WorkHoist user guide: how the construction management software runs your jobs, end to end

1. Set up your company

Settings is where the company is shaped before anyone else signs in. Super Admin and Admin see all of it.

• Company: name, logo, US or UK (that one setting drives dates, currency, sales tax or VAT and Letter or A4 paper), and your tax rate.
• Team & Users: add people and give each a role. Paid seats are Admin, Project Manager and Finance — the people who manage work, build estimates or handle money. Field crew, clients and subcontractors are free. Your own roles go here too: type "Plumber" or "Glazier", tick Field crew (free seat, uses the field app) and add it. Untick it to make an office role that works like a Project Manager or Finance.
• Pipelines: the stages a lead moves through, with your own fields on each deal card.
• Templates: Project templates and Estimate templates (phases, tasks and line items you reuse on every job of that kind), and Forms (what your daily log and punch list ask for on site).
• Cost Codes, Labor Rates (each worker's pay rate and burden, so hours become job cost), Payment Cards.
• Email and Integrations: every office user connects their own Gmail or Outlook, and Google Drive.

Where: sidebar → Settings. Full detail: Client & contractor portals covers who sees what from outside.

2. Win the work

Every lead sits on the Pipeline board, by stage, with the contact, the value and days in stage. Open a lead to log calls and notes, set a follow-up, attach files, and build the estimate right there. The estimate is sections and line items with overhead and profit on top; send it as a PDF proposal from the preview, and mark it sent, accepted or rejected. Mark the deal Won and the project is created from the estimate — nothing re-typed, and the budget can be generated from it.

Where: sidebar → Pipeline. Feature pages: CRM & sales pipeline, Estimating & proposals.

3. Run the job

A project is phases, tasks and a schedule. Give each task a start and due date and assign it to a person; a field user you assign is added to the project automatically. The Timeline is the Gantt with dependencies; the Work Plan is the company calendar that shows who is free and who is at capacity across every job. Daily logs, the punch list (snagging list in the UK), RFIs, submittals and documents all live on the project, so the record of the job is in one place. Equipment is checked out to a job and back. Subcontractors are assigned per project with their insurance and documents tracked, and a compliance alert when something lapses.

Where: sidebar → Projects, Work Plan, Equipment, Accounts. Feature pages: Projects & scheduling, Work plan & crew capacity, Equipment & assets, Subcontractor compliance.

4. Hours and photos back from site

Your crew use the free WorkHoist Field app on their own phones. They see the tasks you assigned them, clock in and out on a task, take photos and file the daily log, with or without signal. Hours land on the task the same day and, with a pay rate set, on the job's labour cost. Daily logs arrive under the project for the PM to approve, with any delay the crew flagged. On a phone browser, the same field login also ticks checklists, adds punch items with photos, raises RFIs and checks equipment out.

Where: the office invites the operator from Settings → Team & Users and the invite email carries the App Store and Google Play links. Operator guide: How to use the WorkHoist Field app. Feature page: Field app.

5. The money on the job

Every project has a budget by category and cost code, with actual cost from approved expenses, bills and crew hours against it as they happen. Change orders are priced, approved and billed. Purchase orders go to suppliers and subs, and their invoices come in as bills against the PO. Expenses are logged with the receipt — scanned, uploaded or photographed — and approved by the PM. Progress invoices are built from the schedule of values with retainage (retention in the UK) held and released, sent as PDFs, and client payments recorded against them. Financials shows the company: billed, collected, outstanding, margin by project, WIP and the P&L, with CSV exports for your bookkeeper. US companies send invoices, payments, expenses and bills to QuickBooks Online with one click.

Where: inside a project → Financials; company-wide → sidebar Financials. Feature page: Job financials.

6. Clients and subs see their part

A client's login opens their one project's portal: progress, documents, billing, and change requests they can raise. A subcontractor's login is their own work, equipment requests and their own expenses. Neither sees your costs.

Feature page: Client & contractor portals.

7. Email and messages on the job

Connect your mailbox and link each email about a job to its project or deal, next to the in-app channels and direct messages your team use. Approval and @mention notifications go by email if you want them.

Where: sidebar → Emails; top bar → Messages. Feature page: Email hub & messaging.

8. Ask the AI

Bob, the in-app assistant, answers questions from your live data without leaving WorkHoist. Connect Claude or ChatGPT and ask for margin by project, who owes you, or budget against actual; photograph receipts and name the job and they arrive as expenses waiting for approval. On every plan.

Feature page: AI connector (MCP).

Getting help

Raise a ticket from inside the app, call the office on +1 917 540 1739, or — for the first 100 customers — reach Michael directly. Onboarding is included on annual plans.