Roadmap - Chalkstring

We want to get rid of the need for the batch transfer, and note that some other software systems are able to API directly to our accounts package - is the same possible for the Chalkstring data?

Completed Development

Change how the Bills reload data as you scroll the page

I find that each time i scroll a bill and it reloads, the fact every cell updating now has a spinner and the whole screen itself flickers as it refreshes, it hurts my eyes after a while. Is there any way to make the screen updating less busy?

Released

We would like a new status for empty products [ included / excluded / not applicable / by others ]

Add VE options 'below the line' in the rate build up/tender bill

Output Documents

"Below the line" flag for products in rate buildup Items excluded from contract total but visible as options (with rate per unit and quantity) Ability to toggle items between main contract and VE options Any items left as VE option, not carried over to onsite project when the tender is accepted In the tender bill, VE options shown in a separate section after the main contract total (but on the same page)

Ability to lock product templates from future changes and updates (a hard cant edit status)

To prevent anyone accidentally overwriting a template instead of saving as new as they should

We would like the ability to sync multiple products in the RBU back to the PT database at the same time.

I have to Sync every changed product item to make it available in the central database for other assessments to pick. Is there a possibility to make a button where you can Sync all items that have been changed in the RBU at once - and for safety so you cant mass overwrite your templates make it so they only create as new based on the current names of the products?

Allow 'projecting forward' for subzones

Progress & Applications

Currently, you can't 'project forward' via the application bill for any zones which has been split into subzones. There is no '+' button for the subzones.

Include number & link to issues allocated to subcontractors in the Labour / Incoming S&F Application Review screens

Issues

Include a new row which displays a number of Issues - eg 3 Issues - click on this link and you get a modal with the issues listed out from which you can click through to add comments / resolve etc Same principle on incoming S&F applications Note - Issues get allocated to subcontractors in 1 of 2 ways. Either the issue is assigned to the subcontractor directly, or it is assigned to a specific operative that is currently working for that subcontractor. So the issues displaying are both those allocated to the subcontractor and or their operative for whom they are responsible. This will give users instant visibility of whether they should be approving payments in full if issues would require some amounts withholding.

Approving labour applications

When approving a labour application, it would be useful to have an approve button within the 'looking glass' page so that I don't have to then page back after checking to approve.

Make it easier to edit labour claims

Currently there is no way to edit a labour claim once you have clicked 'save draft'. You can amend it to say you aren't approving what's been claimed for but you can't edit the original claim - you can only delete it and start again. Can we have a way to edit a draft claim.

Review labour applications

When reviewing labour applications, I can click into the application to view what has been booked in. I can only and edit or delete from this screen - to approve it I have to come out of the screen and find the application again (and it has usually moved position in the queue). So, an approve application button within the application would be useful please.

Ability to take a project/assessment off site

Currently when a user accepts a project on site in error, they have to come via Helpdesk to undo it. Can we provide a button to "take a tender" back off site. This would need to include a disclaimer that this is based on "tenders" rather than the whole project. So if the project only had 1 tender accepted, reversing that would reverse the project, but if it had more than 1 tender accepted, only the tender selected would be undone.

The ability to 'uncertify' applications if mistakes are made

Progress & Applications

Helpdesk can currently do this for us, but would like the ability to do it ourselves if needed.

Show a summary of the measurements in a box when exporting takeoff drawings to send to clients

Output Documents

Having a key with a measure summary next to it would be a great feature

Ability to add embodied carbon per unit of item to material information

Resources

Output Documents

To allow there to be the embodied carbon per unit within for example a material bill export based on the quantity showing total embodied carbon per item which will allow the ability to give the client an overall carbon impact for the materials in a package. (This could also be done for the weight of materials as it would be a similar calculation)

BREBUR Ltd - Ability to overlay other drawings on a takeoff

Ability to overlay other drawings on a takeoff

Ability to add multiple products to an RBU and materials/labour activities at a time to a product, same principle as when bulk adding items to a quote request.

Products to an RBU - multi select then add Materials & Labour to a specific product

Fixed Costs edit

Be able to edit cost and profit to each selected item on the fixed cost tab.

Fixed Costs - See the Prices in the List

It would be great if when you are adding fixed costs to an assessment you could see the price of the fixed costs in the list. At the moment you have to guess!

Plant and hire equipment - managing this through material orders but it is quite admin intensive to maintain the data.

You asked if there was a way to have a timer that tracks elapsed days and updates the order. I think this will require more scoping so we may need to come back to you

Plant and Hire Equipment Tracker

We have our own Excel spreadsheet that tracks the plant, enter a hire date and then shows the weekly costs upto the date that you open the excel sheet. We don't need this showing on material on site. But would be ideal to get this option into chalkstring to track costs.

