Creating a project

Every job in BidCraft starts as a project. A project is the bucket that holds your photos, videos, voice notes, dimensions, scope, and the final proposal you send to the client. You can have as many open at once as you want — drafts auto-save, nothing gets lost.

Start a new project

From anywhere in the app, head to the Projects page in the sidebar and hit the + New Project button at the top right.

[!steps]

1. Click + New Project.
2. Type in the client's name. This is the only field you truly need to start.
3. Add their email, phone, and job address if you have them handy. You can fill these in later.
4. Save. The project lands under Building the Bid on your Projects page with a "draft" badge.

That's it. You're now inside the project workspace and ready to start capturing.

Finding your way around the project page

The top of every project is one header band: the job name, the status pill, your client on a single line (tap the address for directions, tap the number to call), and the buttons for the whole job — Clock in once the job is under contract, Client Portal, and a ··· menu holding everything else.

Underneath sits a row of seven buttons. They're tools, not steps — every one of them is one tap from wherever you are, on day one and on the last day:

At the end of the row sit + Quick add (a receipt, a photo, a voice note, a task, or a crew invite, without leaving the page) and All tools, which opens the full map with a live status line under every entry — handy when you can't remember whether change orders live with the proposal or the feed.

None of the seven ever hides or greys out. Each has its own colored icon, and that color means the same section everywhere on the page. If something needs you — a question Biddy is waiting on, a failed payment, an overdue invoice, an unsigned change order — that button wears a small amber dot, and the thing itself is waiting on Home with a button to deal with it.

Opening a project always lands you on Home, whatever stage the job is at. From the top, Home shows:

• The next step — one big card with the one thing worth doing now and its orange button. It's the only orange button on the page, so you always know what to press. Beside it, Also open lists anything else holding the job up (like a client with no email yet), each with a tap straight to where you fix it.
• The job at a glance — one row of figures: the bid, money collected, tasks done, rooms captured and your client. Anything that only exists after signing says so instead of showing a blank.
• Your showcase collection — all nine badges for the job. They stay faded until you collect one, then light up with a green check. Tap a badge to add one.
• Missions and recent activity at the bottom.

Before you've scoped the job, the next step points you at Capture; once it's signed, it's leading with today's work and any money still owed.

The four steps of building a bid

The next-step card on Home carries a journey bar across the top. It's a status readout, not a menu — it tells you where the job has got to. Finished stages turn tan with a check, and the one you're in is outlined with a small pulsing dot. On a phone, the stage you're in gets the extra room and the others shrink to a check.

1. Capture — photos, video and notes, room by room.
2. Analyze — Biddy reads them and writes measurements onto each room card, with a quick check or two underneath where a number would change the price.
3. Draft the scope — your rooms become a priced list of work, with real numbers on it before any proposal exists.
4. Lock & build — that draft becomes the client's proposal, the materials list and the task plan.

You can tap any segment to jump there. Nothing stops you working out of order — the bar just says where you are.

[!tip] If you're standing on a job site, just type the client's last name and hit save. You can come back and fill in email and address when you're back in the truck. The faster you get into capture mode, the more useful the photos and voice notes will be while the walk is still fresh.

Picking a project type

The Project type dropdown drives which scope template BidCraft uses when it drafts the proposal. Leave it on Auto-detect from inputs if you're in a hurry — the AI will pick a type after you add a photo or two and you can always change it later.

If you do want to pick:

• Standard project types — BidCraft's library of the ~15 project types most contractors run (Full Bathroom Remodel, Shower Remodel, Bathroom Refresh, etc.)
• Your custom types — if you've saved any variants of a standard type (like "Small Bathroom Remodel" or "Premium Shower Remodel"), they appear here so you can pick the right shape on the first click
• Other (describe) — type a free-form description for one-off project types that don't fit the standard library

Picking a variant tells BidCraft to use that variant's specific lines as the scope draft starting point. Variants are a one-time setup — see How job type templates work for the create-variant flow on the templates page.

Already know your numbers? Skip the photos

You don't have to upload a single photo to build a proposal. The moment you pick a project type, each room on Capture gets an empty measurements block tailored to that type — a shower remodel asks for shower width and depth, wall area, floor area, and niches; a backsplash asks for wall area and linear feet; and so on. Type in your measurements by hand and they feed the pricing exactly the same way numbers pulled off a photo would.

This is the fast path when you already walked the job and wrote your numbers down, you're bidding off a plan, or you just want to rough something out in a couple of minutes. Once the required measurements are filled in, the draft-the-scope button unlocks and Biddy drafts the scope from your typed numbers alone — no photos needed.

[!tip] Photos still earn their keep — they catch conditions and fixtures you might not think to type. But if you already know the numbers, don't let "I haven't uploaded anything yet" slow you down. Pick a type, type the measurements, draft the scope, build the proposal. See Editing project dimensions for how the measurements table works.

What goes in client info

Client details live under Client on the project page — or just tap edit on the client line in the header. The fields you fill out here aren't just record-keeping — they show up on the proposal your client sees and on any invoices that go out. Spelling the address right matters.

[!note] Email is required if you want to send the proposal natively through BidCraft. If you're sending the proposal through HighLevel instead, email lives over there.

What "draft" means

A new project sits in draft status until you actually generate a proposal. Draft just means "I'm still working on this." Nobody sees a draft except you and your team. The status will move forward as you go:

• Draft — you're capturing and analyzing
• Inputs Collected — you've added photos, video, or notes
• Proposal Ready — proposal exists, ready to review
• Proposal Sent — proposal is out to the client
• Client Viewed — client opened the link
• Signed — client signed digitally
• Paid — deposit cleared

You don't manually advance the status. The app moves it for you as work happens.

If a job stalls out or you lose the bid, you don't have to delete it — you can park it on a shelf instead and it steps out of your active views without losing anything. See Organizing your projects.

What's next

Once your project is created, the real work begins: capturing what you saw on the walk. Pictures, videos, and a few voice notes are usually enough for BidCraft to build a clean scope and proposal.

Head to Adding photos and videos to start capturing, or jump to Organizing inputs by room if it's a multi-bath job and you want to set up rooms first. For tips on the voice-note side, see Recording voice and text notes.