Project settings

Project Settings lets you update the core project record, write the project scope that prints in a tender download, configure the contract basis, set the rate preferences that influence where new estimate lines source their pricing, choose the day/card rate schedules the project’s build-ups can pick from, and see which shared drive folders sync into the project. Open a project, open the navigation menu, and select Project Settings under Project navigation. Project Settings is divided into six sections, listed in a navigation rail on the left: Project details, Project scope, Contract basis, Rate preferences, Day/Card rates, and Shared drive. Each section has its own URL (for example /projects/:projectId/settings/contract-basis), so you can bookmark a section, share a link to it, or use the browser’s Back button to return to a previously visited section. Selecting a section from the rail is also a history entry.

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Saving changes

Each section saves on its own:

• Project details, Project scope, and Contract basis each have a save bar at the bottom of the section. It reads Unsaved changes while you have edits, or No unsaved changes. Click Save changes to save that section only, or Discard to revert it to its last saved state.
• Rate preferences are saved from the Edit rules sheet.
• Day/Card rates and Shared drive apply each change as soon as you confirm it.

If you navigate away — to another section, another page, or using the browser’s Back button — while a section has unsaved changes, Stralos shows a Save changes before leaving? dialog. Choose Save changes to save and continue (the navigation proceeds only if the save succeeds), Discard changes to leave without saving, or Keep editing to stay on the section. If you are part-way through editing rules in the Edit rules sheet, save or cancel them there first; the dialog offers only Discard changes and Keep editing.

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Project details

The Project details section groups its fields under six headings: Project, Working week and month, Dates and working day, Estimates, Location, and Search distance.

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Project

• Client: the company the project is being prepared for. The list shows every active company: your clients first, then other companies under Other companies with their role. Type to search; Stralos also searches companies beyond the first page as you type. If you choose a company that is not a client yet, the field says so, for example “Higgins is set up as a supplier. Saving will also mark it as a client.” Saving adds the client role and leaves the company’s other roles as they are. If what you type is close to an existing company’s name, for example “Fulton Hogan Ltd” when the company is saved as “Fulton Hogan”, the existing company is offered under Did you mean. To add a client that doesn’t exist yet, select + New client…, or type the name and select + Create new client ”…”. The New client panel asks for the Client name, Company roles, Company phone and Company email, a main contact (Contact name plus a Contact phone or Contact email) and a Location. If the name matches a company you already have, the panel offers Use with that company’s name instead. Select Create client to save the company and select it with its main contact. If the project’s client has since been retired, the field shows its name with “(retired)” until you choose another. If the client can’t be loaded at all, the field reads “Unavailable company”.
• Main contact: the person at the client the tender goes to. Their name, phone, and email print on the Tender download. Choose from the client’s contacts, or add a person with + New contact… or by typing their name and selecting + Create new contact ”…”. The New contact panel asks for a Name and a Phone or an Email, with an optional Role. Click Add contact to save the person and select them. Changing the client clears the main contact, and you must choose one of the new client’s contacts before you can save. Switching back to the saved client restores the saved contact. A project with no contact chosen yet shows TBC — to be confirmed, with the helper “Main contact is TBC — to be confirmed. Choose a contact here before downloading the tender.” You can still save other changes without one. If the saved contact has since been deleted, the field shows their name with “(removed)”. Choose another contact.
• Status: the server-managed pipeline stage, shown as a badge with any transition actions available from the current stage.
• Project name: the name shown across navigation and workspace pages.
• Quote Number: the project’s initial quote number, assigned when the project was created. Each other tender estimate and saved version has its own quote number. Read-only. A project without one shows Not assigned.
• Job Number: assigned when an estimate on the project is marked Won. Read-only. Until then the field shows No job yet. See Quote numbers and job numbers.
• Client reference: optional. The client’s own reference for this project.

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Working week and month

These fields set how many working days Stralos counts in a week and in a month when it prices weekly and monthly rates on this project, such as plant hired by the week.

• Days per week: leave blank to follow the company default. The helper text shows the company default (5 days unless your admin has changed it). Enter a value greater than 0 and no more than 7, with up to 2 decimal places.
• Days per month: leave blank to follow the company default (20 days unless your admin has changed it). Enter a value greater than 0 and no more than 31, with up to 2 decimal places.

