Welcome to Archdesk. Before you start using the system it is essential that you understand how it works in general.
As an Archdesk user you will ultimately have access to the data based on your role so that you will only see information that is crucial for your operations for clarity and effective flow of information. However, to properly understand how you fit in the process, you must understand the workflow that happens between departments/roles.
🚨 The below process is a SAMPLE CASE SCENARIO to give you a general idea of the workflow that in some way or other can be happening in your company.
IMPORTANT DEFINITIONS
PROJECT: a Project in Archdesk is a set of actions required for a completion of a construction project from the very first point of contact with the requestor (client) to handover. A project has its start and finish point with a defined finished result.
PROCESS: a Process in Archdesk is a chunk of work performed by a group of specialists (often a department or roles) that is one of the elements of the projects (e.g. Quotation, Site Check etc.)
STAGE: a stage is a set of single tasks that together make up a process leading to its completion.
SAMPLE WORKFLOW
OFFICE ADMINISTRATION/COMMUNICATION
It all starts with your potential customer contacting your business. The person who picks up the phone and receives the request from the prospect, creates a contact in Archdesk and fills in all the information and queries received over the phone. They should also ask additional questions to gather as much information as possible from the person that is calling. If the request arrived over the email, the office administrator can copy-paste the message into the Notes section in Archdesk and contact the sender if there's any information missing before they forward it to the Quantity Surveyor/Estimator/Sales Person (in different businesses, different people do estimates)
YOUR ROLE 👤 If you are an office administration/communication agent:
- Receive a call/email from the customer.
- Log into Archdesk at: https://YourCompanyName.archdesk.net using your credentials (email and password).
- From the Shortcut Menu in the upper left corner, create a Client's Contact in the system. Type in their Name, Last Name, Contact information (phone number/email), address if possible. Try to get as much details into the system as possible.
- Once the contact is created, the new pop-up window will prompt you to create a Project for this client. Create the project as in Archdesk, a project, from the management perspective starts the moment you register the call or receive an email from the prospective client.
5. Assign it to the person responsible for creating quotes/estimations in your organisation. They will instantly receive a notification in the system that a project has been assigned to them.
6. Go to details and in the Notes section add any information that may be useful for estimators/project manager and any stakeholder that will be working on the project.
7. Attach all the documents received from the prospect in the Files section.
8. When you are done and the information gathering is complete, mark the corresponding stage as completed the processes for that specific project. When gathering the information, document the process and its status as you go.
QS/ESTIMATORS/SALES
YOUR ROLE 👤 If you are a QS/Estimator/Sales person responsible for quotations:
1. When a client's query is registered in Archdesk as a new project, you will receive a notification in the top right corner.
When you click on the notification, the project with its first process will open (the processes at this point have been defined for you during the initial Archdesk setup so you don't have to worry about it).
After opening that project you will find all the data about the customer that have been gathered by an office administrator when they received the call. You should find your potential client's contact details in case you need to follow up with them, their inquiry details in the Notes section, and documents from the prospect in the Files section.
2. You can now Create the Quote for that project. Go to the Quotes section on the left-hand side menu and Create the quote.
3. In the Processes mark the progress of the Sales process and check "Completed" on the Quotation stage when it's done.
4. Once you are finished with the quote, approve it (approve button in the top right corner) and send it to the client for approval. Go to the Details Section in the Quote document, then File -> Send via E-mail.
The customer will receive a document similar to this one. The status of the Quote will change to Client Approval (orange).
When the client clicks the Accept button and approves the quote, you will receive a notification in the system.
5. In the Processes mark the Client Approval as complete.
The quote will now go to Accounting for approval.
6. In the Project Details assign a Project Manager who will be responsible for the project.
ACCOUNTS
YOUR ROLE 👤 If you are an accountant:
When the prospective client accepts the Quote sent to them by the estimator, you, as an accountant, will receive a notification in the upper right corner. When you click on it, the quote accepted by the client will show in the background. Go to the quote, and after you have done the due diligence (checked the clients' credit score, etc.) you can Accept the Quote so that the Buyers/Procurement department can issue POs.
During the project, you will be able to issues invoices and monitor expenses on the project on the project's Financial Dashboard.
Archdesk integrates with accounting systems like Xero, QuickBooks, Sage, bluQube, and others.
After the project has been finished, you can confirm the final payment or add the retention process and set up a due date that will appear on your dashboard for control and visibility.
PROCUREMENT
When the quotation is approved by the client and the accounting, it's time to order materials for the project.
YOUR ROLE 👤 If you are a person responsible for materials procurement:
- Go to the project and find the right quote in the Quotes section.
- Check the materials that need to be ordered.
- When the tender processes are complete, create Purchase Orders in Archdesk and send them directly to the Suppliers.
- Receive materials.
PROJECT MANAGEMENT
The Archdesk system helps businesses with multiple aspects of managing their construction and production projects.
YOUR ROLE 👤 If you are a project manager at your company:
1. After you have been assigned to a project you will receive a notification (in the upper right corner). Click on the notification and the project will open. At this point, the quotation should have been prepared by the estimator and approved by the client and your accounting.
2. Based on the information you find in the project's Notes, Files, Quotes, and Communication you can create a programme of works.
3. If needed, export the Programme 
into Excel or Microsoft Project to share it with your client or supervisor for approval. You can also print the programme from there.
4. Based on the Programme, in the Schedule section, you can create tasks for the employees. They will only see the tasks that they are responsible for completing on a given day and, using their phones on a worksite, they will be able to clock-in and clock-out on them and log in the time they've spent on those tasks.
5. In Archdesk you are able to define processes for your projects and then identify stages of those processes.
The processes are specific to your business and have been defined for you during the Implementation of Archdesk at your business. If you want to create a different process, please reach out to the Help Desk via email: support@archdesk.com .
Every process also has predefined stages. It's a good practice to set up the processes and stages based on how you receive updates on "chunks" of work from e.g. the site.
You can add the processes in the Processes section when you open a specific project. In the below screenshot we can see a sample of processes in a company:
- Sales
- Contacts
- Fabrication
- Installation etc.
Another example of the processes could be:
- Health and Safety
- Risk Assessment Rounds + Methods Statement
- Construction
- Plumbing
- Electricians
- Decoration
The processes can be modeled in any way around your operations.
When the work is done you can perform get the certificate, do the quality control, list of snagging, and get client approval. You can store all that data in the Project Files section.
Project Financial Dashboard
The Financial Dashboard depicts the status of each project separately.
REPORTING
Archdesk is a flexible system that allows Reporting facilities from many locations:
1. Dashboards
Based on the data available in the system the reporting dashboards can be configured. They can show the overall financial health of all the projects, the stages at which they are at the moment, and the progress of completion.
2. Financials > Reports
During the Implementation of Archdesk, you can request from the team ready-made Reports to be available for you and the team. They will be stored under the Financials tab > Reports. In order to access each, you will need to click on them and that will activate the download option. Data will be downloaded in an Excel format.
3. Projects tab
Under the main Projects tab, you will have the ability to filter down and extract/export a list of all projects. The system allows you to create many custom inputs after which you can filter data out. For example, a custom input would be the Project Manager's name. If ever you will need to know all projects that run under a certain Project Manager, you need only get to the Projects tab - filter after the Project Manager name and export the data.
4. Company > Employees
Your HR Team may need an export of the Employee data at any given time. This is why Archdesk has this option readily available for you. Under the Company tab, you have the Employees list. You can filter the data (through the help of the funnel icon) and export it.