Projects & jobs

Converting is the hand-off from sales to the field. By default only an accepted estimate can be converted. An Owner or Operations Manager can relax that under Settings → Estimating, in the "Project conversion" section, so a sent or approved estimate counts too.

1. 1Open Projects and click New project. You can also open the accepted proposal and click Convert to project.
2. 2Choose the estimate. The list only offers estimates that are eligible and not already converted.
3. 3Click Create project. You land straight on the new project.

You get a project number like MGO-2026-014 (change the prefix under Settings → Business profile), the customer and job-site address copied from the lead, the scope of work from the proposal, and the estimate price as the contract value. The estimate's cost breakdown is snapshotted as the budget, and the proposal's payment schedule becomes the payment milestones, falling back to the default schedule in Settings → Invoicing. The lead moves to Won, whoever converted becomes the project manager, and the customer is emailed a welcome that introduces their portal.

There are only three reasons, and the message names the one you hit. The lead has no street address: a city alone is fine while it is still a lead, but the crew needs somewhere to go, so add the address on the lead first. The estimate is not accepted yet: get the customer to accept the proposal, or relax the rule under Settings → Estimating. Or the lead or estimate is already a project, in which case open the one that exists.

Sold a job before you started using Managolio, or closed one on paper? Import project brings it in whole instead of making you re-sell it. In one step it creates the customer, the lead, the estimate, an accepted proposal, and the project, then opens the new project for you. No estimate or proposal email is sent; the customer only gets the welcome with a link to their portal. It is Owner and Operations Manager only, and it sits next to New project at the top of the Projects list.

1. 1Open Projects and click Import project.
2. 2Customer: choose New and enter their name and email, or Existing and pick a contact. An existing contact needs an email on file so they can reach their portal.
3. 3Project: add a title, choose the type, and set the stage the job is actually at now (Planning, Permitting, Scheduled, Active, Inspection, or Punch list). Add the job-site address so the crew has somewhere to go.
4. 4Money: enter the accepted contract value and the date it was accepted. Optionally add cost line items to give the job a budget and margin, and set the payment milestones so they total 100%.
5. 5Click Import project. You land on the new project, already at the stage you picked, and the customer is emailed their portal link.

On the payment milestones in the import form, turn on Paid for any deposit or payment you have already taken, then set the date and how it was paid. Each one is recorded as a real offline payment, a paid invoice plus a payment record, and it syncs to QuickBooks like any other payment. Only mark a milestone paid if you have not already entered that money in QuickBooks yourself, or it will be counted twice. Leave everything still owed unpaid and invoice it from the project as the work bills.

A job runs through Planning, Permitting, Scheduled, Active, Inspection, Punch List, Complete, Warranty, and Archived. You only see the stages your work actually uses: Permitting and Inspection need the Permits module, Punch List needs Field operations, and Warranty needs Warranties. The set is frozen when the project is created, so turning a module off later only changes new jobs.

Project progress sits at the top of every job, and the badge next to it says "Live on customer portal" because this is exactly what your customer follows.

1. 1Look at the "Next:" line under the bar. It names the stage and gives you a one-tap button: Start permitting, Mark scheduled, Start work, Ready for inspection, Start punch list, Mark complete, or Start warranty.
2. 2Tap it. A toast confirms the move and offers Undo if you tapped the wrong one.
3. 3Need to correct or skip a stage instead? Use Change stage at the top right and pick any stage directly.

You do not have to babysit the stage. Pulling a permit moves the job to Permitting. Booking a site visit, delivery, construction or walkthrough moves it to Scheduled, and booking an inspection moves it to Inspection. A daily log, a time entry, a material log, a cost entry or a safety incident moves it to Active, and the first punch item moves it to Punch List. This only ever moves a job forward, never backward, and it never touches a job that has reached Complete. Complete, Warranty and Archived are always your call.

The completion date is stamped. If Review request on completion is on in Settings → Customer emails and you have a review link saved in Settings → Business profile, the customer is asked for a review, once per job. Moving on to Warranty sets the warranty end date to the completion date plus your default warranty period from Settings → Invoicing.

