Field management for custom home builders

Your client stops texting “any update?”

Because the photo you took this morning is already on their portal, filed to the right room. Zero emails written.

No account needed to look around. Nothing to install.

Ground line

What actually goes wrong

The build is fine. The paper trail is the problem.

Nobody loses a custom home over framing. They lose it over a tile nobody approved and a change order nobody wrote down.

“I have four hundred photos on my phone and no idea which house they belong to.”

The camera roll problem

“She picked the faucet in March. In August nobody could prove which one.”

The selections problem

“I know what I signed. I don’t know what I’ve actually paid out.”

The money problem

One job, three doors

Everyone sees their own part. Nobody sees your margins.

One site, three sign-ins. Not a permissions screen you configure — it’s the whole design. Subs never see money. Homeowners see only what you share.

Builder

Everything

The full job. Costs, contracts, subs, selections, the lot.

  • Daily log that files itself by date and area
  • Budget lines, signed contracts, payments against them
  • Open items with an owner and a due date
  • Stage progress across every site you run
Homeowner

Their house

Progress, their selections, and the decisions you need from them.

  • Photos you chose to share, nothing you didn’t
  • Selections with prices and a one-tap approval
  • Who’s on site this week — no sub names, no notes
  • Invoices and what’s outstanding
Subcontractor

Their scope

Their trade, their dates, their spec. Nothing about anyone else.

  • Only items assigned to their trade
  • Install specs and the finishes that affect them
  • Confirm or decline a date
  • Never sees pricing, contracts, or other subs

A day on site

Four taps, standing in the mud.

If it’s slower than the walk back to your truck, it won’t get used. So it isn’t.

Screenshot: the Log tab with today’s photo prompt
and the recent feed underneath
Log · what happened on site today

7:40am

Photograph the thing, not the paperwork

Snap it, tap the room, tap the trade. Filed before your phone is back in your pocket.

Screenshot: an entry flagged as an open item,
assigned to a trade
To-Do · open items with an owner

10:15am

Anything wrong becomes an open item

One toggle gives a photo an owner and a due date. Tracked, not remembered.

Screenshot: the homeowner’s progress view
with shared photos and a decision waiting
Homeowner portal · their house only

4:00pm

Your client already knows

Shared photos and the tile decision you need by Friday are already on their portal. The “any update?” text never gets sent.

Screenshot: the money card showing budget,
signed, paid and projected
Money · budget, signed, paid, projected

6:30pm, at the kitchen table

What you signed versus what you’ve paid

Signed, paid, and the gap between them — shown plainly. Paid costs export straight to QuickBooks.

Where custom builds actually go wrong

Selections and money, treated seriously.

The two things a spec builder can shrug off and a custom builder cannot. They get the most careful part of the app.

Selections

Every finish with its allowance, real price, and upcharge. One-tap approval, dated. Install specs ride along to the sub who needs them.

Answered early, installs stay on schedule. That’s the whole reason it exists.

Job costing

Budget revisions keep their reason. Contracts you log payments against. Overspend shows amber instead of hiding.

Editing money never rewrites it — the rule the whole money layer is built on.

Built for a basement with no bars

It works with no signal. Not “mostly”.

Everything saves to the device first and syncs when there’s signal. Log twenty items in a poured basement — it catches up on its own.

Synced · live Offline · saved here Saving…

This was tested the hard way

During development a live sync incident wiped a site’s records. Every device still held its own copy, and the whole job republished itself on reconnect. Nothing was lost.

That wasn’t a feature demo. It was a bad afternoon that the design happened to survive.

Why it’s different

I watched a very good builder run my build — and realized how much one person is expected to hold in his head.

A custom build is a logistics problem wearing a hard hat, coordinated largely from memory, a phone, and a truck cab. The craft was never the hard part. The information is.

SitePlumb was written during that build. The homeowner experience isn’t a module bolted on — it’s where this started, and the builder side grew around what a builder actually juggles.

That’s also why the daily log takes four taps. Anything slower doesn’t survive a real jobsite.

Read this before you get excited

Who this isn’t for, yet.

You’ll find this out in week one anyway. Better you hear it from me than discover it after migrating a job.

Estimating and takeoff not built

There’s no bid or proposal side. If you buy software mainly to win work, this isn’t it yet. Budgets start once you’ve got the job.

Crew time tracking not built

No timesheets, no clock-in, no payroll hours. Plenty of tools do this well and they’re cheap.

Subs still need chasing be realistic

The sub view is genuinely narrow and useful. Some subs will still ignore it and answer their phone instead. That’s the trade, not the software.

One person builds it early

Support is me, and I answer. That means fast fixes and honest answers, and it also means no 24-hour call centre. Judge accordingly.

Design partners

Looking for a handful of builders who’ll be blunt.

Free while we work together. I want the truth about what’s missing and permission to fix it fast. Running two to twenty custom homes with an opinion? That’s the whole requirement.