Allow the reordering of the list of fixed costs within the offsite and onsite assessments.

Currently the fixed costs which are added to an assessment into the 'fixed costs' section appear in the order they are added. Can we add a feature to allow these to be reordered?

Abillity to reorder fixed costs during estimating

Currently the fixed costs appear in the order they are added, can we have the ability to move these up or down as required like with material and labour items in a product component?

Add 'External notes' section to product templates.

Add 'External notes' section to product templates. Currently these are only available when a product is added to a rate build up and don't save if the product is sync'd back to the database.

Ability to be able to 'unlink' a zone from a drawing.

When a drawing is linked to an assessment and zone(s), once products and measures are added, they cannot be unlinked, the box is greyed out. Can we make it so they can be unlinked?

Automatically fill any blank £value cells (e.g. VAT Value) with 0.00

FR from Barry: Automatically fill any blank £value cells (e.g. VAT Value) with 0.00 (as Xero cannot import blank cells) Make all the numbers in 0.00 format (i.e. 2 decimal places) Examples below in yellow and green highlights…

Forward and back product arrows to continue to products on the next/previous page of the RBU

Currently, when using the back and forward arrows to move through products, once you get to the last product on the current page, the next arrows greys out and you have to close down the model, use the arrow at the bottom of the page to move to the next page and then reopen the first product modal to continue moving through the products. Can this be updated so the arrows will allow you to browse through all products regardless of which page you are currently viewing on the rate build up.

Ability to see page forward and page back from anywhere in the Rate Build Up

Onsite Assessments

When you have a list of 50 products to scroll up and down through it would be ideal if you could see a floating toolbar that allowed you to more easily go from page to page without always having to scroll to the bottom of the page.

UX/UI - Add forward and back arrows to the top of the RBU page as well as the bottom

When in the Rate Build Up page, this page only shows 50 products. Anymore and you need to scroll down to bottom right to click onto next page. Can we have a duplicate click at the top right of each page for convenience. Also, can the arrows be made a bit bigger as they are quite hard to click on. Would also be good to see these arrows displayed at the top of the pop up windows where you add products, materials etc

We would like a ‘sort’ button in the measures panel on the left in Takeoff to reorder the products alphabetically.

When Im measuring the products in the left list are listed as per put in. You can’t alphabetise or sort this. I would like to request a button for this to make scroll easier for the item i am looking for without having to search?

For the ability to add a default colour for the product within the product template database, so when that product is added to takeoff, it will always default to that colour as standard.

Could we have a notes section added to the project hub, near the files and links.

Graphs, charts & reports

Something like the notes on the Project home page please

OHP & inflation % remain visible at the top once they've been applied to RBU's

Request that the OHP & inflation % remain visible at the top once they've been applied on a RBU. When my director checks the rates he has to open the items to see what I have allowed for the overhead and profit. Can I request the Apply to All section will stay filled in when I save it, and if then I change it on other individual product items it will get red so he knows some changes have been made and he needs to check individual rates.

When creating a new drawing in takeoff could we have an extra option to bulk add the whole product list from a previous drawing (plus a link backward for changes)

When i am measuring drawings for a project, i would like my whole list of products to be able to be bulk added to a new drawing so i dont have to add them individually. A consideration is also if i bulk add say 10 products from the drawing for the ground floor, then copy them to the 1st - then realise i had missed something off the list of products if i now add it to the 1st floor list could it also work back to add it to the ground drawing.

Re-order the sequence products appear in the measuring software

Sometimes products get added into the measuring software randomily and not in a logical sequence which makes it visually difficult to see or filter out the differnet assessments - could we have the option to re-order them like has been done with materials and labour within rate build ups.

Download order notes. Per project can it cache and remember the note from last time so don’t need to keep typing same thing over and over

Procurement – the desire is to have the same note appear on all the POs generated for a specific project e.g. for a ABC project, have a note on the PO that says deliveries cannot be accepted after 2pm. And then for XYZ project, apply a different note.

Change order of "Products & Measurements" during a take-off

please can you add a function to re-order the list of products in the take-off screen

Reorder Products in Takeoff

Please can you add the function to change the order of the products as they appear in the take-off

We require an invoice reference field for external costs please

External costs

To help ties up the costs within Sage.

We need the ability to edit values on invoices for VAT to get to the penny matching with our accounts software.

Sometimes the 2 decimal place rounding leads to small differences in values and we would like to be able to overtype the automatically calculated value if we need to make it match something that is slightly different please.

