Server-stamped timestamps that gate the customer forward, paired with hold screens that poll. The surviving gate is Start Project: after the contract is signed the customer sees a your-build-is-being-planned screen listing what the dashboard will show, until the builder clicks Start Project and the same page becomes the live dashboard.
Also called: hold the customer · start project gate · do not show the dashboard yet
The customer sees a live build only when you say it is one
Signing used to drop a customer straight onto a project dashboard listing stages that did not apply to their build — concrete on a job with no concrete — and a progress bar going nowhere while the start date slipped. Nothing appears until you click Start Project. The gate is a stamped decision on your side, not a side effect of the customer finishing paperwork.
The wait screen answers the questions they would otherwise phone in
The hold names the customer and their project, says the crew, schedule and milestones are being finalised, and lists what the dashboard will carry once it opens: stage-by-stage progress, jobsite photos, milestones, documents and messaging. A green pulse tells them the page updates on its own. A customer who has just signed for a six-figure building and lands on a blank screen reads it as a broken one.
One bookmarked address covers the whole wait
The hold sits at the same URL the estimate did and asks them to bookmark it, so there is no second link to send, lose or resend. Builders who hand out a fresh link at every stage spend the following months forwarding old emails to customers who cannot find the right one.
A build that is already running opens the gate on its own
The gate reads two signals: your Start Project click, or a real project bound to that estimate by any other route — a repair, a reseed, a project that predates the stamp. Reading the click alone held customers on a your-build-kicks-off-soon screen while phases were running and photos were being taken on their job. The build was visibly underway everywhere except on the page the customer was looking at.
- 1estimate_links carries intake_released_at and project_started_at, stamped server-side
- 2The portal load API returns the gate flags and a merge effect mirrors them onto the estimate
- 3While on the hold, the page polls the load API every six seconds
- 4A flip in a gate flag re-renders straight into the dashboard with no reload
The journey chained approval straight through to the details form, the contract and a live dashboard with no builder in the loop, and it misled the customer twice. They were pushed into signing before the builder had finished the internal pass — materials, colours, markup, labour, payment schedule, and the permit, engineering and location costs not yet in the number. Then the moment the contract was signed they saw a full project dashboard before anyone had clicked Start Project, listing stages that did not apply to their build, like concrete on a job with no concrete, and a progress bar going nowhere while the start date slipped. Builder gates sit at both points now, and the customer waits on a screen that explains what is happening rather than a dashboard that quietly misleads them.
- A customer-facing dashboard exposed before the project is configured
- Paperwork advancing ahead of the builder's internal review
- Customers refreshing or emailing to find out whether anything moved
See it on your own jobs
Twenty minutes, your numbers, no slide deck. We’ll build one of your real buildings in front of you and send you the estimate link at the end — yours to keep either way.
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