Click a field’s Use company default button to clear the project’s value and follow the company default again. The button is unavailable while the field is blank. If either value is out of range, the save is blocked with “Enter valid working days per week and month, or leave blank to use company defaults.” Admins set the company defaults in Company defaults. A weekly or monthly rate can carry its own number of days, and you can override the conversion on an individual build-up line. Disposal and quarry material rates are not converted. Week and month activities also use these values. Inside a week activity, a line charged Per week costs its quantity once for each week, and a line charged Per day costs its quantity for each working day in those weeks. Month activities work the same way with Per month. When you open an estimate, Stralos reads the project’s current working days and re-prices the estimate if they have changed. A submitted estimate is never re-priced. Stralos fixes the conversion into a line’s price when it selects the rate. Lines that are already priced keep the conversion they were priced with. To apply a changed project value to a build-up line, choose Use project default in that line’s conversion control.

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Dates and working day

• Proposed start date, End date, and Target submission: the three date fields appear side by side in one row. Leave End date blank to clear any stored value. If you enter an end date that falls before the proposed start date, Stralos rejects the save and shows the error inline on the End date field. Target submission is the optional target tender submission date.
• Site visit and Questions close: a date and a time of day, in the project’s time zone, so 9 am on site reads as 9 am for everyone. If you pick a date without changing the time, Stralos uses 9:00 for a site visit and 17:00 for questions close.
• Decision expected and Next follow-up: dates only.

These four dates are the same ones you can set on the Key dates widget on the project Overview.

• Time zone: the time zone used for this project. The first option, Company default, follows your company’s time zone. Select any IANA time zone to override it for this project. The field’s helper text shows the active zone: the company default when no override is set, or the override and the company default it replaces. To make an overridden project follow the company again, select the Company default option.
• Hours per working day: the number of hours in a working day for this project’s estimate. The field shows the primary estimate’s current value; its helper shows the company default for comparison. The value is set on the estimate itself. Click Edit on the estimate to open the estimate’s settings sheet. If the estimate cannot be loaded, the field says so and the rest of the page still saves.

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Estimates

• Multiple estimates: a checkbox that controls whether this project can hold more than one tender estimate. It is off by default: the project has a single primary estimate, which opens when you enter the workspace. Turn it on to create, name, and switch between alternative estimates priced side by side. The checkbox is saved with the rest of the section.
• Manage estimates: a button next to Multiple estimates. It is disabled until the setting has been saved on. Click it to open the Estimates sheet over Project Settings, where you can create, rename, and manage the project’s estimates without leaving the page. See Managing estimates.

Turning Multiple estimates off hides the estimate switcher, and the primary estimate opens as normal. No estimate is deleted; if you turn the setting back on, the other estimates reappear. Projects that already held more than one tender estimate when the setting was introduced start with it on, so nothing disappears.

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Location

• Country: two-letter ISO country code (e.g. NZ).
• Office: the office this project runs out of, chosen from your company’s active locations. This is not the pricing location under Rate preferences. Once a project has an office, you can change it but not clear it. If the project has no office yet, choose one before you save other project detail changes. If your offices cannot be loaded, the field says so and the rest of the page still saves. Admins can add an office from the field with + New office…, or by typing a name and selecting + Create new office ”…”, which opens the Add your office panel. Other members get no create option.
• Prefer resources from [office]: a switch in the Resourcing rule box below Office. When on, it records that people, plant, and materials from this office are the project’s first choice. The preference is recorded for your team only; Stralos does not allocate anything from it yet.
• Location: address, city, region, and map pin.

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Search distance

Search distance sets how far from the project pricing looks for suppliers. Choose 5 km, 10 km, 20 km, 35 km, 50 km, 100 km, or 150 km, or choose Other and enter a distance from 1 to 2000 km with at most one decimal place. The distance saves with the rest of Project details. You can also set it in the Suppliers for this project step that appears straight after you create a project. When no distance has been saved, the group says “Not chosen yet. Pricing looks within 50 km, then 100, then 150.” It pre-selects a suggestion: 50 km if any supplier site is within 50 km by road, otherwise 100 km if any is within 100 km, otherwise 150 km. The suggestion is not saved until you select a distance and save. Below the picker, Stralos counts the suppliers with a site within the chosen distance and lists those sites with their road distance. The count is of suppliers, not sites. Distances are measured by road from the project’s saved address, for suppliers in every rate group. A supplier price set to All locations counts at every active site of that supplier. If no supplier is within the distance, the group names the nearest site instead.