Take Off Cursor Style

Within the take-off tool, is it possible to change the cursor pointer from an arrow to a cross hair to gain a more accurate start and end click please?

Budget summary at estimating stage

Can we please have a tabulated budget summary at estimating stage, including columns for total budgeted materials, waste, labour, inflation, contingency, fixed costs, subtotal, overheads, profit, total etc and with rows per assessment with totals at bottom for whole project (and metrics for the whole project). We'd like to see this information without having to tender the project within Chalkstring. It would be helpful if it could be displayed on screen and with optional Excel export as this will help us with adjudication and tender reviews, both internally and with our clients.

Change it so that takeoff files can be reassigned to different assessments within the same project

We would like to be able to takeoff for plots 1-5, then duplicate that assessment which copies all the products and measures we have already done for plots 1-5. I then want to delete and remeasure some of the products, but then assign that duplicated data back to the assessment we are working on. Original request 1. Add a drawing, link to a few zones e.g. plots 1-5 and measure some products 2. Create a duplicate of that drawing with its measures, link it to different zones and then remove a few but not all of the measures so that you don't have to remeasure everything from scratch because for example half of the floor layout is identical.

Enable take-off to measure both area and perimeter simultaneously

It would be hugely beneficial when measuring area items like ceilings, if the take-off software was able to also measure the perimeter at the same time. This would eliminate the need to repeat the same take-off for both area and perimeter.

Define ortho/rect on skew

Set up ortho/rect on skew by picking first two points and making all other lines perpendicular and parallel to this line. Enables existing time saving functionality to be used on irregular shaped layouts

Ability to 'link' the product(s) being added when using the 'Add products and/or measurements from another drawing' function to existing product(s) in the assessment

Currently, the Add products from another drawing function creates a copy of the product as it adds it to the drawing, in the same way the 'Add product from database' function does. This present an issue when I want to copy a product from one drawing to another within the same assessment. It currently creates another line item in the rate build up for that product when I want it to instead populate the quantities using the already existing line item for that product in the assessment. E.g. In zone 1 I have measures product 'Wall 1' on a drawing. I want to copy this measure to zone 2 due to it being very similar with only a small change required. When I do this, another line item is added called 'wall 1 (copy)' and is linked to zone 2. I would like the original product 'Wall 1' to be linked to zone 2 as it's copied so I can use the copy function, but it not add multiple instances of the same product to the assessment. Perhaps a page as part of the copy steps where you confirm which existing products, if any, you want to link the measures being copied to?

Ability to create new material configuration options on the fly wherever you can currently select a material & configuration

Configurable materials are very useful but if the configuration you want isn't already defined you currently need to then go and add it first to the material from the resources section. It would be helpful to be able to create new configuration options wherever you can currently choose a material with a configuration. So this will include In the Rate Build Up: In the RBO toolkit: In the Material Bill: Editing an Order: Users would like adding to these dropdown menus that display the current configuration options, the ability to: 1. Add a new configuration - this would use this created configuration for this material instance, but also save that back to the material itself as a configuration available to be selected again in the future. 2. Add a one off configuration - this would apply to the current material in the current project, but not become a selectable option on future instances of this material.

Increase number of characters for names and descriptions

Would like the name and description fields for products to be increased from 255 characters on both Chalkie and the bill importer. 255 isn't enough to be able to add all the details needed to for clients to be happy with the bill.

Link one measure to multiple products/Duplicate measure and link to a different product

"I have some request to make our live easier. When we measure ceilings we measure first the ceiling by himself. Afterwards we measure the Moisture E/O & Finish ( T&J or SKIM ) It would really speed up when we could connect the both measuring and don’t have to do it twice ore sometimes 3x It would as well be perfect when we for example measure making good we can connect all T&J to Making good. This way I don’t have to go into the BofQ and use the calculator and put in manually."

Option to delete multiple items within an assessment

At present we have to delete items within an assessment one by one. It would be more efficient if we could make use of a check box to select items and then delete multiple.

Option to produce a tender without needing the cover letter

We often retender the same thing multiple times via email back and forth, or use a custom cover letter, so we dont need the system to generate one every time. We would like the option to produce just the tender spreadsheet, and that be capable of being accepted on site as a valid tender. At the moment we can produce draft tenders from the assessment overview, but these cannot be accepted on site without the full tender process at the moment. So here at this point add a new option to "Generate bill only tender".

Take Off - revision changes - copy measures from one drawing to another

Be able to have the ability to copy measurements from one drawing and overlay onto another where only small layout changes have occurred during tender revisions.

