Start a job

Most jobs start from a quote the customer has accepted, so the job begins with the real contract value and links back to the quote. When work was agreed on the phone or on a site visit, you can start a job without a quote.

Who can do this

Owners, and Staff whose Team has Create/edit own jobs. The Jobs & field module must be on (Settings › Modules).

From an accepted quote

1. Open the quote — Go to Quotes and open a quote with the status Accepted.
2. Convert it — Press Convert to job. “Convert to a job?” says who the job is for and its contract value. Press Convert to job again to confirm.
3. Set up billing — The new job opens. A toast says the quote was converted. Add its milestones next: see Set up billing milestones.

From the jobs list

1. Open the drawer — Go to Jobs and press New job.
2. Choose how to start — Under Start from an accepted quote, press Choose a quote and pick one in Accepted quote: it fills in the contact, name and contract value, and links the quote. Quotes that already have a job aren’t offered. Or press Fill it in myself.
3. Fill in the job — Enter Contact, Job name, Site address, Currency (your business’s, to start with), Contract value, Retention %, Start date, End date and Notes. Contact and Job name are required.
4. Create it — Press Create job. A toast says “Job JOB-007 created” (with your number), and the job opens on Milestones.

The New job drawer with Start from an accepted quote at the top and the job's fields below

What the job gets

• A permanent number from the Job sequence (“JOB” by default; change it in Settings › Numbering).
• A name. From a quote, it’s the quote’s first item followed by the customer’s name. You can rename it.
• The site address, from the contact’s site address, else their billing address.
• The contract value. From a quote, it’s the quote’s total and can’t be typed over. It changes only when you apply a variation order.

Converting a quote twice

Each conversion creates a separate job for the quote’s whole amount; it isn’t split. If the quote was converted before, Spine warns you first (Convert to job anyway, or Create another job in the drawer). An Owner sets this to warn, block or off in Settings › Repeat quote conversion. A second job from the same quote ends its name with “ (2)“.

If the job won’t save

The drawer says what to fix beside the field, and nothing is saved until you do: “Choose who the job is for.”, “Give the job a name.”, “Enter a contract value of zero or more.”, “Enter a percentage from 0 to 100.” (for retention) or “End the job on or after its start date.”