• If the project has no address, the group asks you to add one first.
• If you change the address, distances stay measured from the saved address. Save the project and Stralos measures again from the new address.
• Supplier sites without an address can’t be measured or counted. The group says how many there are, and names them when there are six or fewer.
• If distances can’t be measured, click Try again. You can still choose and save a distance.

In automatic price selection, when no earlier step prices a line, Stralos picks the cheapest supplier site within the saved Search distance. With no distance saved, it tries 50 km, then 100 km, then 150 km. If no measured site is in range, it uses the nearest measured site, and if no site can be measured, the cheapest option. Click Save changes in the section’s save bar to commit updates to the editable fields, including Multiple estimates. Saving project details does not change the status badge. See Saving changes.

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Status actions

Project Settings offers these standalone transitions when they apply: Only the action valid for the current status is shown. A status action is separate from Save changes. If the server rejects an action, Stralos refreshes the project and shows the current status with the error. Admins also see Override status. The override opens a side panel. A reason is required and the override can target any status except Awarded. The status picker is searchable. Type to filter by the label shown, which may differ from the default if your platform has been relabelled (for example “Tendering” instead of “Estimating”). If you start typing a reason and then close the panel without saving, Stralos asks you to confirm before discarding the unsaved text. Use Mark won in the estimate workspace for the guarded award flow. The lifecycle API supports an admin override to Awarded, but the current Project Settings interface does not expose that target. See Projects for the lifecycle overview.

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Project scope

Project scope holds what the job covers, in your own words. It prints first in the tender you download from the estimate’s Tender download tab, and every estimate on the project shares it. Anyone who can edit the project’s details can edit the scope. Write the scope in Scope of works. Use Heading, Subheading, bold, italic, underline, and bulleted or numbered lists to lay it out. Select Save changes in the save bar, or Discard to go back to the last saved scope. The estimate’s Tender download tab shows the scope read-only, with an Edit in project settings link to this section. See Project scope in Tender submission.

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Create scope with AI

Click Create scope with AI to have Stralos draft a scope from the estimate’s items and the text of the project’s processed tender documents. The helper text below the button names the estimate it uses. If the project’s estimate is not available, the button is disabled and the helper text says so. While the draft is being created, the editor is read-only and the save is blocked. Click Cancel generation to stop. When the draft is ready, it replaces the contents of Scope of works. A message below the button lists the documents the draft drew on, or says the draft is based on estimate items only when no processed document text was available. Check the tender documents for anything the draft may have missed, edit the draft, then select Save changes. The draft is not saved until you do. If you have unsaved changes in the editor, Stralos first asks Replace your unsaved scope? Select Create AI draft to continue. Your saved scope stays as it is until you save, and if generation fails your edits are kept. If the estimate has no items, Stralos asks you to add estimate items first. If the draft cannot be created, the message reads “The AI couldn’t create a scope draft. Please try again.” The save is refused when:

• The project has no client, name, or location saved yet. The save bar shows “Please add the project’s client, name and location in Project details first, then save the scope.” Save those in Project details first.
• The scope is longer than 50,000 characters. The field shows “Please keep the project scope under 50,000 characters.”
• The text carries formatting Stralos cannot store. The message reads “Some of that formatting can’t be saved. Please paste it as plain text and format it again.”

Clear the scope and save to have no scope on the project. The Project scope tick on the Tender download tab is then disabled.

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Contract basis

The contract basis section tells Stralos which contract form governs the project and holds its commercial parameters.

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Contract form

Select the standard form or suite that applies to this project. The field is searchable — type a standard number (for example 3916) or a keyword (for example design) to filter the list without knowing which group the form belongs to. The available options are: Custom contract label — if you select Custom / heavily amended form, enter a short label identifying the bespoke or heavily amended form. The label is required and is limited to 120 characters.

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Overhead percentages

• On-site overhead % — the on-site overhead percentage (clause 9.3.9 under NZS 3910). Enter a value between 0 and 100.
• Off-site overhead + profit % — the off-site overhead and profit percentage (clause 9.3.10 under NZS 3910). Enter a value between 0 and 100.

Leave either field blank to clear the stored value. Both fields accept up to three decimal places.

