the crew the hours the job was bid at.

Completion photos

Each line has a Take photo button. On a phone it opens the camera. Take the picture and the line is checked off in the same step, so there's nothing to type. The photo shows up under the line with the date and time Flow recorded it, which comes from Flow's clock, not the phone's. If a customer later says the work wasn't done, the photo shows that it was, and on which day.

Completing without a photo still works. Tap the checkbox instead.
Several photos per line are fine. Take another and it's added beside the first.
Only photos. Video and other files are refused, and photos are limited to 25 MB.
If a photo doesn't save (for example, no signal in a basement), Flow says so, and you take it again.

Everyone who can open the job can see its photos, including people who can't check lines off.

There's still no place to add a field note or flag a problem here. If something on site differs from the bid, that conversation still happens the way it does today (a text to the office), outside of Flow. When the job closes, the customer's closeout email links to these photos (see Stage 7).

Stage 7 — Closeout & lien release

Closeout is a three-step card: record the final payment, mark the lien release filed, and close the job. The steps unlock in order, and the last one is protected by Flow's strictest gate.

Step 1 — Final payment. Flow pre-fills the amount from the signed bid's grand total; adjust it if needed, add an optional check or reference number, and click Mark paid. Flow records a cleared "final" payment on the job and advances the status. This is a manual record that the money came in — Flow does not process a card or reconcile against your bank. Once recorded, the step shows the cleared amount and reference.

Step 2 — Lien release. After the final payment clears, an Advance to lien release button appears. This step is where you'd upload the signed lien release document — but document upload is not in v1 (the screen says "coming in a future release"). Today the button is a status advance only: you click it to record that the lien release has been handled, and Flow marks the step done. There is no template, no generated document, and no filing portal here. You do the actual lien release the way you do it now; Flow tracks that you reached this point.

Step 3 — Close job. The Close job button appears only after the lien release step. This is the gate to be aware of: Flow will not close a job whose final payment hasn't cleared. That check is enforced in the state machine, not just hinted at in the UI — the only way past a failed hard gate anywhere in Flow is an owner override with a written reason, and the closeout screen doesn't even offer that shortcut. Clicking Close job marks the job closed and returns you to the job overview.

The closeout email. Closing the job emails the customer that the work is done, listing the work phases from the signed bid. If the crew took completion photos, the email has a See the photos button. It opens a page with the photos grouped by phase, each dated with the day it was taken. That page uses the same private link as the customer's signed bid, and it only opens once the job is closed. The photos stay there as long as the job does. The job's history shows whether the email went (or why it didn't, such as no email address on file).

What's not in v1 yet

Being straight about the limits of Stages 4–7:

No purchasing. The materials list is generated from the bid and shown read-only. Flow doesn't send orders, track suppliers, or record delivery.
No crew calendar or scheduling board. You set one start date per job and export it as an .ics file. There's no dispatch view, no resource planning, no multi-day scheduling.
No field notes in execution. Lines are checked off, with photos; there's nowhere to write a note or flag a problem.
No lien-release documents. Step 2 is a status marker; there's no template, no PDF generation, and no filing integration.
No payment processing at closeout. Final payment is a manual record, not a charge.

These stages exist to keep a job moving and its history complete. The depth is in Stages 1–3.

Labor roles and payroll burden — the rates behind the bid that generates your materials list and completion checklist
Building a bid — how the signed bid drives everything in Stages 4–7
Job overview and audit log (coming soon) — where every status change in these stages is recorded