Publishing your proposal
Publishing turns a draft into the deliverable — there’s no separate “export to PDF.” Click Publish in the top bar; a short wizard confirms property details and signers, emails the property owner, notifies your team, and on insurance projects runs token checkout. You get a signable web link and a downloadable PDF; on insurance projects the carrier-format documents follow.1. Set the Prepared By line
The cover names who prepared the proposal — a homeowner-facing name XBuild fills in for you. To change it, open edit mode and in the Prepared By field click Choose from team to pick a teammate (name, email, and phone fill in; XBuild records which member you picked), or type a name, email, and phone for a rep who isn’t a registered member. Editing a field after picking someone keeps that person recorded. The name — plus email and phone when entered — shows on the cover of the published page and PDF, saved with the version.2. Ready to publish
The first screen lists what publishing creates: a shareable link (a web page your client reviews and signs — What your customer sees) and downloadable assets (the proposal PDF, plus Xactimate or Symbility documents on insurance projects). Click Continue.3. Confirm property details and who needs to sign
The homeowner’s name and property address are stamped onto the documents, so confirm them:- Address — autocompletes; pick the suggestion so the full address, ZIP included, comes through. Insurance publishes require a ZIP.
- Who needs to sign — the first row is the property owner, whose name is the homeowner name on the documents. Click Add signer for anyone else who must sign, such as a co-owner, with their Full name; Email address is optional, needed only to email their signing link. Everyone listed must sign before the proposal is complete — to send a copy without a signature, CC them on the next step. Signer rules and later changes: E-signatures and authorization.
- Symbility publishes only — also collects the date of loss, type of loss, and policy and claim numbers (Publishing to Symbility).
4. Email the property owner
Turn Send email to property owner on and the proposal is emailed the moment publishing succeeds.
A signer with no email address is named here as not receiving a signing link — add an address on the previous step, or have them sign in person after publishing. If sending is on with no address at all, Continue stays greyed out and the step offers Publish without sending an email. Turn the toggle off to deliver the link yourself — copy it or send the email later from the post-publish panel. Insurance projects default the email to off.
5. Notify your team
Pick teammates who should follow the project (Team collaboration). Existing members are searchable by name; Administrators can also invite brand-new people by email, which uses a member seat and is limited by your plan’s seats (Members and roles). On retail, continuing here publishes; insurance goes to checkout first.6. Token checkout (insurance projects)
Insurance publishes carry a one-time token charge per output format — 40 tokens for the first Xactimate publish, 90 for the first Symbility publish; same-format republishes are free and a format switch is charged at the other format’s rate (How tokens work). Retail has no publish charge, and the step is skipped whenever nothing is owed. The screen itemizes the charge and shows your available balance (trial tokens included). The button reads Publish when the balance covers it, or Purchase N tokens with the dollar amount when it doesn’t — tokens are charged when you click, not before. If the balance can’t cover it and your company has no active token plan, the wizard asks you to subscribe first; if your account can’t buy tokens or subscribe, the button says to contact your Administrator (Manual top-ups).7. Publishing and success
The publishing screen shows the shareable link to copy while documents generate; timing depends on format (Processing times). Insurance documents are emailed to you and filed into the project’s Documents when ready, so you can close the wizard (Publishing to Xactimate, Publishing to Symbility). On success you get the action panel:
The panel stays available after the wizard closes — reopen it from the project any time.
8. After publishing
A published version is fixed — the link and PDF keep showing exactly what you published. Any further edit, in chat or manual edit mode, creates a new Draft; publish that and the same link updates, with no repeat publish charge in the same format. The homeowner can then review, sign, and pay — E-signatures and authorization, Deposits and getting paid.9. Troubleshooting common issues
- The Publish button asks me to subscribe. Your balance doesn’t cover this publish and your company has no active token plan. An Administrator can subscribe from the prompt; members see “Contact admin to subscribe” (Plan comparison).
- The email never reached the homeowner. Check the address you entered and their spam folder, then re-send from the panel with Send email.
- I texted the customer the link and they can’t sign. The copied link is one signer’s — send it to the person the panel names. Links copied before signing links were introduced open a page that can’t be signed; copy a fresh one from the panel.
- The second owner never got a signing link. Only people under Who needs to sign get one; a second To address gets a view-only copy. Add them under Manage signers, then Send email.
- I published the wrong version. Fix the draft (or restore an earlier version) and publish again — same link, updated content, no repeat charge in the same format.