The Complete Place & Finish Setup & Usage Guide.

Sign In & Set Your Password

Open the link in your welcome email (your company.planningops.com workspace) and click Set your password & sign in to choose your own password — that’s the one you’ll use going forward.

You’ll land on the Schedule view, empty and ready. Your name and role show top‑right, and your company name is already in place from signup.

Find Your Way Around

Before you build anything, get oriented. Place & Finish has three tabs:

• Schedule — your day-to-day board. Projects are rows, days are columns; pours show as colored pills.
• Lookahead — a rolling 90-day planning grid for upcoming and target work (Part 3).
• Analytics — date-range rollups of pours, yards, and cancellations (Part 3). Read-only for everyone; only the PDF export is Admin/Editor.

What you see depends on your role: Admins and Editors can edit and export; Viewers get all three tabs read-only; Collaborators work only the Lookahead projects assigned to them.

Also up top: the hub tabs (Place & Finish · Manpower · Project Schedule · Daily Reports) and, on the right, a ? Help button (opens the in‑hub Field Manual), a Day / Night sun‑moon toggle (Night/dark is the default), a green Auto‑Saved pill (everything saves automatically and syncs live — no Save button, no menu), a live “N ONLINE” presence pill (hover for who’s here), the admin‑only gear that opens the Control Panel, and your name / role badge (tap it for My Account). Editing controls only appear if your role can edit.

Brand Your Hub

Make it yours. Open the gear ⚙ → Control Panel → Branding:

• Company logo — tap Upload (PNG, JPG or SVG, up to 5 MB — auto-resized for crisp headers and export bands); Remove drops back to the stock Planning Ops mark. Your logo brands every screen, your login splash, your tenant’s branded portal at your-company.planningops.com, and every PDF export and schedule email your crews and clients receive — so everything that leaves the hub looks like your company.
• Accent color — run the app in your company color instead of orange (Reset to Default restores orange).
• Under Locked in at signup: your company name, office name and workspace code show read‑only. The company name and office name head every export; the workspace code is a short identifier for the workspace, not a filename prefix— exports are named with your full company name and city. Email support@planningops.com to change any of them.

Turn On the Features You Use

The hub flexes to how your shop runs. Switch these on or off per workspace — when one’s off, every trace of it (toolbar button, pour-editor fields, exports) disappears, so the board stays clean.

• Truck Drivers On by default
  Track delivery & pickup drivers on the schedule. Adds a Truck Drivers roster, per-day driver assignments with pickup/dropoff direction and notes, and steel logistics pills beneath each cell’s pours.
• Screeds & Operators On by default
  For shops that own their screeds. Adds Screed (number + model) and Operator rosters, and turns the pour’s Screed # / Operator fields into quick dropdowns instead of free text.
• Pumps & Operators On by default
  For shops that track concrete pump trucks. Adds Pump (unit #, boom size, make/model), Pump Operator, and Pump Subcontractor rosters, and expands the pour’s Concrete Pump checkbox into pump size + operator/subcontractor detail. Turn it off and the Concrete Pump box stays a simple yes/no.

Set Up Your Offices

Offices are your regions or branches (Atlanta, Orlando, and so on). Every project belongs to one, and the office drives the color and grouping on the board and in exports.

• In the Manage cluster on the section header, tap Offices, then Add Office.
• As you type the office name, a 3-letter code is suggested automatically (ATLANTA → ATL); override it anytime.
• A color is auto-assigned; pick your own from the swatches if you’d rather (you’ll get a heads-up if two offices would clash).
• Repeat for each region you run. Each office shows a live project count; to rename or recolor it later click Edit (the 3-letter code is fixed once the office exists), or delete it from the same panel.

Build Your Rosters

Enter your people and equipment once, then pick them from dropdowns when you schedule. Each roster has its own button in the Manage cluster (the equipment ones appear only if you turned that feature on in step 4).

• Add each in-house crew and subcontractor. Set the type — P&F (in-house) or P&F Sub.
• Each team needs a name, a contact email, and a phone — these are where cancellation alerts are sent (by email today). P&F teams use a lead’s details; P&F Subs use the subcontractor company’s.

• Add each driver (name, phone, email). You’ll tag them on a day as a dropoff or pickup.

