The Professional’s Guide to Modern GBQ

Where: Create account → Estimator, architect, engineer or project manager

When you register as a professional, Modern GBQ creates your account and a consultant workspace of your own — a Consultant organisation named after you, on the free Consultant plan, with you as its owner. Nothing is verified and nothing is charged. The workspace is where your client projects live: when you accept an invitation, the project is added to you through this workspace, so you never become a member of the client’s organisation, and the client never sees inside yours. It can also run projects of its own (section 6), and its plan decides two things: whether you can upload documents to a client’s project (section 4) and how many professional reports you can produce in the Grace Quote app (section 7).

If you registered before the workspace existed, one was created for you the next time the platform started. If you were added to a client’s organisation by staff invitation instead, you belong to that organisation and have no workspace of your own until you create one on the Organisations page (type Consultant).

Cost to work on a client’s project

Free — the project’s limits belong to its owner

What you see

the projects you were invited to, and your workspace’s own

What you can change

decided by the role your client gives you

Uploads to a client’s project

Consultant Gold and Platinum (section 4)

Grace Quote professional reports

2 on Free, 10 a month on Gold, unlimited on Platinum (section 7)

Where (for your client): the project’s page → Invite a professional by email

Your client — an owner or administrator of the organisation that owns the project — enters your email address and picks your role on the project’s page. You receive a branded email with a link. If you already have an account, open the link, sign in with the invited address, and press Accept: the project opens and appears under Projects. If you do not, the link takes you to create a free professional account with that address; after you confirm your email and sign in, the same page lets you accept. The invitation is valid for 14 days; your client can resend it (a fresh link) or withdraw it, and the person who invited you is told when you accept.

A client can also add a member of their own organisation to a project from its Participants panel — that is for their staff and partners, not for you. Your access to a project lasts while your participant row is active and your workspace is active. Whatever your role, you can remove yourself from a project with Remove me on your own row in its Participants panel, and your client can change your role or remove you there at any time.

Every participant holds a role, and the role decides what the project shows you. An invitation can carry Client or adviser, Architect, Engineer, Project manager, Consultant, Estimator or Read-only adviser — never Owner, Developer or Administrator — and only a role at or below the inviter’s own. A builder who shares their own client’s project with you uses the same invitation; a Client or adviser reads the estimate and can approve it as an estimate, nothing more. The pages show only the controls your role can use, and when your role cannot do everything, the line under the project’s name says so, for example You are on this project as Engineer (view only).

Editing covers the site address, buildings, storeys and rooms, the GEM inputs, material selections and quantities, pricing, and the quote’s exclusions and terms. View-only roles read all of it and can download every document. Selecting, notifying and withdrawing the preferred builder are for the roles that approve; starting a round, inviting builders and sharing the rates are for the roles that edit.

Every quantity shows its working, and on the owner’s side of the project (see the table in section 3) every priced line names its source — a supplier’s published offer, a dated market price with its link, or an indicative rate — so you know which figures to challenge; a Consultant reads the priced lines without their sources. With an editing role you can correct the inputs, swap a material for an alternative with a reason, enter the quantities GEM does not measure (at your own rate if you have one), and re-price. Each pricing run writes a new version; nothing is edited in place, and every version is kept.

Every priced version has a printable report — open it from the quote’s review step and use Print → Save as PDF. It carries the totals, the line-by-line breakdown by stage, the exclusions, the items by others and the terms.

Uploading your own documents

Your reports, drawings and photos go into the project’s Drawings & documents panel. As an outside professional you upload there, and delete the files you uploaded, when your workspace is on the Consultant Gold or Platinum plan — as an architect, project manager, estimator, engineer or consultant (not as a read-only adviser), so an Engineer or Consultant on a paid plan is a contributor: upload and delete your own files, never change who sees them and never delete anyone else’s. On the free plan the upload button is replaced by a note: email your report to the client; they can upload it here. The people who manage the project upload, share and delete as before.

When the client sends an approved quote to builders, the responses are compared blind — figures, programme and qualifications before names — until the owner’s side records its feedback. The comparison is the owner’s decision material, so it is shown only to the roles in the table in section 3. Starting a round, inviting builders and sharing the rates are editing actions; selecting, notifying and withdrawing the preferred builder are for the roles that approve.

Where: Organisations → your consultant workspace

Your consultant workspace works like a developer’s: projects, quotes, drawings and documents, and the builder panel — within the plan’s project and Detailed-quote allowances. Add colleagues as members from its page: a member starts as a plain Member, who sees only the projects you assign them to from each project’s Participants panel; make them an Administrator to let them add and suspend members, assign projects, edit the details and run billing; make them an Owner to let them do everything you can, including changing roles. Only an owner changes roles or suspends another owner or administrator, and the last owner can never be suspended, demoted or removed. Switch between your workspace and any other organisation you belong to with Acting as in the sidebar.

The same rules apply inside your clients’ organisations: a project is assigned to their members by their owners and administrators, and an outside professional is invited by email — which is why you are never made a member there.

The consultant plans are priced like the homeowner and developer plans. Free is the workspace you start on; Gold and Platinum add uploads to your clients’ projects, more projects of your own and more professional reports. While online payment is not yet switched on, use Ask for this plan on the pricing page and the Modern GBQ team sets it up and confirms by email; a referral reward for a professional lands on your own workspace as a term of Gold.

The Grace Quote app produces dilapidation and defect-evidence reports from your phone — photos, the inspection details and a branded PDF. Sign in to the app with your Modern GBQ account; a report is charged to one of your organisations whose plan includes it, and the app says which one (Charged to …) and lets you pick. Your own workspace is preferred when you own or administer it.