By the end of this guide you will be looking at one of your own builds the way your client will see it. You are not building your full setup in this session. You are building one working slice of it, which will become the foundation of your account.
What to have ready
Pick one of your recent builds to use as the example and have the plan or the selections schedule for it somewhere you can see. Have a handful of product photos ready, either saved from a supplier website or pulled from a price list. And know your two most familiar product types, because those are the ones you will set up first.
If you have an existing price list or product library sitting in a spreadsheet, send it to us and we will load it into your account for you.
Five minutes: understand what you are building
Read Areas, Selections and Items if you have not already. The three sentences that matter are these. Areas are the places in the build. Selections are the decisions your client makes. Items are the products they choose from. And then the two settings that control the shape of it all: area type decides where a decision appears, and selection type decides which products are offered.
That is genuinely all the theory you need for this session. Everything else can wait until you have seen it working.
Five minutes: set up your Area Types and Areas
Go to Settings, then the Areas tab.
Create your area types first, starting with Bedroom, Bathroom, Kitchen, Living and Exterior. You can refine this later once you know how you want to work.
Then create areas under them, matching the build you picked. For a typical four bedroom home that is Bed 1, Bed 2, Bed 3, Bed 4, Main Bathroom, Ensuite, Kitchen, Living and Facade.
Name them the way your clients speak rather than the way your plans are labelled, because these names appear in the portal navigation and on the signoff report you hand over at completion. Areas are shared across your whole account, so renaming one changes it everywhere it is used, including on other jobs and in your clients' portals. If you want a different name on a particular job, create a new area instead of renaming an existing one.
Full detail in Creating your Area Types and Areas.
Three minutes: set up your Selection Types
Still in Settings, on the Selection Types tab.
For this session you only need two, so pick the two product types you know best. A good example is Tapware and Flooring. Create just those two and leave the rest for now, you can add more later.
Full detail in Creating your Selection Types.
Fifteen minutes: add twenty items
Go to Items and add roughly twenty products, about ten of each of the two kinds you picked.
Use real products you actually offer, and focus on some of the important basic fields for now:
Name, written the way a homeowner would recognise it.
At least one good image, the most important part of an item.
Description, a sentence or two on what it is and why someone would pick it.
Colour
Finish
The procurement side of an item, which is the supplier, your internal cost and the supplier-facing PO description, can wait. You will need to come back and complete it before you raise your first purchase order. What makes a good item record covers the full picture when you are ready to build the catalogue out properly.
Full detail in Adding your first items.
Two minutes: create the job
Go to Jobs and click New Job. Name it after the build you picked, enter the site address, and enter the start and completion dates. Leave the client blank for now, you will add yourself shortly.
Full detail in Creating a job.
Eight minutes: set up the selections
Open the job and go to the Selection Settings tab. There are three sections inside it and you work through them in order.
Areas. Add the areas that exist in this build, picking from the library you created earlier, then drag them into the order someone would walk through the house.
Selection Groups. Find the area type Bathroom in the sidebar and click Add. Inside the group, add two or three selections: If you created Flooring & Tiling as Selection types earlier then try, Floor Tile with the selection type Flooring, and Basin Tapware with the selection type Tapware.
That group is attached to the area type rather than to a room, so those decisions have appeared in both your Main Bathroom and your Ensuite at once. Every bathroom you add to any job from now on picks them up automatically.
Item Groups. Create one item group for Tapware and add your taps to it, and one for Tiling and add your tiles. For each product, set an upgrade price, leaving your standard inclusion at zero. Only products above zero show a price badge to the client.
Do not skip this section. A selection with no matching item group gives your client a product screen that will not load.
Full detail in Setting up selections on a job and Attaching item groups so products appear.
Two minutes: add yourself as the client
Back on the job Summary tab, in the Details card, click Add Client. Add yourself using a personal email address rather than your work one, then use the dropdown and choose Send Login Setup. Check your inbox, set a password, and log in.
Note that this email comes from a HomePulse address rather than yours.
Check the client view
You are now looking at your own build the way your client will see it.
Click into an area. Open a decision. Check the products show their photos and prices. Open one and read the description and specifications the way your client will. Choose it and watch the upgrade total move. Mark the group complete and see it carry you to the next decision.
If something does not look right, it is almost always one of two things. A product screen that will not load means the item group is either missing or sitting on a different selection type than the selection is using. Products showing with no photos means the images have not been added to the items.
What to do next
Decide how you want to structure your areas. You have used a room by room structure above, which is not the only option and not always the right one. Areas are shared records and restructuring later is a rebuild rather than a rename, so decide before you build templates. Three ways to define your areas, and what each one costs you works through the options.
Turn what you just built into a template. Building a Selection Template shows you how.
Get your real catalogue in. Everything else in the system draws on it. Talk to us about loading in your price list.
Related articles
Areas, Selections and Items: the three things that make HomePulse work
Area Types and Selection Types: the two axes that control everything
What your client sees when they log in
Three ways to define your areas, and what each one costs you
Why templates are the whole point