Frequently Asked Questions

A short list of the things teams ask us while they get their shop running, with a link to the full guide for each one.

Last updated About 1 hour ago

Introduction

Building Swell is built to get a shop running quickly. Once your departments, routes and people are in, the floor can check in and start tracking work against real orders.

These are the questions we hear along the way. Most have a short answer and a setting behind them, and nearly all of them have a full guide linked from the answer.

They are grouped by area. Each area opens with the quick answers, and anything that needs a few steps has its own section underneath. It is worth sending to your team ahead of your first week, so they know where to look.

Before you start. Nearly everything below assumes somebody has already set your shop up: departments, shifts, routes, stages and people. If that has not happened yet, start with the Quick Start Guide. For the words Building Swell uses for things, see Key Terminology.

Signing In

If this happens	What to do
Your account is locked after failed sign-ins	An unlock email goes out automatically. Check your junk folder. If it still has not arrived, email support@buildingswell.com and we will unblock it from our end
No invite arrived, or the link expired	Creating the mailbox is not the invite. Ask an administrator to send one from Settings, then Users, then Invite in the top right. An expired link is resent with Resend next to the person's Pending status. See Managing Users
The demo site will not take your password	Demo uses the same email address but its own password. Use Forgot password on the demo sign-in page. Single sign-on does not carry across to demo

Attendance and Time

If this happens	What to do
You cannot find Attendance at all	It lives inside Build, not the main menu. Click the hard hat icon in the bottom left, then Attendance in the top right. On a phone or tablet, tap Controls and pick Attendance. If it is not there, your role needs Read access on Attendance. See Attendance
You cannot edit somebody's time	Their session is still running. Check them out from Build, then Attendance, the same way you would at the end of a shift. Once nothing is running against that day, the entry opens for editing. See Timesheets
A timer has been running since the weekend	A missed check-out leaves the session open. Check the person out from Build, then Attendance, and correct the hours afterwards. To stop it recurring, set an Auto-Stop Session Threshold under Rules Engine, Departments, Settings. See Tracking Time
You need to know whether cost codes follow the person or the ticket	The work. A cost code sits on the order, on an individual work session, on an overhead task and on a department. There is no cost code field on a person, so moving somebody between jobs never carries a code with them. See Managing Orders
You need to know what day your timesheet week starts on	Whichever day you set. It follows your pay cycle, set per department under Rules Engine, Departments, Settings, using Pay cycle duration and First payday. A weekly shop shows seven days and a fortnightly one fourteen. See Timesheets

I am in the system but I do not show up in Attendance.

Having a login is not the same as being on the People list. Attendance checks in people, and somebody can have a user account under Settings with no person record at all. Two things to check, both of which need Settings or Rules Engine access, so pass them to your administrator if you do not have it.

Are they on the People list? Go to Rules Engine, then People, and search the name. Open Filters and switch Archived on in case they were archived.
Is their login linked to that person? Go to Settings, then Users, open the three dot menu on their row and pick Edit User. The panel has a Crew Member link.

See People and Managing Users.

Everyone got clocked out at the wrong time, or nobody got clocked out.

Auto check-out is set per department, and it fires at that department's shift end. Go to Rules Engine, then Departments, pick the department, open the Settings tab and look under Automation.

Because the setting belongs to the department, one department can have it on while another has it off, and each follows its own shift end. A department whose shift end does not match when people actually leave will clock everyone out at the wrong time. See Departments.

We work four tens and an eight, or it is a holiday week.

Three different tools, depending on what changed. All three are tabs under Rules Engine, then Departments.

What changed	Tab	How to set it
A different weekly pattern, like four tens and an eight	Shifts	+ Add, set each day's start and end under Hours per day, then apply it to the crew on the People sub-tab
A holiday, or a shutdown week	Holidays	Add holiday, one entry for the whole date range. Leave Closed all day ticked to close the department, or clear it and give a start and end time for a shortened day
One person off, or working longer	Availability	Record Time off or Extra hours against the person or a named group

A person's own record wins over their department's. Changing a department's default shift recalculates Duration across that department's routes, and Building Swell asks you to confirm first. Orders already planned keep their times. See Departments and Availability.

I created overhead but it does not show in Timesheets.

Nobody has recorded time against it yet. Creating an overhead task does not put anything on a timesheet by itself. It turns into a timesheet line once somebody records time against it, either assigned from the Overhead tab in Build, or added in Timesheets with New Session and the Overhead Session type.

If the task is not in the list to pick from, check its department. Overhead tasks are created as All Departments by default, and one scoped to a single department is only visible to that department's team. See Overhead.

Work, Routes and Assignment

If this happens	What to do
You need to reorder or retire stages and steps	Go to Rules Engine, then Stages. Drag a stage by its six-dot handle to reorder it. To take a stage or a step out of use the action is Archive, on both. For more than a handful of changes, use the three dot menu to Export, edit the file and import it back. See Stages and Work Steps
You assigned one person and they ended up on three builds	That is Batch mode. Click Assign, turn Batch mode on, tick the stages you want, then Create batch. Whatever you tick gets everyone you select. For one stage only, skip the panel and use that stage's own (+) button. See Daily Team Planning
People got signed onto a job nobody picked	Check the phase template. Under Rules Engine, then Phases, a template can carry Default Assigned, the people put on that phase automatically every time it is used. Where the crew varies by day, leave it empty and assign in Build instead
A build is still showing after you finished it	An order stays visible until shipping is completed in Building Swell, which is handled in Deliveries. To take finished work off your view in the meantime, turn on Active only in Build. See Intro to Deliveries
You are wondering whether every phase needs its own due date	No. The due date on the project or the top-level order applies down automatically, so you only set the ones that differ. You set a due date rather than a start and an end date, and Building Swell schedules backwards from it. See Managing Orders

If I change a route, what happens to work already running on it?

