A design firm loses the job when the proposal, the drawings, and the invoice are different tools

In plain terms: a prospect becomes a contact, a contact becomes a proposal, a proposal becomes a contract, and the contract opens a project that already contains the brief. Internal staff, external consultants, and the client each get a different surface of that same project.

Won in the pipeline, blank in the folder

The failure mode is retyping. CRM says the job is won. Someone creates a folder and pastes the brief, the fee, and the stages from memory. The fee in the folder is already a different number from the proposal the client signed. Every later argument starts there.

The chain is one record. Opening the project copies the contract, the stages, and the client. It does not ask a project manager to rebuild them.

Three surfaces, not one login

• Firm dashboard for the owner and the project manager: every job, the fees, the margin, who is late.
• Professional workspace for staff and for invited outsiders (a quantity surveyor, an acoustic consultant, a contractor on site). They see the projects they are on, not the firm’s other clients.
• Client portal, opened by the project manager when the project is ready to be seen, not on the day the lead was created.

Roles are data. The firm adds “heritage specialist” in the screen and grants that role a set of permissions. It is not a software release. Two roles stay fixed because they are the product: the firm owner, and the client. Everything else the firm can reshape.

Permissions are per project. A contractor on the construction stage does not inherit the design-stage fee conversation.

What the client is allowed to see

Deliverables, construction photos, checklist percent, visit reports, approvals, and a cost summary with the margin removed. Not internal cost rates. Not other projects. Not the argument between the project manager and the consultant.

Client messages go to the project manager. The project manager forwards what a consultant needs to see. A client dropped into the professional group is how a casual remark becomes a variation the firm has accidentally agreed.

Several people on the client side each get a login: the couple, or the client and their lawyer. “The client” as one shared password means you cannot tell who approved the drawing. A returning client sees all of their projects on one account. They do not get a new identity per job.

The portal is used on a phone. Formal review still happens on a desk. Both have to work, and the phone has to be the one you design first, because that is where the client will actually open the photo.

Change orders and the invoice

A change on site that lives in a voice note will not match the invoice. A change order is a short record: what changed, what it costs, and the client’s approval. Until that approval is on the project, it is not on the invoice. The invoice itself is raised in the same system, from the contract plus the approved changes. Exporting a spreadsheet into a second accounting tool is how the fee drifts again.

Signing can stay physical. Download the PDF, sign it, scan it back, file it on the project. A missing e-sign vendor is not a reason to leave the signed copy in someone’s camera roll.

Handover is not the end of the portal

Defects liability is when the client actually needs the system. Switching the portal off at practical completion pushes every snag back to a chat thread the next project manager cannot search. The client logs the defect. The person assigned resolves it and closes it. The history stays.

Stages are not a religion. The project manager can add, rename, reorder, and hide stages on that job. A house renovation and a fit-out do not share a template unless the firm wants them to.

Language and the side channel

If the client’s language is Kiswahili, an English-only portal is a portal they will not use. Labels and the emails that call them back have to exist in the language they read. A messaging app can be a link out to a person. It cannot be a second conversation the project record never sees, or the approval you need next month is gone.