One screen that governs the whole customer-facing funnel, split across its four stages: the estimate, the questionnaire, the contract, and the live dashboard. Every section is a row. Under Your Custom Building, every line the customer will read — size, pitch, overhangs, openings, the porch — is listed with its exact words and its own switch. Inside the price block, every line is its own row: show the materials and the total, hide the labour, and leave the markup line off unless you sell cost-plus — the markup is built into the prices either way. A row you never touch follows your house setting, so per-project changes read as the exceptions they are.
Also called: hide the labour breakdown · what the customer can see · client visibility · portal sections
One screen, four stages
Try itThe estimate, the questionnaire, the contract, the dashboard. Every stage of their funnel, in one place, so you are not hunting through four settings pages to answer one question about one customer.
Four separate settings pages, or a support ticket, or one global switch that changes it for everybody at once.
A builder answering one question about one customer shouldn't have to hunt. Every stage of the customer's funnel is governed from one screen, so the answer takes seconds and the customer gets the right page the first time.
Read every building line before they do
Try itYour Custom Building opens to every line the customer's page will print — Siding: 29 ga wall steel, Overhangs: 12″ boxed overhangs, Openings: (1) 12x12 overhead door…, Attached buildings/porches: 40′ x 12′ porch on the front — worked out by the same function the customer's page uses, so the preview is the page. Each line has its own switch: leave the slab line off on a job where the customer pours his own. The send screens build it from the estimate about to go out; after sending, from the one that went.
The rep told the customer boxed overhangs; the page says 12″ overhangs, and the customer rings to ask what else is different from what he was promised.
A customer who reads exactly what the rep told him trusts the rest of the quote. Seeing the words before they go out lets the builder fix one line instead of explaining it on the phone.
Switch a whole section off
Try itTrust strip, services, warranty, testimonials, FAQ, builder notes, contact footer. Off means it is not on the page — not greyed, not empty, gone.
Sections you cannot remove, so every customer gets the same page whether it suits them or not — and a warranty block on a shed quote invites questions you don't want.
A customer reads everything on the page as a promise. Off means gone — not greyed, not empty — so a section that doesn't apply to this job can't start a conversation about something you never offered.
Hide a line, not the price
Try itThe switches go inside the price block. Show the materials line and the customer total, hide the labour line. The customer sees a complete, coherent price — just not that part of it.
Show the breakdown and expose your labour rate; hide it and show a single number that looks like a guess.
Customers argue with a crew rate; they rarely argue with a complete price. The switches go inside the price block, so the customer sees a coherent total — just not the part that turns the conversation into a negotiation about your crew.
A markup line only if you sell cost-plus
Try itEvery markup on the job is built into the customer's prices, so the lines add up to the total with no markup row. Tick Markup line under Your Investment and the page shows the markup as one row of its own instead — the cost-plus view — with the same total either way. A send leaves it off unless someone turns it on. How the markup is set and spread is under markup.
Hiding the markup row used to leave its dollars out of the other lines, so a customer who added them up found the gap — and read your margin off it.
How you show margin is a sales decision, and it shouldn't change the price. A cost-plus builder gets his transparency, everyone else gets lines that add up — and nobody's arithmetic stops working.
Untouched rows follow the house rule
Try itA row you never touched keeps following Settings → Client Portal. That is what makes the house setting worth having: you set the norm once and only ever handle exceptions, and the exceptions are visibly marked.
Setting the same twelve switches by hand on every new estimate, and forgetting one on the job where it mattered.
An office that sets the norm once only has to think about the exceptions. Untouched rows follow Settings, and the exceptions are visibly marked — so anyone can see what was changed for this customer, and why it differs.
Ask only what the job needs
Try itLender details on a cash job. An insurance certificate for a shed. Every question you leave on is a question a customer can abandon the form over — so the questionnaire is switchable row by row.
A questionnaire that asks a cash buyer for lender details and a shed buyer for an insurance certificate.
