Getting Started and First Setup

What Is TILE?

TILE is a practice management platform designed specifically for architecture and design practices. It helps you track every job from initial enquiry through to completion, manage fees and billing, log hours, generate quotations, and keep on top of actions and deadlines — all in one place.

Creating an Account and Signing In

To use TILE you need an account. Visit the sign-in page at app.gettile.co.uk, where you can sign in with an email address and password. Accounts are managed through Supabase authentication. Once signed in, TILE loads your organisation’s data, including all jobs, settings, and team configuration.

The Welcome Banner — Your Onboarding Checklist

When you first sign in, a “WELCOME TO TILE” banner appears on the Pipeline view. It presents four setup steps in order:

1. Set up your practice — Add company name, logo, and contact details.
2. Configure job references — Set your prefix (e.g. ABC-001) so every new job gets a consistent reference number.
3. Create your first job — Paste an enquiry email or fill the form manually.
4. Check your dashboard — See your pipeline, KPIs, and team performance.

This banner remains visible until dismissed with the × button. It reappears on each page load until you close it.

Setting Up Company Branding

Open Settings by clicking the TILE logo in the top-left corner, then select Account from the sidebar menu. Scroll to the Company Branding section.

Click Save Branding to save.

Configuring Business Details

Still within Account settings, scroll to Business Details. These fields feed the AI assistant (Grout) with context about your practice for generating social posts, quotations, and other content.

Click Save Details to save. If left blank, Grout will still generate content but it will be less tailored to your practice.

Configuring Bank Details

Scroll to Bank Details. These are used in payment request emails and invoice templates. Only the org admin (Master role) can edit these.

Click Save Bank Details to save.

Setting the File Reference Format

Scroll to File Reference Format. This controls how job reference numbers are generated. Changes apply to new jobs only.

Example: Prefix “TILE”, Separator “Hyphen”, 3-digit format, starting at 1 produces TILE-001, TILE-002, TILE-003.

Setting Deposit Percentage and Payment Terms

Scroll to Billing and Quotation Terms.

These values feed into every generated quotation and into the Billing tab deposit/balance split on each job.

Adding Team Members

At the top of Account settings, the Team Members section lists everyone in your organisation. Each member has a name, username, and role. Click + Add User to invite new team members. Click Edit to modify an existing member.

What Happens If You Skip Setup

TILE will still work but quotations will lack branding, AI content will be more generic, and reference numbers will use defaults. You can return to Settings at any time.

The Dashboard

How to Get There

Click Dashboard in the main tab bar at the top of the screen.

KPI Cards

The dashboard displays eight KPI cards:

Brief Me

Click the Brief Me button (coffee cup icon) to open the Morning Briefing panel. Contains six sections:

1. Overdue Actions — All actions past their due date across all jobs.
2. Due Today / Tomorrow — Actions due in the next 24 to 48 hours.
3. Planning Deadlines (14 Days) — Planning determination or submission deadlines within the next fourteen days.
4. Hours This Week — Hours logged this week or a note if none logged.
5. Awaiting Client Response — Jobs waiting on a client action.
6. Quiet Jobs — Jobs with no recent activity that may need chasing.

Wrap Up

The Wrap Up button (moon icon) is the end-of-day complement to Brief Me.

The Pipeline

What the Pipeline Is

The Pipeline is the main view of TILE — a kanban board showing all active jobs as cards arranged in stage columns representing your project pipeline.

Pipeline Stages

1. Enquiry — New lead, no fee quoted yet.
2. Quote Sent — Fee quotation sent, awaiting response.
3. Quote Accepted — Client has accepted the quote.
4. Survey — Carrying out or scheduling a measured survey.
5. Existing Dwgs — Drawing up existing drawings from survey data.
6. Concept Design — Developing initial design proposals.
7. Planning Sub. — Preparing or submitted a planning application.
8. Determination — Application awaiting decision.
9. Approved — Planning permission granted.
10. Const. Drawings — Producing construction drawings.
11. Bldg Control — Building control application submitted.
12. On Site — Construction has started.
13. Complete — Project finished.
14. On Hold — Job paused.

Job Cards

Each card shows: job reference, property address, client name, job type, team member badges, lead source tags, quoted fee, hours progress bar, and enquiry date.

Moving Jobs Between Stages

Drag a card from one column and drop it into another. You can also change stage from within the job tile via the Stage and SOP tab.

Creating and Setting Up a New Job

How to Open the New Job Form

Click the New Tile button (pink, top centre of the screen).