Editing a route does not reach orders that are already running it. They carry on with the definition they were built from. To bring an order onto the new version, apply the route to that order.

Two different things share the word route. One is editing the route itself. The other is applying a route to an order, whether you are switching it to a different one or re-applying the same one. The modes below are about applying.

Mode	What it does	Work already started or finished
Merge, the default	Brings the order up to date. New items are added, and work that has not started moves to the new definition	Left exactly as performed, even if the route no longer contains it
Append	Adds only what is new in the route. Nothing else is changed, removed or re-ordered	Untouched
Replace	Makes the order match the route. Anything the route no longer has is archived off the order	Brought in line with the route

Say your order runs steps 1, 2 and 3, and steps 1 and 2 are already ticked off. The route gains a new step that belongs between 1 and 2, so the order now runs 1, 4, 2, 3. Steps 1 and 2 still read as complete. Step 4 sits in its new place with an empty checkbox waiting for somebody to do it. Nothing that was already ticked gets un-ticked.

Whichever mode you pick, work that has started or finished is never rewritten, and nothing is hard deleted. What a mode takes off the order is archived and can be brought back. Anything somebody added straight to the order, with no counterpart in the route, is left alone in every mode.

To try a change without touching live work, duplicate the route, change the copy, and switch over when you are ready. See Managing Routes and Adding a New Route.

It will not let me complete this stage.

Usually an unfinished step, or a permission you do not have. Two things to check before you call it a fault.

Every step in the stage has to be finished first. Click the checkmark icon on the right of the stage row to open its progress panel, tick each step or use the + and - buttons to finish the counts, then Complete turns the whole stage over.
Your role may not carry the permission. Removing Read access from a module hides it instead of showing an error, so a button that is simply not there is usually a permission rather than a bug. One case that comes up often: removing a QC step from a route needs Orders with Delete.

See Build and Roles.

I can find it in Planning but not in Build.

Build does not show the same list as Planning. Three controls at the top of Build narrow what you see.

The shop selector. Build shows one shop at a time, so an order belonging to another shop is not on the list.
Active only. While it is on, completed orders are hidden. A checkmark next to it means it is on.
Filters and Search. A project, person, status, phase or date range left set from earlier will still be cutting the list.

See Build and Planning.

Reporting and Forms

If this happens	What to do
You need the QC forms for a job as one document with the photos	Open the order and use the download button in the top right of Order Details, then pick the form sections you want. There is no single button that bundles every form on a job into one export. The Quality Control tab on Order Details lists every form tied to that order. See Exporting Production Reports
You need form entries in a spreadsheet	Go to Forms, then Entries, the central list of every form entry across all your orders. Narrow it with the filters first, by status, assignee or category, then export. Entries can be imported from the same place. See Forms
You want to upload a whole folder of documents	You can. In Documents, Import folder keeps the folder's structure, Import files takes several at once and Import URL pulls one in from a link. When a drawing is revised use Import version rather than uploading a second copy. See Documents Hub

Why do the hours differ between Insights, Timesheets and the order?

They are measuring different things. Three reasons account for most of it.

The MH over figure is a pace verdict, not a budget one. It compares hours spent against the hours your current progress should have used, so an item can read MH over while it still has planned hours left.
Spent hours have shift breaks taken out, so they report hours worked rather than hours on the clock.
Rounding lags by a day. When a department rounds hours to the shift, rounding runs a full day after the last session of that day ends, so the current week still shows the times people actually clocked.

See Progress & Man Hours and Timesheets.

Permissions

The error says I cannot do it. Which permission do I need?

Removing Read access from a module hides that part of the product rather than showing an error. If a page or a button is simply not there, that is usually why.

You cannot grant yourself a permission. Find your case below, then ask your administrator to add it to your role.

What you are trying to do	Permission it needs
Remove a QC step from a route	Orders, with Delete
Upload a photo anywhere, including inside a QC form	Documents, with Create or Update
Fill in and submit an inspection form on an order	Form Entries, with Create or Update
Correct or change somebody's time entry	Time Sheets, with Update
Create, edit or reschedule an order	Orders, with Create or Update
Share a saved view with everyone in the organization	Share Saved Views with Everyone, with Create

Roles are managed under Settings, then Roles. The full list of modules and what each one covers is in Roles.

I cannot delete a role.

A role that still has people on it cannot be deleted. Building Swell refuses the delete and tells you how many users are on that role. Move them to another role under Settings, then Users, and the delete goes through.

One to watch on the other side: anyone with Update access on Roles can change their own role and grant themselves permissions they do not have. Keep that one for the administrators you trust with it. See Roles.

Conclusion

Nearly everything on this page comes back to a setting: which shop the selector is on, when a department's shift ends, which permissions a role carries. Check the setting first and most of it answers itself.

If something here does not match what you are seeing on screen, email support@buildingswell.com and we will go through your setup with you.