Every question you leave on is a question a customer can quit over. A cash buyer asked for a loan number stops filling in the form — and a stalled form is a stalled job.
What rides alongside the contract
Try itWhether the agreement restates what they are approving above the signature, and whether they can save their own PDF. Two switches, both of them things customers ask for by name.
A signature page with no restatement of what is being signed, and no way for the customer to keep their own copy.
Customers sign faster when they can see what they're agreeing to and keep a copy. Both are things they ask for by name, and both are one switch.
…and the live dashboard
Try itEvery block on the project page is a row here too. Turn the 3D viewer off for a customer who does not care; turn invoices off for a job billed outside the system.
A fixed dashboard template you are stuck with, whatever the job is.
The page should fit the job, not the template. A job billed outside the system shouldn't show an invoices block, and a customer who doesn't care about 3D shouldn't have to scroll past it.
Set the norm once, in Settings
The house rule lives in Settings → Client Portal and every new estimate inherits it. Per-project changes are the exception, which is the right way round — most builders show most customers the same thing.
Per-customer settings that only exist per customer, so the twentieth estimate takes as long to configure as the first.
Most builders show most customers the same thing — the software should remember it. The house rule makes the twentieth estimate as quick as the first, and per-project changes rare enough to mean something.
It applies to the link they already have
Save and it is live on the estimate already sitting in their inbox. No new link, no resend, nothing for the customer to notice — which means you can fix a visibility mistake without admitting to one.
Changing what a customer sees means sending a new link and explaining why.
Nobody likes sending a 'please ignore my last email'. The change lands on the estimate already in their inbox — which means you can fix a visibility mistake without admitting to one.
See it the way they will
Try itOpen the customer's own view and read the page as they read it. The check that stops the mistake, done in the two seconds before you send.
Sending, then finding out what you exposed when the customer mentions it.
The only version of the page that matters is the customer's. Reading it as they will, in the two seconds before you send, is the check that stops the expensive mistake.
- 1Open What They See on any project — or on the send screen, before it goes
- 2Pick the stage: estimate, project info, contract or dashboard
- 3Switch any section on or off, and read every line of Your Custom Building exactly as the customer will
- 4Inside the price block, switch individual lines — materials, labour, tax, total — and tick Markup line only for a cost-plus quote
- 5Untouched rows keep following your house setting in Settings
- 6Save — it applies to the link they already have
Two customers are never owed the same amount of detail. A repeat commercial client wants the full build-up; a first-time homeowner shown a labour line will ask why the crew costs that, and the conversation stops being about the building. So it is a checkbox list, it takes ten seconds, and it applies to the estimate they already have — no new link, nothing to resend, nothing for them to notice. Builders also asked to see the building description before the customer did — the soffits, the overhangs, the pitch — because a customer who reads something different from what the rep told him stops trusting both. Now every one of those lines is on the screen, in the customer's words, with a switch. We build only for post-frame and barndominium builders, so the lines are the ones your customers actually ask about.
- One level of detail forced on every customer
- Questionnaires asking for things that do not apply to the job
- Re-sending a document just to change what is on it
- Per-customer settings that can only be changed globally
- Building copy the builder never saw until the customer did
Change what a sent estimate shows, without resending
The exact panel the send screen used, opened over an estimate that already went out. Only the verb changes: this one saves, and the link they already have picks it up. Resending still lives on the status pill, so the two never turn into rival send buttons.
Hide a single service line, or just its price per unit
The fixed blocks are the same on every estimate. The service rows are whatever you put on this one. Each switch is labelled with the exact text it turns on — 21′ × 16′ · 336 sq ft, $13/sq ft — so you read what the customer will read.
Every switch you flip actually leaves the send screen
The list of what shows on a customer's copy is worked out from the controls, not typed alongside them. Only what you deliberately flipped is fixed for that customer; everything else keeps following your house settings.