Two Ways to Create a Job

1. Paste an enquiry email — Grout AI extracts client name, address, job type, and description automatically.
2. Fill manually — Click “Fill manually instead” to switch to the manual form.

Manual Form Fields

Benchmark Hint

When you select a job type and enter a fee, a benchmark hint appears showing the industry fee range for that project type, whether your fee is in range, the data source, and typical hours. Use this to sense-check your fee.

Inside a Job Tile

Opening a Job

Click the Open button on any pipeline card, or search for a job and click the result.

Tabs

Actions Panel

A sidebar showing to-do items for this job. Each action has a checkbox, priority indicator, and remove button. Click + Add to create a manual action.

Comms Tab

What It Is For

Record every interaction with clients, councils, contractors, and other stakeholders, creating a chronological project communication record.

How to Log a Communication

Click the appropriate type button: Call, Message, Email, Letter, Meeting, Portal, Note, or Auto. A form appears for title, description, and relevant details. Save to add it to the log with a timestamp and type badge.

Auto-Logged Communications

When Grout processes an email or generates content, it creates an Auto entry tagged with a Grout badge. These entries also extract action items added to the Actions panel.

Notes Tab

How Notes Work

Click the Note button in the LOG row to add a freestanding note not tied to a specific communication event. All entries are timestamped and attributed to the user who created them.

When to Use Notes vs Comms

Use Comms types (Call, Email, Message, Meeting, Letter, Portal) for actual interactions. Use Notes for internal observations, decisions, or reminders that did not involve a communication event.

Hours Tab

What It Shows

A summary bar shows total actual hours versus estimated hours and a percentage complete. Below, hours are broken down by stage: Pre-Project, Survey, Design, Planning, Construction, Admin. Each task row shows estimated hours, actual hours, percentage, a + button to log time, and a timer button.

How to Log Time

1. Click the + button next to any task, or click Log time manually.
2. A form appears with fields for Action (pre-selected), Hours (numeric), and Note (optional).
3. Enter hours and click Log.
4. The entry appears in Recent Time Entries and the totals update immediately.

Benchmark Hours

Estimated hours are based on RIBA fee guidance and BCIS 2024 data for the selected job type. They are guidelines, not targets.

Planning Tab

Fields

How Planning Dates Feed Into Brief Me

Dates within the next fourteen days appear in Brief Me under Planning Deadlines. Overdue planning dates appear in Overdue Actions.

Docs Tab

Folder Structure

How to Generate a Quotation

Open the Docs tab on any job. If no quotation exists, generate one. The quotation includes property address, job scope, quoted fee, deposit percentage from Settings, payment terms, and professional terms.

Billing Tab

Fee Summary

Deposit / Balance Split

A slider control shows the deposit/balance split (default 60/40 from Settings). Adjustable between 20% and 80% per job without changing the global default.

Invoice Schedule

Deposit on Appointment and Balance on Completion, each with status: Pending, Sent, or Paid.

Payment Log

Click + Log Payment to record a payment received. Enter amount, date, and reference.

Global Actions and Planner

Global Actions Tab

Click Actions in the main tab bar. Shows all actions across all jobs. Each row displays job reference, client name, action description, date, priority, and status.

Completing an Action and Undo

Click the checkbox to complete an action. A toast notification appears reading “Action completed — Undo” with a clickable Undo link visible for approximately 5 seconds.

The Planner Tab

Shows a weekly calendar-style view with time blocks for Buffer, Focus, and Admin. An Unscheduled sidebar shows actions not yet placed. Click Grout — Schedule This Week to let the AI suggest how to allocate actions across the week.

Calendar Tab

What It Shows

A monthly grid view of the current month with navigation and view mode buttons for Month, Week, and Day.

Content Toggles

• Actions (pink) — Action due dates.
• Events (blue) — Manually created events.
• Deadlines (orange) — Planning deadlines and key dates.

External Calendar Integration

Connect Google Calendar or Outlook via the Setup link to sync events between TILE and your existing calendar.

Social Boost

What It Does

Social Boost is TILE’s AI-powered social media content generator for architecture practices.

Brand Kit

Stores your visual identity — logo, colours, and fonts. Grout references this for on-brand content generation.

Posting Opportunities

Suggests social posts based on job milestones. When a job reaches Planning Submitted, Planning Approved, BC Submitted, or Ready for Site, Grout can generate a tailored post about the milestone.

Search

How to Access It

The Grout Search bar is always visible at the top of the page.

