BuildBook Product Updates

Job costing is one of the most crucial parts to any construction project or business. Proper job costing improves the financial health of your construction company, simplifies estimating, keeps your projects on budget, and improves your profits over time. 

That’s why we’re so pumped 💪 for our new Price Book import feature! Now pros have full ability to import both their Cost Codes and Price Book directly into BuildBook. Streamlining the time it takes to build out your job costing in BuildBook, while also making it easier on pros to update items as the market changes. 

We've created the perfect import template, pre-loaded with a full Cost Code Library and Price Book for pros looking to get a jumpstart. It also includes a blank tab to help align any existing Price Book with the import tool. When you start to import, you will be able to download the template from within BuildBook.

How do you import your Price Book?

1️⃣ Click the Import Price Book button to begin the import process by dragging and dropping, or uploading your file.‍

2️⃣ Find your import template saved to your desktop

3️⃣, Next you'll be prompted to walk through the import setup process

4️⃣  Follow the import wizard steps and sync your spreadsheet

5️⃣  When everything looks good, click import records

🎉 Your done!

‍

For more details on Price Book, check out this help doc.

A top BuildBook feature, Selections took a major climb in the power ranking this week with its new ability to send and capture client approvals 👀

Stop the never-ending loop of chasing your client to get the green light. Send out your project’s selections with a few clicks and create a digital record of every interaction with your client from approvals, denials, and everything in-between. When it comes to getting through a Project fast and efficiently you can’t get held up from purchasing the right materials to finish off a room or home. Now, get back to the job. 

‍

How to send out a Selection approval

1. Navigate to your “Selections” tab
2. Choose any Selection
3. Click share approval

What does your client receive?

1. Automated email to view approval request
2. New ability to electronically approve or deny 
3. Leave any additional comments with their response

How can you see a Selection status?

1. New “Approval” column in your Selections list
2. Top bar notification message
3. Selection approval responses will appear in the Project’s activity feed
4. Note: you can manually override a Selection status as the main admin

If you’d like to learn more about sending Selection Approvals, check out our full help doc.

‍

Whether you prefer to start your schedules by creating phases first or tasks first, your scheduling tool shouldn't work against your preference. With this latest enhancement, you can add any existing tasks into any phase — making it faster and easier to build a schedule in BuildBook.

Once you've built out your Task List and are ready to start building your schedule, just create a new Phase and select the Tasks you'd like to add to it. It's that simple!

‍

‍

If you're a phase-first person, you still have the ability to create and add tasks after the phase has been created. However, this new enhancement gives you the option to now have your cake and eat it too.

‍

For more details on how to manage Phases, check out this help doc.

‍

We continue to increase the performance and usability of the BuildBook Mobile App. That’s why we’re so fired up about this most recent update!

Task Manager inside the app has taken a big leap forward, creating a more fluid experience for pros and pro team members who are on the job site and need to create Tasks as they go!

Best ways to create a Task on the mobile app

1. Directly from the mobile apps dashboard, where you must choose the Project and then add a Task
2. Inside a selected Projects: project is already assigned and cannot be changed from Task creation view

‍

Copying Task Lists was released just under a month ago, and the biggest feedback we received was, “What about a project schedule?”.  

‍

So our product team thought, yea … what about a schedule 🧐! That’s what lead us down the path to this newest feature enhancement, which gives our pros that exact ability!  Taking the tedious work of rebuilding a Project Schedule and replacing it with just a few clicks of the mouse.

‍

How can I copy a Schedule?

• Start at the destination Project and go into Schedule.
• Use the ellipsis menu to use the "Copy From" option.
• Select a Project Schedule  from the dropdown menu you’d like to replicate

‍

‍

Once you've chosen a Schedule, we've made it easy for you to adjust the start date with two options.

1. Keep existing dates: Will keep the same timeline as your previous schedule
2. Change dates: this allows you to choose a new start date based on the new Project's timeline. The first Phase of your schedule will begin on the date you choose and all other dates will shift to match, based on the previous Schedule.

‍

For a full guide to the Schedule and Gantt Chart, read this help doc.