Creating your Area Types and Areas

Areas are the places in your build, and they are the first thing to set up in a new account.

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Areas are the places in your build, and they are the first thing to set up in a new account.

Before you start

Decide how you want to divide up a house. There are three defensible ways to do it, and Three ways to define your areas, and what each one costs you walks through all three with a comparison table.

If you would rather get moving and refine later, the safest starting point is room by room for the areas your clients care about, usually the kitchen and the bathrooms, with broader areas covering everything else.

Where to find it

Go to Settings and open the Areas tab. Two buttons sit across the top of the screen: New Area on the left and Area Types on the right. Area types come first, because every area has to belong to one.

Step one: create your Area Types

  1. Click Area Types. A panel slides out from the side of the screen listing the types you have, each with the number of areas using it underneath.

  2. Click New Area Type. A row appears at the top of the list with an empty name box.

  3. Type the name and click the tick to save it. The × beside it cancels instead.

  4. Repeat for each type. New ones are added at the top of the list, so your newest is the one you see first rather than the one you have to scroll for.

To rename one, click the pencil on its row and the name becomes editable in place. To remove one, click the bin. A type that has areas using it cannot be deleted.

A solid starting set for a residential builder is Bedroom, Bathroom, Kitchen, Living, Laundry and Exterior. Add or remove to match how you actually build. If you consistently treat ensuites differently to main bathrooms, with a different standard specification, make Ensuite its own type. If your clients never make a separate decision about the Entry or Landing, leave them out and fold those decisions into a broader area type of Interior.

Your selections attach to the area type rather than to the individual room. Build your bathroom decisions once against the type Bathroom and they appear in every bathroom on every job automatically. Area Types and Selection Types explains the mechanic in full.

Step two: create your Areas

Close the panel and you are back on the Areas tab.

  1. Click New Area.

  2. Enter the Name.

  3. Pick the Area Type from the dropdown. This is required, so the types have to exist first.

  4. Click Submit.

Each area you create appears as a card showing its name with its area type underneath, four across and twenty to a page. They are listed alphabetically by name, and that order is fixed here. Ordering happens on a job or a template, not in this library.

To change one, click the menu on its card and choose Edit or Delete.

For a room by room structure that is Bed 1, Bed 2, Bed 3, Bed 4, Main Bathroom, Ensuite, Powder Room, Kitchen, Living, Dining, Laundry, Alfresco and Facade. For a zone structure it is a much shorter list, along the lines of Interior, Wet Areas, Kitchen and Exterior.

Name them the way your clients speak rather than the way your plans are labelled. A homeowner understands Main Bathroom immediately, and has no idea what B2.04 means. These names appear in the client portal navigation and on the signoff report you hand over at completion.

What to do next

Create your selection types, which is the other half of the setup. Creating your Selection Types.

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