The STrOp glossary

Construction has never had much discipline about language. "Ticket" can mean the signed T&M tag in your foreman's pocket, the delivery slip on a pallet, or a help-desk thread. An "estimate," a "bid," and a "proposal" get used interchangeably right up until the difference costs somebody money. When the GC, your office, and your field crew each mean something different by the same word, the mistake surfaces later — as rework, a missed billing, or a scope fight.

So STrOp is deliberately opinionated about words: one name per thing, and when one word could mean two things, we split it. This page is the decoder — what each term means everywhere it appears in the app. If you catch a screen using a word differently than this page says, that's a bug we want to hear about: send us a support request.

Your shop

Organization — your business: the account everything in STrOp belongs to. When you see "Company" anywhere in the app, it never means you — see the split table below.
Member — a person with a login in your organization, carrying a role (Org Admin, Project Manager, Estimator, Foreman…). Roles decide which parts of the app someone works in.
Worker — an entry on your field-labor roster: classification, union and dispatch data, certifications. A worker may or may not have a login — the roster and the member list are different lists on purpose (one is payroll and compliance, the other is app access).
Crew — the workers assigned to a field work order on a given day. A crew is whoever is on the work that day, not a fixed unit you set up in advance.
Custom field — a field your admin defines that STrOp doesn't model out of the box — a customer P.O. number, an internal job class, a vendor code — on projects, companies, or contacts. It shows up in that record's forms and detail page like any built-in field. Archiving one hides it from forms without losing what's already been captured.

Winning work

Project — the record everything else in STrOp hangs off: one contained bundle of work, tracked from the first phone call through the end of warranty. Estimates, proposals, timecards, pay apps, punch lists — each belongs to a project.
Job — a project someone has agreed to pay for. While you're chasing it, it's a pursuit; the moment you win it — the Award Job button is literally that moment — it's a job. Service work is a job from the first call, because the customer already asked you to come.
Lifecycle — the ten-stage arc every construction project travels, Qualify through Warranty. The app's navigation follows it.
Contract (the stage) — stage 5, where a won job gets set up: contract terms in, SOV built, compliance cleared, so it's ready to staff and bill.
Pipeline — all the projects you're chasing, viewed as a funnel.
Qualify — stage 1: the go / no-go on whether a project deserves your estimating hours.
Opportunity — something on the radar you might bid, before it becomes a project.
Company — an outside party in your CRM: a GC, an owner, a specifier (the architect or engineer), a vendor, or a competitor. "Company" always points outward.
Contact — a person at a company, possibly with a buying role on a pursuit.
Prequalification — your approved-bidder standing with a GC (submitted, prequalified, declined — with a limit and an expiry).
Estimate — the priced takeoff: lines, assemblies, alternates, markup. An estimate is priced.
Bid — the number: the sell price you submit. Add up every line of the estimate and you get the bid.
Budget submitted — a flag on a pursuit: you sent a budget number and haven't been awarded yet. The pursuit keeps its stage, so a budget can still turn into a hard bid.
Key dates — the dates a project already has — bid due, NTP, substantial completion, the next pay app cutoff and the rest — shown together on its Schedule. Edit each where it lives; the schedule follows.
Proposal — the document that delivers the bid: scope narrative, qualifications, terms, your letterhead.

Those three are the ones the industry blurs constantly, so STrOp holds the line: estimate = priced, bid = number, proposal = document.

Qualification — a clause on a proposal: an assumption, inclusion, exclusion, or general condition. Not a worker credential (that's a certification) and not bidder standing (that's prequalification).
Qualification statement — always the full phrase: the signed quality-assurance document a spec asks for with your submittals — a document-review certification or an installer's qualifications statement. Generated from the project's Submittals tab, signed on paper, attached to the submittal item.
Alternate — priced add/deduct scope beyond the base bid. A scenario is a named base-bid-plus-alternates combination.
Daily production — on a labor line priced from a production rate, what one worker gets done in a shift — not the crew's combined output. Crew size sets how long the work takes, not what it costs per unit.
Labor-day — one worker for one shift. Crew size × working days.
Award — winning the work: the moment a project becomes a job. Flips the project from pursuit to execution.
Contract — the executed agreement between you and your client for a project: value, retainage, dates, clauses. Contract value flows from it.
Contract type — the commercial form of the deal: lump sum, GMP, T&M, unit price, cost plus.