Under Project details, each part of the job is a tile. Tap one and that section slides in from the right in a drawer where you can read it and make changes. The tiles sit in bands. Money holds Payments, Budget, Costing and Change orders. Delivery holds Overview, Permits, Tasks, Subcontractors and Warranty. Field holds Photos and Field log. Documents holds Files and Contract. Overview carries the scope, the activity trail, the job type, the jurisdiction, the project manager, the contract status, the start and target dates, the site address and the job-site state. You only see the tiles your role and your modules allow, so crew never see money and a job with Permits off has no Permits tile. Subcontractors shows once a sub is assigned, and Contract once a signed contract is filed. Above the tiles, the Schedule, Log update, Add permit and Invoice buttons cover what you reach for daily.

Change orders keep added scope on the record: priced, signed by the customer, and rolled into billing. Anyone but crew can draft one.

1. 1Open the Change orders tile on the project and click New change order.
2. 2Fill in Title, an optional Description, Added cost, Added price, and + Days if it pushes the schedule. Both money fields accept a negative number, so a credit back to the customer is a change order too.
3. 3Watch the margin note. It compares this change order's own margin to the project's and warns you if it would dilute the job.
4. 4Click Draft change order. It lands as CO-01, CO-02 and so on.

Sending, approving, declining and revoking are Owner and Operations Manager only. A change order moves through Draft, Pending Approval, Sent for signature, and then either Approved or Declined.

1. 1On the change order, click Send for signature. The customer needs an email on file.
2. 2They get a link to a page showing the title, the price change and the schedule impact. It never shows your cost or your margin.
3. 3They type their full name and tick the confirmation box to sign. The name, the date, their IP address and the exact wording they agreed to are all kept on the record.
4. 4While it is out you can Copy link or Resend. The link stays the same on a resend. You can also Approve it yourself if they said yes in person.
5. 5On approval the price change is added to the contract value, the cost change is added to the budget, and a new billable milestone appears on the Payments tile so you can invoice the extra work like any other milestone.
6. 6Changed your mind? Revoke approval reverses all of that and returns the change order to Pending Approval. It is blocked once that milestone has been invoiced, so void the invoice first.

The punch list is where the crew is, not on the office project page. It needs the Field operations module.

1. 1Open Field Ops, choose the job, and go to the Punch tab.
2. 2Click Add punch item and fill in Item, an optional Detail, and an Assignee from your team.
3. 3Items move through Open, In Progress, Complete and Verified. Crew can work an item, but only a supervisor can mark one Verified or take that back, so sign-off is a second pair of eyes.
4. 4Adding the first item moves the whole job to the Punch List stage.

Log update on the project, or the Log tab in Field Ops, opens a Daily log: date, a weather chip, a summary, crew count and hours worked. That is your proof if a job ever slips because of rain. The Photos tile is the office view of the job's photos. With write access you can add shots right here, open any one full size, or use Download all to hand the whole set to an adjuster. Every image on the job funnels into Photos, whether it came from Field Ops, this tile, the Documents page, or a warranty claim, so the Files tile stays paperwork only. Job-site photos are internal. They are never shown to your customer in the portal.

The Documents band has two tiles, both Owner and Operations Manager only. Files lists the job's paperwork: the signed contract, permit paperwork, and change-order and invoice PDFs as they are created, plus anything you upload against the job. It is paperwork only, since every image lands in Photos instead. Use Upload to add a file and Search to find one. You can delete a file, except the signed contract or accepted proposal, which is locked: archive it instead. Contract is a shortcut straight to the signed contract of record, where you can open it in a new tab or download the PDF. The Contract tile only shows once a contract is on file, so an imported or unsold job has none.

A recurring service account is a different animal from a bid job. It has no contract, no budget, no change orders, no permits and no warranty; its Project progress slot shows the billing schedule instead. When the Maintenance plans module is on, the Projects list gets All, Jobs and Maintenance tabs so you can look at one kind without the other. A plan is closed out with Archive plan, and you have to pause or end the billing schedule first.

Archiving happens on its own. Once a job is finished, every invoice is paid off, there are no open warranty claims and no recurring schedule is still billing, it leaves the Projects list and files itself into Archives by year. An archived project is read-only everywhere.

1. 1Open the job from Archives (Owner and Operations Manager only) and click Restore project.
2. 2Pick the stage to restore it to. Only stages before completion are offered, because a completion stage would just re-archive it.
3. 3Choose whether to reset the warranty clock. Left alone, the original completion and warranty dates are kept.
4. 4Restore. It returns to the Projects list and nobody is emailed.