Ability to add a set of products (e.g. wall types) to one drawing and then easily copy all of them to subsequent drawings

Currently each time we upload a new drawing we have to add all of the wall types from scratch. We'd like to be able to copy a list of products from one drawing to another.

Add New Client from Projects page

There is currently no way to add a new client from ‘projects’ page at the point of realising that the client doesn’t already exist. One needs to go to clients, then add new, then back to projects, select project, edit project, select the client. Alternatively the process starts off in ‘clients’ just to see if the client making the enquiry already exists. It would be great to have the option to ‘Add New Client’ from the client drop down list on 'projects' page.

Create new client at the point of creating new project

When creating a new project, if the client does not already existing in the list, we have to choose a random client to be able to complete the addition of the project to Chalkstring, then go to the contacts menu, clients section, add the new client, then return to the project, edit the project, and replace the random client with the correct one. This is cumbersome and could be streamlined by being able to create a new client at the point of creating the project.

Create New Supplier within New Materials Quote screen

Resources

Currently we are unable to create a new supplier once we have started to create a new quote. This means that if we have already input details for the new quote, we have to close the new material quote screen, add the supplier, and then start the new material quote from scratch and re-insert any data.

Reinstate assessment OHP fields back to RBU header

Can you please move the assessment OHP % fields (together with the new contingency and waste % fields) back to where they used to be in the header before you hid them under "Apply to all". It is far more obvious and intuitive to new users if it is in the header

Add date created to guesstimates

Similar to having an expiration date on guesstimates (as per another suggestion on here) could we get the date the guesstimate was created added to the information?

Ability to select Subcontractor when adding a labour rate guesstimate

When you add a guesstimate for a labour item you can select a 'region'. We would like the ability to select a subcontractor when adding a guesstimate and for this subcontractor to pull through to the labour bill export. This will allow us to use the information to generate orders for subcontract labour.

Add notes to Guesstimates

Add notes to guesstimates i.e. list price plus 10%

Copy/duplicate products within the RBU without needing to sync back to the database

When product templates have been added to an assessment and then customised for that project, it would be helpful to have the ability to copy another instance of that product within the same assessment for example if you need to do an add/omit within a lump sum assessment or if you have a requirement to duplicate the item on that assessment only and don't want to save it back as a template.

Allow multiple drawings to be uploaded at the same time

Allow multiple drawings to be uploaded at the same time

Add expiration dates to Guesstimates

Could you please add an expiration date for the validity of a guesstimate, so that old ones are automatically removed from the live data over time? It would also be useful if the date the guesstimate was created was stored with it so users can be sure if they are using a current best guess price or not.

We would like to be able to record our site progress on our takeoff drawings

Our site teams are used to colouring up paper drawings to evidence progress. Given we are now using the takeoff to establish the measure of everything, could there be the ability to mark up the progress on the drawing so it can be calculated precisely as opposed to the % basis of the sliders?

Material Increases affecting OH&P retrospectively

When applying material increases to the project packages Chalkstring is updating the project hub/rate build-ups to show a loss in profit which I understand, however it is applying this retrospectively as if this has always been the rate paid out. This is skewing the actual OH&P that should be shown. Is there a way Chalkstring could read the quantity of materials ordered already at the time the increase comes into effect, and only apply the increase on the balance remaning. E.g. I have ordered 50,000m2 of a total 80,000m2 of insulation, the increase should only affect the margin on the remaining 30,000m2 not the full 80,000m2

Configurable material usage in material bill

When multiple different material configurations are within the material bill if for example we have 1,000m2 of 15mm Soundbloc within the bill made up of some 2400mm boards, some 2700mm and some 3000mm boards if the correct quantity of configuration is not ordered then it moves the cost for this to contingency when it may be that the total 1,000m2 has not been exceeded. It would be beneficial if materials with configurations are shown on one line with te option to select the configuration when ordering and the m2 or lm of material ordered deducted from the total material allowance.

Please could you include suppliers trading address (not just head office address) in supplier details on purchase orders

Change the material bill swap behaviour from replacing the "requirement" to "transferring the balance"

Due to the problems with the supply chain this year, there have been a number of instances where we have been mid procurement of a material, when all of sudden we could no longer get our hands on it. We have had to switch to ordering similar materials that are available. However, due to the current behaviour when a material is swapped it is swapped out in the Rate Build Up and as a result swaps the requirement to the new material, this has resulted in us incurring a lot of "contingency" budget spending on materials we ordered but are now no longer in the current scope. We would expect to see all these tracked in the material budget not contingency budget, so can you change how the software handles swaps once progress has started on a project please?