What It Searches

Job references, client names, property addresses, email addresses, phone numbers, job descriptions, job types, and notes.

Search Results

Each result shows job reference, client name, property address, current stage, and the matched field. Click any result to open that job tile directly.

Settings

Access Settings by clicking the TILE logo in the top-left corner.

Account

Team Members, Email and Password, Company Branding, Business Details, Bank Details, Document and Email Templates, Backup and Data, Billing and Quotation Terms, File Reference Format, Integrations.

Plan and Billing

Appearance

Theme Preset, Brand Accent Colours, Background and Text Colours, Typography (text size and font family), Logo upload.

Grout Library

Upload reference documents that Grout uses when generating content for your practice.

Profession Selector

TILE supports seven professions out of the box, each with its own pipeline stages, terminology, SOP checklists, and AI prompts. The selector appears the first time you sign in to a fresh organisation, and can be re-opened from Settings → Pipeline Profession while no jobs exist (or via superadmin support).

Available Professions

• Architecture — Full planning + Building Regulations pipeline. 14 stages from Enquiry to Complete. Default for residential / commercial architecture practices.
• Interior Design — Five service-type sub-pipelines: Full Interior Design, Furniture Install & FF&E Only, Home Staging, Serviced Accommodation, HMO. Terminology “Projects” rather than “Jobs”.
• Planning Consultancy — Pre-app, Application, Determination, Conditions, Appeal stages.
• Structural Engineering — Calculations, Building Control, Site visits, Final Cert.
• Property Development — Acquisition, Planning, Construction, Marketing, Exit. Terminology “Deals”.
• Building Surveying — Survey, Report Drafting, Defects Period, Final Cert. RICS-flavoured stage labels.
• Other / Custom — Generic 7-stage pipeline you can rename in Settings.

Editing Stage Names

Master accounts can rename any stage by double-clicking the column header on the Pipeline view. Renames are saved to workflow_custom_stages_v1 and apply across the org.

Subscription Note

Profession is a one-time subscription choice. Adding a second profession (e.g. you offer both Architecture and Interior Design) requires an additional subscription under the same organisation — contact hello@gettile.co.uk.

Heritage / D&A / Planning Statements

TILE generates three statutory documents through Grout (the AI assistant). All three live under the Pro tier and follow the same flow.

Where to Generate

Open any job → Overview tab → Suggested Documents panel. Buttons appear contextually:

• Design & Access Statement — for Householder, Full Planning, and Listed Building applications above relevant thresholds.
• Heritage Statement — when the site has Listed Building, Conservation Area, or Scheduled Monument designations.
• Planning Statement — for Full Planning applications, particularly larger or contested schemes.

The Brief Grout Modal

Before generation runs, a 7-field intake panel collects the essentials Grout needs to produce site-specific output rather than generic boilerplate:

• Design intent — what the scheme is trying to achieve (required)
• Scheme description — one short paragraph (auto-prefilled from job brief)
• Existing situation — the site or building as-is
• Proposed works — bullet points OK
• Key planning issues — what you anticipate
• Plus 2 type-specific fields (e.g. Building Period for Heritage, Planning History for Planning Statement)

Required fields are marked with a red asterisk. Leaving them blank emits [TO COMPLETE: hint] markers in the output (red bold in the PDF, yellow-highlighted in the DOCX) so you can see exactly what to fill in before sending.

Output

Each generation produces a paired PDF + DOCX in the job’s Drive folder. The PDF is the canonical client artefact; the DOCX is editable in Word. Both are version-tracked — if you regenerate, the old version is marked SUPERSEDED (amber badge) and the new one is CURRENT (green badge).

Re-generation and Revisions

Click Generate again to produce v2 with your edited brief. Click Upload revised version to drop in a manually-edited DOCX — TILE hashes the content, stores it as the next version, and shows an extracted-text preview.

Integrations

Settings → Integrations covers every external service TILE connects to. All connections are per-user except where noted.

Email (Gmail / Outlook)

Connect via OAuth from the Email card. Once connected, TILE polls every 15 minutes for new mail, runs the messages through Grout to extract job-relevant content, and surfaces them in the inbox panel for you to assign to a job. The connection token is stored encrypted server-side and used only to read mail you’ve granted access to.

Google Drive

Connect via OAuth from the Drive card. TILE creates a parent folder named after your practice and per-job subfolders inside it. All generated PDFs, DOCX files, quotation PDFs, and uploaded documents land flat in the job folder. Superseded versions are automatically moved to a Superseded/ sub-folder for tidiness.

