A Trades section on each barndominium project. Each trade — dirt work, utilities, septic, plumbing, electrical, HVAC, spray foam, drywall, cabinets — is a row showing who provides it (your own in-house trade division, an outside sub, or your own crew), where it stands, its price, the schedule stages it covers, the next visit and any jobs linked from another system. Open a trade to ask your division for a bid, accept it, revise it, and schedule its visits.
Also called: trade packages · trades tab · in-house division bid · internal subcontract · agreed price · hvac division · trade visits · work orders
Every trade on one card
Try itA barndominium project gets a Trades section: dirt work, septic, HVAC, plumbing, electrical, spray foam, drywall, cabinets — one row each. A row says who does it (your in-house division, an outside sub or your own crew), where it stands, the price with a lock once it's accepted, the stages it covers, the next visit and how many jobs are linked from another app. The header counts it up: 3 of 8 accepted · 1 bid to review · 1 waiting on a bid · $25,067 agreed.
Halfway through a barndo, nobody could say which trades were priced and which were still a guess.
The PM sees which trades are priced and which are still a question mark without ringing round.
Your own division bids the work
Try itAsk the division for a bid and its managers hear about it. They enter their own cost and target margin, and the bid is cost ÷ (1 − margin) — $9,800 at 22% is $12,564.10. The division's cost and margin stay with the division; the builder sees the price, the note and Accept. How the money then counts on the job is on internal division commitments.
The in-house septic price was a phone call and a sticky note, and nobody could say how it was worked out.
A firm internal price, worked out the same way every time, beats a number passed across the shop floor.
Accepted means locked
Try itOnce a price is accepted it becomes the job's cost for that trade and shows with a lock. The HVAC division's $6,666.67 stays $6,666.67 if its crew runs over — that comes out of the division's margin, not the job's budget. The same window holds the trade's visits, its scope, the stages it covers and any jobs linked from the division's own app.
The division ran over on the ductwork and the job's budget quietly went up with it.
The builder budgets a number that doesn't move behind their back.
Only a revision moves it
Try itRevise price asks whether it's a Change order (the scope changed) or a Correction (the price was wrong), the new price and why. The difference works itself out and each revision is listed under the price with its date and reason — the plumbing sub's +$650 for a water softener loop sits there for anyone to read. A customer-facing extra still goes through change orders.
A trade's price had changed twice and nobody could say why, or who had said yes.
Every change to an agreed price has a reason and a date beside it, so nobody argues about it at the end of the job.
Build mode is per project
Try itA builder who does pole barns and barndominiums sets Build mode on each job. Trades appears on a barndominium; a post-frame shop looks exactly as it always has. Switching asks first, says the schedule stays exactly as it is, and keeps any trades already set up for if you switch back.
Barndo screens cluttered every shop job, or the houses went without them.
Each job shows the tools for what it is, and a wrong pick costs nothing to fix.
- 1On a new barndominium job, Set up creates the build mode's trades in one press: trades your division does go to it, the rest start as outside subs, and the stages each covers are suggested from the schedule.
- 2Ask the division for a bid and its managers are notified. They enter their own cost and target margin; the bid is cost ÷ (1 − margin), and their cost stays with their division.
- 3Accept locks the price: it becomes the job's cost for that trade. From then on only a revision — a change order or a correction, with a reason — moves it, recorded with who approved it.
- 4Visits (site visit, rough-in, trim-out, start-up, service call, inspection) are the trade's work orders; each one lands on the company calendar for the people on it.
- 5Post-frame projects are untouched: the section only appears on barndominium projects of an account that offers that build mode.
A barndominium builder with an in-house HVAC or dirt-work division has two problems ordinary job costing can't hold. The division's work is a real cost to the job, but it is one company, so it must not become a fake bill or sale in the books. And the builder needs a firm number: if the division runs over its own estimate, that is the division's problem, not a change to the job's budget. So the agreed price locks on acceptance and moves only through an approved revision with a reason. Visits live on the same record so the division can run its field schedule here instead of in a separate app.
- In-house trade work had no agreed price on the job, so job cost moved whenever the division's costs did.
- Trades, their prices and their site visits lived in separate tools.
- Changing an agreed price left no record of why or who approved it.