• Add your screeds (number + model), operators, and any screed subcontractors you hire out to. These become the dropdowns on a pour.

• Add your pumps (unit #, boom size, make/model), pump operators, and any pump subcontractors you hire out to.

Add Your Projects

Each project is a row on your schedule. Open Manage → Projects and tap New Project for every active job.

A job you create here is on the Schedule right away. A job added from Control Panel or Manpower instead arrives PENDING — open the Projects menu and tap “Accept into P&F” to put it on the pour board. Click Edit on any project to open its editor (job #, address, contacts, mix designs, bid rate).

• Pick the office, then enter the job #, project name, and site address — just the street and ZIP or postcode; City and State (or province) fill in automatically from it.
• Save the project, then click Edit on its row to add contacts — ready-made role slots (Project Manager, Superintendent, Operations Manager, Ready-Mix Supplier, Concrete Pump) plus your own custom rows (+ Add Custom Contact). Each takes a name, email, and phone; contacts are emailed on confirm and cancel. To also text a contact, tick the SMS consent box on their mobile number — a cancellation within 12 hours then sends them a text too. A reminder banner shows at the top of the dialog until at least one contact has a name and email.

Need to retire a job? Open its Edit panel and Archive it — it drops to a collapsed section, out of the working view but retained (if upcoming pours are still scheduled, the hub warns you first). Admins can then Delete an archived job — it lands in Recently Deleted (restorable any time) and asks you to type the project name to confirm.

Schedule a Pour

Clicking a cell opens the pour editor. Fill in as much or as little as you need:

• Pour type — tap a colored tile (SOG, FDN, Panels…) or type your own label.
• Cubic yards — the volume you’ve committed (rolls into your totals and analytics). On a Canadian or UK project the field reads Cubic metres and stores m³; the unit follows the project’s country, not your workspace’s.
• Start time — flexible input; type “14:30”, “2:30p”, or just “8” and it normalizes.
• P&F Crew — pick Our crew or Subcontractor, then choose from that roster.
• Concrete Pump — check it; if the Pumps feature is on, it expands to pick Our pump (unit + boom + operator) or a subcontractor.
• Laser Screed — on flatwork pours, check it to pick Our screed (screed # + operator, from your roster when the Screeds feature is on — plain text fields if it’s off) or a subcontractor. On paving pours a 3D Paving toggle appears too. (Laser Screed is hidden on non-flatwork pours like dock pits, sidewalks, curbs, and foundations.)
• Location — where on site (e.g. Dock 4, North bay, Building A); shows on the pour’s hover card.
• Notes — anything the crew needs to know.
• Status — Pending by default → Confirmed (turns green) as it locks in → Canceled (red, kicks off the notify flow in section 12). Marking a pour Confirmed opens a quick “Confirm This Pour?” dialog and emails the team — project contacts, your crew, and any pump/screed people on the pour — the full pour details the moment you confirm (uncheck Email the team to confirm quietly).

Two fast ways to place a pour: click a cell and fill the editor, or drag a pour-type tile from the palette strip straight onto an empty cell for a one-gesture assign (works with touch on a tablet). When creating a new pour, check Multi-day pour (repeat across a range), set a Through date (leave Weekdays only on to skip weekends), and it places the pour on each day (Schedule N Pours). Already placed? Drag the pill to another day — no re-entry; and if that pour is already Confirmed, moving it auto-emails the team a “rescheduled — moved from [old] to [new]” notice (same one-click opt-out). Multiple pours can stack on the same day.

Add Truck Logistics if enabled

Each day cell has a Logistics sub-lane under the pours. Add a delivery or pickup independently of any pour:

• Pick a driver from your roster (their phone shows on the pill). Stack multiple drivers on one day.
• Set the direction — ↓ Dropoff (arriving) or ↑ Pickup (leaving) by tapping the chip — and edit its note (gate code, dispatch #, material) anytime.
• It renders as a steel logistics pill beneath that day’s pours, and rides along in your PDF exports.

