Subcontractors

What it's for

Subcontractors is your book of labour and trade partners — "Labour/trade parties you dispatch work orders out to — a distinct party from materials vendors (Purchasing)." When you send a job out rather than sending a van, the party you send it to lives here.

Reach it from Jobs → Subcontractors in the sidebar, at /subcontractors.

Tabs

The list has no tabs. Opening a sub shows their record.

Panels and controls

• The list shows your subs with the detail you need to pick one.
• New subcontractor adds a party to the book.
• Opening a row goes to their record, where their details and the work they have been given live.
• No subcontractors yet is the empty state.

Subs are not vendors

The distinction matters and the screen states it plainly: a subcontractor supplies labour and receives work orders; a vendor supplies materials and receives purchase orders. The same company can be both, but they are two different relationships with two different paper trails, and mixing them makes job costing wrong. Materials vendors live under Purchasing.

Subcontractor cost assigned to a job appears on that job's costing panel, so work sent out still shows its true margin rather than looking free.

What it accepts

The list writes nothing directly — subs are created on New subcontractor and edited on their own record.

How to configure it

• Job costing settings decide how subcontractor cost lands against a job's margin.
• Compliance settings decide which documents a sub is expected to keep current, such as insurance and licences.
• The supplier portal gives a sub their own view of the work assigned to them, where your shop has it turned on.

Who can see it

This screen sits behind the Subcontractors area.

Owners and office managers can open it. Dispatchers and technicians cannot — assigning a sub to a job happens on the job itself. The gate is checked on the server, not just hidden in the sidebar, so a direct link does not get around it.

The full role matrix is on Roles & permissions.