Calendar (Google Calendar / Outlook)

Embed your existing calendar via the Calendar card. Diary entries (booked appointments, site visits, deadlines) appear in the embedded view. Two-way sync is on the roadmap.

Stripe (billing)

Stripe handles tier-tier subscriptions. Master accounts manage seats and plans through the Plan & Billing panel. Tier features (statutory docs, build cost calculator, Grout-powered features) gate on the active plan.

Companies House (UK)

When typing a company name in onboarding or new-job forms, TILE looks up the company via the public Companies House API and pre-fills VAT-able fields.

Mailchimp

Optional — connect via API key in the Integrations panel. New jobs and stage transitions can sync to Mailchimp lists for nurture campaigns.

Smart Day & My Day

The planner is shaped by two layers of settings — org-wide defaults set by the master account, plus per-user overrides each member can configure for their own week.

Smart Day Structure (org-wide)

Master account → Dashboard Settings (PIN-gated) → Smart Day Structure. Configures:

• Working hours — day start and day end (default 9.0–17.5)
• Daily breakdown — deep focus / urgent buffer / admin (default 4 + 2 + 1.5h = 7.5h capacity)
• Weekly billable target — default 30h
• Role focus — Fee Earning, Mixed, or Business Development

These values drive the BUFFER and FOCUS zone bars at the top of each day column in the Planner, and feed Grout’s auto-scheduler when you click Grout — Schedule This Week.

My Day (per-user override)

Settings → My Day. Each team member can override their own working hours and role focus — useful when one team member starts at 8:00 and another at 9:30. Any field left blank falls through to the org default. Changes sync to all your devices via Supabase.

Auto-Scheduling

Click Grout — Schedule This Week on the Planner. Grout walks every unscheduled action, weighs urgency vs your remaining capacity per day, and assigns:

• Urgent actions → urgent-buffer slots first
• Other actions → deep-focus slots
• Overflow → whatever remaining capacity is left

You see a preview with Accept / Clear & Undo options before anything is committed.

Terms & Conditions on Quotations

Every quotation TILE generates can carry your firm’s Terms & Conditions on a separate page (page-break-before, your job-ref + client-name header on each page).

Generic Template (out of the box)

Until you upload your own T&Cs, TILE uses a bundled generic template — an 8-section UK professional-services template covering Scope, Fees, Variations, Programme, IP, Liability, Termination, and General. Placeholders for company name, deposit %, and payment terms are substituted from your settings at render time. The status appears in amber with a “customise in Library” link.

Uploading Your Own

Open the Grout Library → T&Cs panel. Upload a PDF or paste plain text. Mark the version Active. The status flips to green with your title and the next quotation generation uses your text instead of the generic.

Versioning

Old T&Cs versions are archived (not deleted) when you upload a new active version. You can always preview prior versions from the Grout Library.

Attach Tickbox

The quotation preview shows an “Attach Terms & Conditions” tickbox. Default ON. Untick to send a quotation without T&Cs (e.g. a quick estimate where the client already has your terms on file).

Quotations & Versioning

Every Grout-generated document supports versioning. The flow:

Generate

From a job’s Overview tab, click Generate Quotation Draft. Grout reads the job context (project type, address, fee, planning constraints) and produces a quotation HTML you can preview, edit inline, and confirm.

Preview & Edit

The preview overlay is content-editable — click anywhere to make edits. Changes are auto-sanitised (every keystroke) so any pasted HTML can’t carry unsafe markup into the saved version.

Save

Click Confirm & Save. TILE renders the final HTML to PDF (via html2pdf) and DOCX (via docx.js), uploads both to your Drive job folder, and attaches a typed fee_quotation entry to job.documents.

Versions

Generate again to create v2 (or higher). The v1 doc card flips to SUPERSEDED (amber); v2 shows CURRENT (green) with a contextual note “Superseded by Fee Quotation v2 — DD MMM YYYY”. Both PDFs survive in Drive, with the old pair moved to a Superseded/ subfolder so the job root stays clean.

Reinstate

If you need to revert to an older version, click Reinstate on the superseded doc card. The old version becomes CURRENT and the newer becomes SUPERSEDED — bidirectional supersede chain.

Cross-chain (legacy file rows)

Some users have legacy file rows (manual uploads from before the typed pipeline existed) with names like “Heritage Statement v3”. When you generate a new typed Heritage Statement v1, those legacy file rows are also automatically marked SUPERSEDED so the doc panel shows a single clear version chain.

Glossary of Terms