Read the Board at a Glance

The board surfaces the day’s reality without you digging:

• This Week’s Load strip — Today / Tomorrow / This Week / Next Week pour counts and committed yards per window, plus Active Jobs. Cards group by office; numbers exclude canceled pours and update live. Click an office label to filter the board to it.
• Hover any pour for a full detail card — crew (P&F vs P&F SUB), start time, yards, pump, screed/operator, location, status, and notes — without opening the editor.
• Pill badges tell each pour’s state at a glance — a green CONFIRMED or red CANCELED badge, a yellow 3D chip, a note icon, and a red ⚠ if a resource clashes.
• Weather chips — high/low, icon, rain %, and total precip on every cell of any project with a ZIP or postcode; hot (≥95°F / 35°C), cold (≤32°F / 0°C), or heavy-rain (≥50%) days tint rose or blue with a bold red ! — the thresholds follow the project’s units.
• Holidays — US federal holidays are auto-marked: the day’s column gets a rose/gold tint and a ★, so you won’t schedule on a day the plant’s closed. No setup.
• Month View — click the Today badge in the top bar for a full-month calendar; tap any day to Confirm, Cancel, or Edit its pours, drag a pour to another date, and see holidays called out.
• Presenter focus — click any date’s column header to spotlight that whole day in fuchsia, handy when walking a room through a specific day; click again to clear.
• Search — filter projects by job name, job #, pour label, or note text.
• Presence — a pulsing “N ONLINE” badge shows how many teammates are in the workspace right now (hover for their names), so two people don’t collide on the same edit.

Catch Double-Bookings

The instant the same resource is booked on two jobs the same day, the hub flags it — crews, and (if those features are on) screed numbers, operators, pumps, and pump operators too.

• A red ⚠ appears on the clashing pour; click it for a popover that names every other job the resource is on that day, each a button that jumps straight there.
• A Double-Bookings bar above the board shows the running count and expands to the full list (collapse or dismiss it until the count changes).
• You’re warned right in the editor the moment you assign a resource that’s already booked.
• Subcontractors are the exception — a screed or pump sub on two jobs shows a soft FYI, not a hard ⚠, since a sub can run more than one crew. Canceled pours never raise a clash.
• Every clash is listed in your PDF exports, too.

Cancel a Pour & Notify Everyone

Rain-out or a customer push? Set the pour’s status to Canceled and pick a reason — Weather, Customer Delay, Material Issue, Crew Unavailable, Equipment Issue, or Other. Pick Weather and a second chooser appears for the exact trigger — Rain, Cold, Heat, Snow / Ice, Wind, or Other weather — so your reasons stay specific (and feed the weather analytics later). The hub then opens a “Notify on cancellation” dialog and runs the whole phone tree for you.

The Recipients list is assembled automatically and shown in full before you send, so you can see exactly who’s getting it:

• Every project contact you’ve added (PM, super, GC…).
• The assigned crew — both the on-site lead and the company/dispatch office email, pulled straight from your P&F Crews roster (so you never have to re-add crew emails to each project).
• The assigned screed operator or subcontractor, and the pump operator or subcontractor, whenever those are on the pour.
• Duplicates are merged, so nobody gets two copies, and any contact you’ve set to “no notify” is left off. The notice carries the project address so everyone knows which site. (No contacts on the project yet? The dialog tells you, and you can still Skip.)

The notice goes out by email to everyone on the list, and after sending you get a quick tally of how many emails and texts went out. For a cancellation within 12 hours, contacts with a mobile number and SMS consent also receive a text (the system checks your opt-out list first) — the email goes either way.

• Set a “Rescheduled to” date and time, or leave it blank and the notice goes out marked “Pending — supplier confirmation needed.” (It even shows the original pour time as a reference so you don’t fat-finger the new one.)
• Leave “Also create a new pour entry on the reschedule date” checked (on by default) and the hub clones the canceled pour onto the new day — same label, yards, and crew, status reset to Pending — so you don’t re-enter it. Cloned to the wrong day? A one-click Undo on the confirmation toast pulls just that new entry back.
• Add an optional Note and it rides along in the email body.

• Click Send & Reschedule (or Send Notification if you left the date blank) and the notice goes out right away.
• The email goes High Importance (the red ! in Outlook, a ❗ in the subject line for every other client) so it doesn’t get buried.
• Don’t want to notify anyone? Skip leaves the pour canceled and sends nothing — the notice is always optional.
• After sending, you get a “Cancellation Sent” confirmation. Need to send again once a reschedule date firms up? Re-open the canceled pour and run the cancel-notice flow again.

