Plans and limits

Four tiers. Every one includes the programme, the site diary, photos, snagging, documents, building control, the handover pack, the whole of CDM and site safety, and your branding. What changes is how many jobs, clients and people you can run at once, and whether the contract screens, invoicing and FlowAI come with it.

The tiers

How the counting works

Projects

Free counts every project you have ever created, including completed and archived ones. The paid tiers count only live projects, so finishing a job frees a slot.

That asymmetry is deliberate rather than an oversight. Free is a trial of the whole product on a real job, not a way to run a business one job at a time.

Team members

Everyone on your company's books except you. Admins, employees and subcontractors all take a seat — counting only subcontractors would leave an obvious loophole where a Free user invites unlimited "admins".

Clients

Counted separately from team members, so a job with a client on it does not cost you a team place.

Pending invitations

An invitation that has been issued but not accepted counts as taken. Otherwise a company could send more links than it has seats and find out at the worst moment.

What happens at a limit

The interface tells you when you are close, as a courtesy. The actual refusal happens in the database, on insert — which means it cannot be worked around, including through the API.

Nothing existing is affected. Being at your project limit stops you creating the next one; it does not touch the ones you have.

Paying monthly or yearly

Both paid tiers can be paid month by month or a year at a time. Paying yearly takes 10% off — a little over a month free. The toggle above the plan cards, on the pricing page and in Settings → Plans, switches the figures between the two.

Monthly plans renew until you stop them. Yearly plans are charged once, up front, and renew on the same date the following year.

Changing plan

Settings → Plans, pick a tier, press the button. A first payment goes through a card page hosted by Stripe — we never see or store your card number. After that, moving between tiers or between monthly and yearly is one click and does not ask for the card again.

Changes mid-term are prorated: you are credited for the part of the period you have already paid for and charged only the difference. Nobody pays twice for the same fortnight.

Only a company owner or admin can change the plan. Employees, subcontractors and clients do not see the billing controls at all.

Invoices, cards and cancelling

Manage billing on the plan screen opens your billing account: every invoice you can download for the accountant, the card on file, your billing address and VAT number, and the cancel button.

Cancelling takes effect at the end of the period you have already paid for, not immediately. Until then everything carries on as normal, and the plan screen shows the date it ends. Afterwards the account moves to Free — again, nothing is deleted.

If a payment fails

Nothing is switched off. A failed card is retried over about a fortnight, and the plan screen says clearly that the last payment did not go through with a link to update the card. You do not get locked out of a live job over an expired card. Only if the retries are exhausted does the account drop to Free.

Prices are quoted excluding VAT. The checkout page collects a billing address and has a field for your VAT number, so it appears on the invoice.

Deleting things

Deleting is separate from anything to do with plans, and it is always deliberate. Every delete asks first, says what goes with it, and cannot be undone.

Photos and documents take their files with them, not just the record of them. That is what makes a deletion request under UK GDPR something you can action yourself rather than having to ask us.

Enquiries

Tracking enquiries, booking site visits and the report on where your work comes from are Basic and above. Not because the free tier is being squeezed — the free plan is one project for the lifetime of the account, so a pipeline there would be a screen full of nothing.

Unlike most of BuildFlow, entitlement here follows the company's own plan rather than a project's, because an enquiry is not attached to a project yet. And unlike the rest, it is visible to employees as well as owners and admins — but never to subcontractors, whatever their plan, because the pipeline is the company's commercial position.

Safety is not a paid feature

The construction phase plan, risk assessments, method statements, toolbox talks, sign-offs, the incident log and the safety pack are on every plan, free included. CDM 2015 applies to every construction project regardless of size, and a builder on the free tier has exactly the same duties as one on Bespoke. Charging for the means to meet them would be indefensible.

One part is gated: the reusable company library of risk assessments needs Basic or above. That is a convenience for somebody running several jobs at once, not a duty — you can write a full assessment on any job on any plan, and nothing you have already written stops working if you downgrade.

Contracts and payments

The contract sum, scope of works and payment schedule are a Basic feature, and — like FlowAI — entitlement follows the project's company rather than the person looking. A client on a Basic builder's job sees their payment schedule; the same client on a free builder's job has no Payments tab, because there is nothing behind it.

Quoting

Pricing a job up from your costs, the quotation document, and turning an accepted quote into a contract are Pro and above — beside invoicing, because pricing work and billing for it are the same moment in a business's life.

On Basic you can still record an enquiry, book the visit and start the job by hand, then set the contract sum and scope on the Money tab. What Pro adds is the build-up: putting in what the work costs you, seeing the margin as you price, and having acceptance write the contract and the scope of works for you.

Costs and CIS

Subcontractors, CIS deductions and returns, and tracking what a job actually cost are Pro and above. A builder using subcontractors is running a contracting business, and CIS is the paperwork that comes with that.

Like enquiries and unlike most of BuildFlow, this follows the company's plan and is visible to employees but never to subcontractors — a subbie who can see what you pay other subbies, or what margin is left on the job, is a subbie you are about to lose.

Invoicing

Raising VAT invoices, credit notes and the accountant's export are Pro and above. The contract sum, scope, payment schedule, changes and choices are all on Basic — invoicing is the point at which somebody is running a business rather than a job.

FlowAI and the plan

FlowAI is a Pro and Bespoke feature, and entitlement follows the project's company rather than the person asking. That is what lets a client on a Pro builder's job use the assistant — clients have no plan of their own.

Separately from the plan, each company has a monthly FlowAI budget it cannot exceed. See the FlowAI guide for how that is measured.