This is an illustrative example, not a customer story. The business, people and numbers are invented to show how CivilPilot’s features fit a typical interior fit-out firm workflow. Every feature described exists in the product today.
The challenge
Consider an interior fit-out firm in Bengaluru doing apartments, villas and small offices. At any time it has six to eight projects on the go, each between four and twelve weeks long. Work runs through a mix of in-house carpenters and outside vendors for laminates, hardware, glass, lighting and modular kitchens.
Enquiries come from referrals and walk-ins. The designer prepares a quotation in a spreadsheet, revises it two or three times, and the final version is whichever file was sent last. Once the client agrees, the project starts from that file, and the link between what was quoted and what is being spent is lost.
Midway through most projects, the client changes something: a different laminate, an extra wardrobe, a false ceiling in one more room. The change is agreed on a call, the vendor is told, and the extra cost surfaces only at the final bill, where the client remembers the conversation differently.
- Quotation versions lost. Nobody is sure which revision the client accepted.
- Vendor orders placed by phone. Part deliveries and short supply are hard to track.
- Profit known only at the end. Site expenses and vendor bills are totalled after handover.
How they set it up
In this scenario the firm keeps one thread running from the first enquiry to the final invoice, so the quoted value, the approved changes and the actual spend sit in the same project.
Leads and versioned quotations
Every enquiry is entered as a lead in the CRM, with reminders for follow-up visits and calls. The designer prepares the quotation in CivilPilot, and each revision is saved as a new version. When the client agrees, the lead is converted into a project, so the accepted quotation and the project start together.
Purchase orders vendors can be held to
Material for each project is bought through purchase orders that are approved before they go out. When goods arrive, the supervisor records a goods receipt for a part or full delivery, and the system does not allow more to be received than was ordered. Payables aging shows what is due to each vendor and for how long.
Client approval for every change
When the client asks for a change, the team records it as a change request and shares the client approval page. The client approves it there, and the approval stays on the project. The conversation about the extra wardrobe now has a date and a record behind it.
Expenses, invoices and P&L by project
- Site expenses are entered with a receipt and a cost code, and approved before payment.
- Vendor payments go through payment requests with approval, then are marked paid.
- Client invoices are raised as GST or non-GST invoices with a PDF, and receipts are recorded against them.
- The project P&L brings spend together for each project.
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What changes
With this workflow, the firm can always find the quotation the client accepted, along with the earlier versions. The project begins from that quotation instead of from a file someone has to locate.
Changes stop being a matter of memory. Each one has a client approval on record before the work is done, which gives the final bill a firmer footing and makes the closing conversation with the client easier.
Purchase and accounts see the same picture. Purchase orders, part deliveries and payables are tracked per vendor, and expenses arrive with receipts and cost codes. Because spend builds up in each project as it happens, the owner can look at the project P&L while the job is still running, and decide where attention is needed across all eight projects.