Plan Ahead with the Lookahead

The Lookahead is a rolling 90-day grid for the big picture. Projects are grouped by city into Current (active jobs) and Target (work you’re chasing, with a 🎯 ETA chip), so your whole pipeline lives in one view. (It’s a desktop/tablet view — best on a bigger screen.)

• Drag pour-type tiles onto future (project × date) cells to rough in upcoming work; drag a placed pill to a new cell to move it, or hit its × to remove it.
• + Add Target Project spins up a speculative Target (no job # yet) inline — real numbered projects are created in Control Panel → Projects. Click a Target job’s name (or its ETA chip) to rename it, set its estimated start date, or delete it — Current project rows come from the registry and aren’t edited here. An All Offices filter narrows the grid to one office, and Today snaps back to the current date.
• Approve → Schedule: once a sketched pill lines up with a real Schedule project, Admins/Editors hover it and click the green ✓ to push it onto the Schedule. Set Cubic Yards on the pill first and they carry over. The accepted pill then shows as a dashed, read-only “on the Schedule” ghost here — there’s no un-approve on the Lookahead; delete or edit it on the Schedule page.
• Flip On Schedule shown to overlay everything already locked on the Schedule — approved pills plus dashed “ghost” chips for pours added directly on the Schedule. Ghosts are read-only here — edit them on the Schedule tab.
• When a target job becomes real, click the Target’s name (or its ETA chip) and hit + Promote to Project (Admin/Editor; the job # is optional) — it spins up a matching Schedule project in that office, and the Target’s pills flip to Current.
• Export the whole 90-day plan from Export ▾ — a branded PDF (the projection calendar plus a page listing every projected and target pour) or the Master Pour Schedule (Excel · 90 days). Target rows carry their 🎯 ETA into both.

Measure with Analytics

Snap to This Week, This Month, Last 30 / 90 Days, Year to Date, or a Custom range, then filter down to any set of regions and split by crew type — All, P&F, or P&F SUB. (Analytics is read-only for every role; only exporting the PDF is Admin/Editor.)

• Five headline tiles — Total Pours, Total Yards, Confirmed % , Canceled % (each with its pour count), and Active Crews.
• Breakdowns by Project, Pour Type, Crew (with days-worked and cancel %), and Region — plus the reasons pours fell through.
• Screed & Pump utilization bands (when you track them) — each unit, operator, and subcontractor with its pours, yards, days worked, and cancel rate.
• Equipment Usage (pump / laser screed / 3D paving share) and a Weather Impact card — cancel rates by rain level, hot/cold-day counts, and the average conditions on every weather-canceled pour.
• Export to a branded multi-page PDF — complete with pie charts for cancellation reasons and weather. (Deleting a project lets you keep its completed pours in analytics or drop them, so the numbers reflect exactly the work you want measured.)

Share & Export

Get the schedule out the door, branded with your logo:

• Email Schedule To Team… (Admins/Editors, under Export ▾) — opens a composer pre-filled with your teammates who have Place & Finish access, an editable Subject and Message, and removable recipient pills (drop someone for just this send without touching the directory). Send to N emails everyone the branded PDF straight from the server — one click, no mail app.
• Download PDF from Export ▾ — a branded schedule PDF complete with stat tiles, region rollups, the double-bookings list, and your truck-logistics band. The Lookahead and Analytics views each carry their own Export button right in that view.

Invite Your Team & Set Roles

User management lives in Control Panel → Users & Roles and is Admin only — open the gear, then Invite User to add someone, set their role, or send a password reset. (Editors, Collaborators, and Viewers don’t get the Control Panel or the Users screen at all.) Every new user is automatically emailed a secure link to set their own password — you never see or set it for them. Your plan’s base price includes a set of working seats (Admin, Editor, and Collaborator); your first few are already covered, and adding another working user is self-serve — it bills a prorated per-seat add-on automatically, and removing one frees the seat. Viewers are always free and unlimited, so read-only access is never blocked.

