Five stages. Both sides. One record.
The whole thing is one idea repeated: money is committed early so everyone can plan, and it moves late so the work decides. Everything below is a consequence of that.
The contractor writes it. The homeowner looks it up.
Contractor. Build the schedule: milestones, amounts, what’s delivered, what counts as done, what’s excluded. The total is the sum of the schedule — it isn’t a number you type. A milestone can’t be issued without a title and at least one acceptance criterion, and a criterion with no measurement in it gets flagged before you send: adjectives become disputes.
Issuing it produces a code and a QR that resolve to your verified record with the quote attached.
Not standing in their kitchen? Enter their mobile number and it opens your own messages with the quote link written out. We don’t send it — it arrives from your number, so they can see who it’s from.
Homeowner. Scan the code, type it in, or open the link they text you. You see who they are according to the issuing board — licence, insurance, registration, and anything missing, listed first. Underneath it, the quote and the protections that would apply.
No account, no signup, nothing to fill in. The lookup runs one direction only: homeowners can look up contractors, and contractors cannot look up homeowners — the reverse is a scam vector, not a feature. A contractor texting you a quote is not that: they have your number because you gave it to them, and nothing is opened against your name until you decide to fund it.
The homeowner originates the project. The contractor can reshape the schedule, never the price.
Homeowner. Sign in with your phone and a code. Confirm your property and answer the two or three questions your state turns on. Confirm the person quoting you is the record you looked up. Then fund it — bank transfer, an instant push, or split with a lender — with one review screen before money moves.
Nothing releases until whichever ends later: your funds settling, or your statutory window to cancel closing.
Contractor. Accept, decline with a reason, or counter. A counter moves money between milestones — typically pulling some forward, because materials are paid to the supplier and your own first draw can otherwise be weeks out while you carry wages. The total stays identical.
Pre-funding it isn’t a change order, because there’s no funded balance yet to disagree with.
Work gets submitted against criteria that were written before it started.
Contractor. Submit the milestone with evidence against each acceptance criterion. That starts a review countdown. On jobs over $15,000 you can draw weekly against submitted work in the meantime — from us, not from the project balance.
Homeowner. You get the submission and the clock. Approving early is fine. Raising an issue stops the clock — and that sentence is the first thing on your screen, because a countdown that reads as pressure to approve would poison the whole mechanism.
Money leaves, and paper is created at the same moment.
What releases. The milestone amount, to whoever the line items point at — the contractor, or a supplier by name for a materials package. If the homeowner held back one line item, the rest still pays.
What’s recorded. Whether it was approved or released by the clock. The ledger never implies an approval that didn’t happen.
The waiver. Conditional when the draw is submitted, unconditional when the release settles — for the amount that actually left the project balance. Hold $2,100 of an $11,500 milestone and the waiver converts at $9,400, not $11,500. Get that backwards and the homeowner is holding paper covering money nobody received.
Normally this is a general contractor chasing signatures by email after everyone has already been paid. Here it’s automatic, and that automation is the product.
The file assembles itself, and it means something different in each state.
The closeout package pulls together the agreement, every waiver, every change order and the release history — a document both sides keep. In Texas, retainage stays in the project balance through its statutory window before the last release.
In Utah the package is framed as the evidence file for the Residence Lien Recovery Fund. If you’re ever served in a lien foreclosure you have 30 days from that summons to apply for a Certificate of Compliance — and the file you need is already assembled.
A $900 fence repair cannot carry five milestones and four lien waivers.
So under $10,000 the flow changes shape, not just price. Below that line a homeowner otherwise hands cash to someone they met an hour ago — which is exactly where protection matters most and paperwork helps least. There is one quote builder and the contractor never picks a mode: the price they write chooses the shape, and they edit it from there.
| Job size | Release schedule | Homeowner steps | Acceptance criteria |
|---|---|---|---|
| Under $2,000 | One payment on completion | 3 | Preset, editable |
| $2,000 – $5,000 | Materials 40%, then completion | 3 | Preset, editable |
| $5,000 – $10,000 | Three stages — 30 / 35 / 35 | 3 | Preset, editable |
| Over $10,000 | Three to five, by the kind of work | 4 new, 3 returning | Drafted, then written by the contractor |
What a small job drops: having to author your own acceptance criteria from scratch (they arrive preset and written to be measurable, and you can still change every one), the separate property step, and the paperwork volume of a five-milestone job.
What it deliberately keeps: the sign-in code, the identity check, the review before money moves, the cancellation window, and the state questions. Utah’s Lien Recovery Fund turns on owner-occupancy at $900 exactly as much as at $90,000 — skipping that question would drop a protection, not a step.
Two honest notes on small jobs. A statutory cancellation window doesn’t shrink with job size, so on small work the job can finish before the homeowner’s right to cancel expires. And this is exactly the band where a contractor may legitimately hold no licence — so the verified record carries more weight there, not less.
It is also the band where a contractor may be brand new here, and a new account has a 10% first-draw cap with materials routed to a named supplier. That’s not a comment on them; it’s what a record with nothing in it should mean.
Three exits, all of them written down.
Something changes
Renovations change. A change order adjusts scope and amount with both parties agreeing, and if it adds cost the homeowner funds the difference into the same balance before the work counts.
A reduction works the same way in reverse — and in Utah a reduction is the move that keeps a disputing homeowner “paid in full” for the Lien Recovery Fund.
Somebody disagrees
The homeowner holds a specific line item; the rest of the milestone releases. The contractor responds — correct it, concede it, or defend it. Both sides see the same evidence packet, including any messages tagged to that milestone.
If it escalates, a reviewer issues per-line findings anchored to the acceptance criteria, so a split is explicable: cabinets within tolerance released, crown moulding out of tolerance held. A line with no measurable criterion goes to the contractor.
Every screen says the same thing: a reviewer decides whether held funds release. Not whether a defect exists. In Texas the RCLA process governs and we don’t arbitrate at all.
It ends early
Cancellation is a settlement, not a refund button. The money is the easy part; the hard part is unbilled work standing in the kitchen that can still be liened.
So the contractor claims against line items the homeowner already agreed to, the homeowner accepts or disputes, and settling reduces the contract to what got built. The refund is what’s unearned minus the claim.
If the project was financed, refunds route to the lender first — that’s the money costing interest. It doesn’t arrive as cash and it doesn’t unwind interest already charged. We say that on the screen.
Messages and money in the same place, on purpose.
Releases, submissions, change-order fundings and review decisions land in the conversation as project-record cards. There is no separate ledger telling a different story, and a milestone-tagged message rides into an escalation packet automatically.
A message does not stop the clock
The dispute button does. Confusing the two costs somebody their hold, so it’s stated in the message drawer itself rather than buried in help text.
Payment never moves by message
No matter how convincing it is, or whose name is on it. Payment-redirection scams arrive as messages — so the message surface is where that sentence has to live.
Documents, not screenshots
The agreement, every waiver, the Texas pre-execution notice and the closeout package generate as real documents. Every page carries a notice that software generated it and that it is not a substitute for an attorney’s advice.