Finding your way around a deal

A deal used to show every section in one long row of tabs. There are now five groups across the top; picking one shows just the tabs that belong to it.

The five groups

• 🏠 Overview: Summary, To Do, Details
• 🧮 Estimating: Estimate, Specifications, Requests For Quotes, Plans, Notepad
• 📅 Schedule: the job calendar
• 💰 Financials: Invoices, Cost Tracking, Client Costs
• 📋 Portal: what the client sees, and the switches that control it

Schedule and Portal hold a single tab each, so picking the group takes you straight there.

Not every tab appears on every deal: a tab is only there if your organisation's plan includes it and it has been switched on for your site.

Picking a group opens its first tab. Clicking a group you're already in changes nothing, so you won't lose your place.

A deal opens quickly because only the tab you're looking at loads. Every other tab loads the first time you open it, which can show a short grey placeholder while it does. Once a tab has loaded it stays loaded until you leave the deal: switch away and back and it is exactly as you left it, including anything you were part-way through typing.

That includes the tab's own information. The Notepad, Plans, Daily log, Cost Tracking and Portal tabs fetch what they show when you first open them, not when the deal opens. A link straight to one of those tabs opens it ready, with no placeholder. If the Daily log can't be loaded, the tab says so and gives you a Try again button rather than showing an empty diary.

Summary

Summary is the "where is this deal at" page. On a wide screen it is laid out in two columns, matching how Brie sketched it: on the left, Contacts sits above Activity, the tallest box on the page. On the right, stacked from top to bottom, are Financial snapshot, To Do and Notes.

• Contacts: names, email and phone are visible immediately, with call, email and copy actions. Native deals also let you edit and manage contacts here.
• Activity: everything that has happened on the deal, newest first, including what the client has done in their portal.
• Financial snapshot: quote total, variations, combined total, invoiced, paid to date and outstanding, each shown both including and excluding GST.
• To Do: how many jobs are open on this deal, how many are late, and the next few by due date. "Open the To Do board" takes you to the full board.
• Notes: read and write notes against a native deal.

Each of these is its own box with a fixed size. If a box's content would make it grow past about half the page, that box scrolls inside itself instead of pushing the rest of the page down, so the layout always looks the same. A box with nothing in it yet still keeps its place and shows a short message explaining that, rather than shrinking or disappearing.

On a phone or a narrow window, the five boxes stack in one column in the same order: Contacts, Activity, Financial snapshot, To Do, then Notes. Each box keeps the same internal scrolling, so nothing needs to spill sideways off the screen.

Estimating

The Estimate tab keeps estimate selection, editing and totals together in a workspace styled to match Summary. Native estimate cards show each estimate's name, status and total; select one to use its existing editing and quote tools. The cost summary sits beside the line items on wide screens and underneath on smaller screens. Wide item tables scroll horizontally on phones.

Linked Buildxact estimates keep their category breakdown, with a compact refresh and data-freshness row at the top. Native estimates have no Buildxact refresh control. Variations remain below the estimate. Calculations, available actions and the rules for draft, sent and accepted estimates are unchanged.

On a phone, Quote actions opens the download, email, template-saving and available status actions. Estimate settings shows the current GST and default markup; expand it to rename the estimate or edit draft settings. Add items opens the Price Book and template-import tools above the line items. ＋ New is a compact button beside the estimate cards. Desktop shows these controls directly, and accepting or deleting an estimate still requires confirmation.

To Do

The full task board for this deal, filtered so you only see this deal's jobs: add, assign, set due dates and drag between columns exactly as on the main To Do page. Any tasks raised automatically by an automation appear underneath the board.

Copying a client's details

The Summary tab lists the deal's contacts. Each one has copy buttons so you never have to retype an address into Xero, Buildxact or a text message:

• Copy name, Copy email and Copy phone copy that one field.
• Copy all copies the whole lot as a block: name, email and phone on separate lines, ready to paste into a supplier form. Fields the contact doesn't have are left out rather than pasted as blank lines.

The button says "✓ Copied" for a couple of seconds so you know it worked. If it says "Couldn't copy", your browser has blocked clipboard access. That happens on an insecure connection or in an older in-app browser. Open the Hub in Chrome or Safari and try again; nothing is lost either way.

Copying never waits on a save, so you can copy a contact's details while an edit is still going through.

Details

Use the Details tab to find and manage the extra details on a deal. Search by property name or value; clearing the search brings everything back.

On native deals, edit a value or choose Remove, then Save. Removing a value affects this deal only; the property remains available for other deals. Adding a property clears the search so your new row is visible.

On HubSpot-linked deals, you can browse all stored properties, including those outside the configured property groups. Fields enabled for editing have an Edit button. To clear one, choose Edit → Remove value → Save. The change syncs to HubSpot. Other fields remain read-only.

Financials workspace

Open Financials to review invoices, track costs or prepare your client's cost breakdown. Each view has a short introduction and a Deal guide link that opens this guide in a new tab, so anything you're part-way through editing stays where it is.

In Invoices, three summary cards show total invoiced, total paid and outstanding amounts. Each shows both including and excluding GST. These totals cover the matched invoices, including invoices beyond the currently loaded page. Open an invoice's line items to review and categorise its costs.

Cost Tracking keeps carpentry progress and projected costs together. Expand a category to inspect its items; permitted staff can adjust its projection. Client Costs keeps the existing breakdown and version controls together. On a phone, invoice totals stack and wide cost tables scroll within their cards.

Links you've bookmarked still work

A link straight to a tab (for example one someone pasted in a message) still opens that tab, and the group it belongs to opens with it.