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Working with work orders and crews

Work orders turn a sold estimate into work someone does. Each covers exactly one trade — roofing, gutters, siding — and carries what that crew needs: the lines, the schedule, the instructions, and who’s doing it. They live on the project’s Construction tab, grouped by trade. Materials for a work order go to your distributor on a purchase order. On the Business plan, Headquarters by XBuild adds operations: pipeline stages, tasks, work orders and crews, and project finances. Compare what each plan includes in Plan comparison. If you don’t see this feature in your account, contact support@x.build. The top of the Work orders section holds everything you start from: Manage crews, Manage distributors, Seed from estimate, and New work order.

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1. What a work order carries

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2. Create work orders

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Seed them from the estimate

  1. On the Construction tab, click Seed from estimate.
  2. XBuild sorts the estimate’s lines by trade and opens Review work orders — one proposed work order per trade.
  3. Review the titles, trades, lines, and costs. Remove anything you don’t want.
  4. Click Create N work orders. They’re created as drafts — exactly what you approved, nothing more.
Seeding needs an estimate, not a signed contract — you can plan the work before the homeowner signs. Lines already on a live work order are left out, so seeding again after the estimate changes picks up only the new lines.
When a crew has a saved rate for a labor item, XBuild uses it as the cost. If you assign a crew that has no rate for some lines, XBuild warns Set a cost for N lines and opens the work order with those lines flagged — enter a cost to finish assigning the crew. After you save, XBuild offers to save that cost as the crew’s rate for the item, so future work orders fill it in. You can also manage rates under Rates in Settings → Crews.

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Or create one by hand

Click New work order, pick the trade, and add lines, the crew, dates, and instructions. Use this for work that isn’t on the estimate — and for work added by a change order: an authorized change order offers Create work order →.

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3. Dispatch to the crew

Dispatching sends the work to the crew and makes it live.
  1. On the work order’s card, pick the crew and set the schedule.
  2. Click Dispatch. The dialog reads Dispatch to [crew]?
  3. Leave Email the work ticket to the crew on to email it. Send to fills in from the crew’s email — change it for this one ticket if needed; the crew’s record stays the same. Edit the subject and message if you like.
  4. Click Preview ticket PDF to see what the crew gets, then Dispatch.
Dispatch needs a crew, a start date, and — when you’re emailing the ticket — an email address. If the work order or its material order has suggested rows, confirm them first. An archived crew can’t be dispatched to. The work ticket is a PDF with the address, dates, instructions, and the work lines. It’s filed to the project’s documents and emailed from your company name; replies come back to whoever dispatched. It never shows your quoted prices. A subcontractor’s ticket shows only what you’re paying that sub. If the email doesn’t go out, the work order is still dispatched — the card shows the send failed. Resend always goes to the crew’s email on file, not an address typed at dispatch, so fix the crew’s email in Settings → Crews first, then click Resend. After dispatch, the deal with the crew is locked. The lines, how it’s fulfilled, the sub payment, and the crew can’t change. The title, instructions, assignee, and dates still can. To change something locked, cancel the work order and create a new one.

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4. The lifecycle

  • Un-mark complete puts a completed work order back to where it was. It doesn’t touch costs, and an invoice that already includes the work stays as sent.
  • Cancel work order (in the card’s ··· menu) is permanent. It also cancels the work order’s material order if that order hasn’t been sent yet. The work order’s projected costs drop off and bills you’ve already recorded stay. A material order that was already sent stays open, and its material cost stays projected — see A sent order on a cancelled or completed work order.

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5. Ready to invoice

The banner at the top of the Construction tab tracks whether the job is done:
  • Not ready to invoice yet — … lists the work orders not yet complete and the open tasks.
  • All work complete — ready for invoicing once every work order that isn’t cancelled is complete and no tasks are open.
It’s a signal, never a gate. When every work order in a trade is complete and the contract is signed, the completed card offers Generate invoice for [Trade] → — see Customer invoices.

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6. The crews roster

Crews are who you dispatch to: your own crews and subs. Manage crews opens Settings → Crews; click Add crew. Under Rates, save what you pay a crew for each labor item in your catalog. Rates are costs to you, before margin. Crews archive rather than delete: an archived crew leaves the pickers but keeps its name on every past work order and cost. Because work orders and costs point at a crew, you can compare what one sub costs per roof against another across jobs.
Blended scope mode, at the top of Settings → Crews, seeds every trade as one Scope section — labor and materials handed to the crew together, with no material order. The estimate’s lines stay itemized inside it. Only an organization admin can change it.

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7. On the mobile app

The mobile app’s Construction tab can dispatch (with the ticket email and PDF preview), resend, mark complete and un-mark, cancel, pick the crew before dispatch, change the schedule, edit the title, instructions and dates after dispatch, and run the material order while the work order is open. Seeding, creating work orders, editing draft lines, and the crews and distributors settings are on the web app.

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8. Troubleshooting common issues

  • I can’t dispatch. Check the card: it needs a crew (“Assign a crew before dispatching”), a start date, and an email address if the ticket is being emailed. Turn the email off or type a Send to address if the crew has none on file. If it says to confirm suggested rows, open the work order and confirm them. An archived crew can’t be dispatched to.
  • I can’t edit the lines. The work order has been dispatched — lines are locked so the crew’s ticket stays true. Cancel it and create a new one.
  • I can’t change the trade. A work order’s trade is fixed when it’s created. Cancel it and create one in the right trade.
  • I edited the estimate but the work order didn’t change. By design — lines are a snapshot of the work as sold. Seed again to pick up new lines, or edit the draft work order. For work added after signing, use a change order.
  • I cancelled the work order but its material order is still there. It had already been sent to the distributor. See A sent order on a cancelled or completed work order.
  • Resend went to the wrong address. Resend uses the crew’s email on file. Update it in Settings → Crews, then resend.
  • The banner says not ready, but every work order is complete. Open tasks count too. Close them on the Tasks list.
  • “Generate homeowner contract →” opened a change order. That link on the Not on the contract yet strip drafts a change order for work that isn’t on the signed contract.
  • I don’t see the Construction tab. It’s part of select plans. If you have it and the controls are missing, you may have a Limited role, which is view-only — ask an admin.
For further assistance, contact XBuild Support at support@x.build.