Could drop down menus collapse by clicking the arrow, as well as clicking off the menu

Sometimes clicking off the menu means you click something else you dont want so would be nice to collapse back within itself

Can the "on site only" filter checkmark remain active unless unticked

It resets when you leave the page but we use this filter a lot

Change Supply & Fit quote requests to only include products set to supply & fit mode

Supply & Fit

The default has been to include the full bill on a supply & fit quote request, regardless of the product modes - we mix supply and fit works in amongst our own self delivered works so would like the quotes to be specific to supply & fit items

Delete assessments

I only see an option to archive assessments can we have a delete option??

Could we have some progress and status indicators for our tender assessments, similar to when projects go live

Some sort of dashboard on the home page would be ideal to quickly and easily see the status of things without having to go into each work package.

Ability to edit a cover letter for a tender rather than starting from scratch

Could the fields that you have previously entered for a tender cover letter on your project be saved/cached so that when you create the next tender it remembers what you last entered and you can just edit accordingly rather than having to start from scratch each time?

We would like to see BoQ data displaying on the RBU's

Enable users to determine the order of materials & labour as they display within a component / when swapping keep the position rather than add to bottom

When uploading a drawing that has multiple pages to have an option at the top that allows you to select the project/assessment/zones and apply to all pages of the pdf.

When adding products to takeoff, would help user to display unit of measure for product when they are confirming the measurement type is appropriate

Provide product Name, Description and Unit of Measure here

Enable post acceptance changes to tender scope on site.

Admin & Setup

See ticket 6773 in JIRA for the full scope

We would like to be able to bulk import new materials and labour spreadsheets ourselves

We can do this by contacting helpdesk, but we get a lot of bespoke jobs with unique material lists so it would be great if we could just do this ourselves.

We would like to import a quote and that process create new materials in our database at the same time

At the minute, we need to create materials in our account database, then export a quote request. We would like to be able to just take a quote we recieve from a supplier, and transfer that into an import template that will create the new materials and the quote all in 1 go.

Be able to multi select packages / subcontractors in accounts table filters

At the moment it is a single filter per type. We want to be able to filter by the packages of Drylining and Plastering, and also by Subcontractor 1 and Subcontractor 2 - and then be able to export that filtered list to excel. At the minute we have to export the full unfiltered list to excel and then do the filtering we need in that document, we would prefer to do it on screen and to only export what we needed. Thanks

We would like to be able to add new zones to lump sum projects

Currently if a project is lump sum we need to define the zones before tender acceptance, and we understand the reason for this. However, we often find things change considerably even on our lump sum projects, and we need the flexibility to be able to add new zones with new scope requirements for existing contract works, as well as the ability to add variations.

Add button to takeoff to allow you to export the current bill of quantities from here

For those who have takeoff access but not full bill access

Add direct link from Bill of Quantities product names to pop out the rate build up

To save us having to navigate back and forth from the bill to check the make up of a particular product whilst we are reviewing the bill

Rate Build Ups - multiplyer

When creating partition rate build ups it would be useful to be able to set a height of a partition which would then work out thing such as number of fixings, m2 of materials, m2 of labour etc without having to input each item in individually.

Rate Build Ups

When in a rate build up button added to skip to the next or prevuious rate build up within the bill of quants for speed when navigating through multiple rate build ups

Add new zones to lump sum contracts?

Onsite Assessments

We have a refurbishment project where a basement has been added to the scope - it is a lump sum contract and the system doesn't permit the new zone on a lump sum.

Be able to edit the original tender sum or build up, even when the tender has been accepted and it is on project hub.

IMO it would be useful sometimes to be able to edit the original tender sum or build up, even when the tender has been accepted and it is on project hub. Reason for that, is that on our last 3 jobs, the Contract Sum hasn’t been quite agreed with our clients 100% before we needed to start ordering materials for lead in times on the materials. Our clients sometimes only agree the contract sum after we have physically started on site, we work to letters of intent. Therefore we have had to have a little guesswork to get to a CSA figure to tender and accept onto Chalkstring, just so we are using the software from day 1 on site. Another way of doing this, could be to maybe allow ordering of materials outside of the project hub if needed? In the offsite section of Chalkstring?

Can you add the "zone values" tab to draft material and labour bills on the assessment overviews

These extra tabs are already found on the bill exported from the Material and Labour sections, and would be useful for estimating and post tender review purposes too

Warning to set the scale in takeoff before doing anything

when first accessing a new drawing, can you make it so we MUST set the scale, as it causes issues elsewhere if people do stuff before we have. At present there is no warning message we ignore the initial prompt to set the scale

On hold

Additional fields on accounts batch CSV file

Please include a column displaying the different group company each item is associated with

Make invoice name uniqueness optional after a warning