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Special conditions note

Use this field to record amendments to the standard conditions — for example, amended daywork rates or modified notice periods. Maximum 4,000 characters.

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Contract documents

Select the uploaded, processed documents that form the executed contract set for this project. Upload the executed contract set — conditions of contract, Special Conditions, and specification — in the Documents area first. Uploaded project documents appear in the list with their current processing status, so check that the documents you choose are processed. If you select a Custom contract form, at least one processed contract document must be attached before assessment can run.

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Saving contract basis

Click Save changes in the section’s save bar to commit the contract basis. The button is disabled until the section has unsaved changes. Contract form is required. While it is empty, the field shows a “Select the contract form.” error and Save changes stays disabled. On a new project, this error does not appear until you have started editing the Contract basis section — opening the page on a fresh project does not show it straight away. If the contract basis fails to load, an error message is shown with a Retry button. The form is not editable until the existing basis has been successfully loaded, to prevent accidentally overwriting saved data.

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Rate preferences

Rate preferences place the estimate’s pricing location and rate rules in one ordered list. The first entry that covers a line and has an available option prices that line. Earlier broad rules take priority over later, more specific ones. Each estimate keeps its own rate preference list. When a project has more than one estimate, an Estimate picker appears at the top of the section; select an estimate to view and edit its list. Projects with only one estimate show no picker. Select Edit rules to open a side sheet where you can add, edit, reorder, and delete entries. The sheet shows the full ordered list — the pricing location and every rule — and previews how many estimate lines each draft change would re-price before you save. When you save, every affected line is shown with its cost change; untick a line to keep its current price or leave a pinned line as pinned.

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Rule types

Each rule specifies what it applies to (a Resource group, Category, or Resource) and what the estimate should prefer:

• Source: a company and location whose price takes priority. Use the grouped location picker to choose an option: your company’s locations appear first, then each supplier’s, each group headed by All locations. Picking a supplier’s All locations covers every price from that supplier, including prices at its individual sites such as quarries. If that supplier has no matching price, Stralos tries the next preference. A source naming a specific site also matches that supplier’s All locations price, and the cheaper of the two wins. A rule sentence reads, for example, “For resource group Plant, prefer Frews — All locations.”
• Cheapest within a radius — the cheapest eligible option within a given distance (in kilometres) of the project’s site.

When a saved source points to a company or location that has since been retired, the rule row marks it as unavailable and prompts you to choose a replacement before saving.

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Pricing location

The pricing location entry in the rule list controls which internal location’s rates are used for distance-based pricing. It can be set automatically from the project’s site, chosen manually using the same grouped location picker, or set to none. For an individual estimate line, see Pricing review.

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Day/Card rates

The Day/Card rates section lists the day-rate schedules this project’s estimates pick from, each fixed at one revision. Stralos fills it automatically with your company’s schedules and the client’s schedules. You can add or remove whole schedules, and move the project to a newer revision when one is issued. The section has no Save button: each change applies as soon as you confirm it. In the add list, the project’s client’s schedules come first, then other clients’ schedules, then your company’s. When you move to a newer revision, ticking an estimate that has no lines from the schedule moves only the project’s revision, so future picks use the new rates. For the full workflow — adding, removing, and updating schedules, and what happens when the client changes — see Day rates in a project.

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Shared drive

The Shared drive section lists the drive folders mapped to this project. Files in a mapped folder sync into the project’s Documents page. The section is hidden when shared drive sync isn’t switched on in Stralos yet. Each mapping shows the drive, the folder (or Whole drive), its status, and when it last synced. Any project member can click Sync now on an active mapping to request an immediate sync.

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Map a folder (admins only)

1. In Shared drive, click Map a folder. The button appears once your company has an active shared drive.
2. Choose the drive, then choose Whole drive or browse to a specific folder. The project is fixed to this one.
3. Click Add mapping.

If no shared drive is connected yet, admins see a link to Settings → Shared drives, where you can connect one. See Shared drives.

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Pause, resume, or remove a mapping (admins only)

• Pause stops syncing an active mapping.
• Resume restarts a paused mapping.
• Remove deletes the mapping straight away, without a confirmation step.

Pausing or removing a mapping does not delete documents already stored in Stralos. A confirmation such as Mapping paused appears at the top of the page when an action completes.