• Admin — full control: the entire schedule, every feature, branding, billing, deleting projects, and managing every user.
• Editor — runs the day-to-day: edits the Schedule, Lookahead, projects, and crews. Can’t manage users, touch billing, or permanently delete projects.
• Collaborator — a project-scoped role for field leads; sketches upcoming pours on the Lookahead for the projects you assign them, nothing else (detailed further down).
• Viewer — read-only; sees the Schedule, Lookahead, and Analytics, but can’t edit or export.

User management is admin-only:

• Admin — adds and manages every role (Admins, Editors, Collaborators, Viewers), changes roles, sends password resets, removes users, and changes your working-seat count.
• Editor, Collaborator & Viewer — no access to the Control Panel or the Users screen at all.

This is enforced on the server, not just hidden in the UI — a non-admin can’t reach user management or change seats, even by going around the buttons.

Your team size and your bill stay in sync (paid changes are Admin-only):

• Invite User (top of the Users & Roles panel) — create a working user (Admin, Editor, or Collaborator). If that takes you past the working seats your plan already includes, it bills a prorated per-seat add-on automatically and the confirmation shows the new total. Adding a Viewer is always free.
• Lower paid seats from Control Panel → Billing → Manage Subscription (workspace owner), or any admin can just remove a paid user and their seat frees automatically. Reductions take effect at your next billing cycle (no surprise mid-cycle credit), and you can’t go below the working seats your base plan includes — the Planning Ops plan includes 3. Viewers never count against this floor.

Either way, the admin who made the change gets a confirmation email with the updated recurring amount.

The Collaborator role is built for a field lead or partner who owns the upcoming work on specific jobs and shouldn’t touch the master schedule. You give them the role once, then hand them their projects on the Lookahead — and the hub locks them to exactly those rows.

To set it up:

• Open Control Panel → Users & Roles (gear ⚙), invite the person (or edit an existing user), set Place & Finish to Collaborator, Save. That’s all this screen does for a Collaborator — there’s no office to pick.
• Open Place & Finish → Lookahead and click Assign Collaborators (Admin or Editor). Tap the person, check the projects they may work — grouped by office — and Save.
• Change it any time from the same button; uncheck everything to make the board read-only for them again.

What they can — and can’t — do:

• On their assigned projects’ rows they place, move and delete upcoming pours and set the Cubic Yards on a pill. Their edits sync live to you and your PMs watching the full board.
• Every other row — other projects, every Target job — is read-only to them, and they can’t add Target jobs. Until you assign a project, the whole Lookahead is read-only for them.
• They can never approve a pill onto the Schedule — the green ✓ stays with Admins and Editors — and the Schedule and Analytics tabs are read-only for them.
• All of this is enforced on the server, not just hidden in the UI — a Collaborator can’t write outside their assigned projects by any route.

Manage Billing

Opens the Billing tab — your full in-hub billing screen, no bouncing out to a portal:

• Current plan — product, working-seat count, billing cycle, status, and your next charge (or trial-end) date at a glance.
• Manage Subscription — add or remove working seats; it shows a running New monthly total with the exact proration (added immediately and prorated this cycle, or removed at the end of it) before you confirm. The $149/mo base covers your first 3 working seats, each additional one is a flat $20/seat add-on, and read-only Viewers are always free and unlimited.
• Billing cycle — shown here read-only. Annual (one month free) is chosen at checkout; email support@planningops.com to switch cycle.
• Update card (inline, secure — it never leaves Stripe), View invoices with PDF downloads, and Cancel — cancellation runs to the end of your paid period, asks an optional reason, and keeps your data restorable for 30 days. Changed your mind? Resume Subscription un-cancels with one click.

Your card isn’t charged until the 14-day trial ends — cancel anytime before then and you won’t be billed.

Day-to-Day Power Tools

A few things that make the everyday smoother:

• Day / Night mode — the hub opens in the Night (dark) theme by default; tap the sun-moon toggle for the print-friendly Day (light) theme, which then persists in that browser. Higher contrast is always on in both — there’s no separate setting.
• Help — the ? button opens the in-hub Field Manual, a dockable picture manual you can keep open while you work. Tap Ask Support inside it to email support@planningops.com.
• Every edit auto-saves to the cloud and syncs live to anyone else in the workspace — no save button to remember; the green Auto-Saved pill is your confirmation.