Running work

SOV (schedule of values) — the contract value broken into billing line items; every pay application bills against it.
Budget adjustment — a move of cost budget on the Job Budget after the estimate has frozen: add or remove dollars on a cost code, or transfer them between two. It carries a reason and never rewrites the baseline — the baseline stays what you bid; current is baseline plus executed change orders plus adjustments.
Labor-hours budget — the hours you budgeted for each cost code, kept separate from the labor dollars. It comes from your estimate's labor lines (the hours you enter, or the ones the production calculator works out), plus any hours you move with a budget adjustment. Submitted and approved timecard hours count against it; T&M hours are shown next to it instead, since the estimate never planned them.
Field work order (FWO) — the dispatched unit of field work: this scope, this crew, this place, this window.
Timecard / daily report — one record doing two jobs: the per-project, per-day hours (regular, overtime, double-time by worker, cost-coded) and the field narrative for that day (work completed, areas worked, weather, delays, deliveries, photos, site conditions, headcount). Submitting it locks it; a PM or super can reopen it with a reason that stays on the record — a foreman can't. An approved day accepts one change only, voiding; a voided day accepts none.
Site conditions check — one of the nine rows on the daily report that say how you controlled a hazardous area that day: closed off, signs up, client told, alternate route, lighting, the mid-shift walk, stayed clear, dry-tested, released. Each carries the time you tapped it, a note if one's needed, and the photo that proves it. An unchecked row is part of the record too.
Legal hold — the switch an org admin flips on a project the day a claim lands (only an admin can set or release it). Every field record on that job — timecards and daily reports, photos, T&M tickets, documents — freezes against edits and deletes, for everyone, until it's released: documents are frozen at the database and the file store refuses to delete them while the hold is on; photos are frozen in storage against both delete and overwrite. New records can still be added. Not a stage, not a status: a lock, with the reason and the releasing note on the audit trail.
Evidence export — one job's field record, packaged for counsel: timecards, daily reports, photos, T&M tickets, documents, comments and the job's audit trail, every file as it was uploaded, with a checksum for each so anyone can prove nothing changed. An org admin runs it from the project's Edit page, under Legal hold. The data export in Settings → Data & Privacy is the whole company; this is one job.
T&M ticket — the signed field record of time-and-materials work outside base scope. On a jobsite, "ticket" means this — which is exactly why we don't use the word for anything else you file inside STrOp.
Purchase order (PO) — a buyout commitment to a vendor, received against by receipts. The vendor's slip number on a delivery is the delivery ticket number — their word, recorded as-is.
The change chain — how scope changes become money: RFI (a question that may reveal a change) → change event (the log entry that something changed) → PCO (the priced change proposal to your GC — frozen once submitted) → CO (the executed change order — final) → SOV impact.
CO exposure — change money that's moving but not in your contract yet: open change events, PCOs waiting on the GC, and change orders not yet executed. Each change counts once, wherever it has got to, so a change event that became a PCO isn't counted twice. Shown as "pending" next to your contract on the project overview.
SCO (subcontract change order) — your GC's paperwork executing a change against your subcontract. You don't execute an upward change order — the GC does, by issuing an SCO; your CO record tracks their SCO number and date.
Pay application — the periodic progress bill against the SOV (G702/G703): completed plus stored, less retainage.
Retainage — the percentage withheld from each pay app until release.
Lien waiver — the California statutory waiver exchanged for payment; four types (conditional or unconditional × progress or final).
AR invoice — the receivable created from a pay app; payments land against it.
Simple invoice — the flat-fee alternative for small jobs that don't need an SOV or retainage.
Submittal — a product or shop-drawing approval working through review before install. A transmittal is the formal package that delivers documents to the other side: RFIs, billing packages and submittals all go out as numbered transmittals (T-001, T-002…), so you always have a record of exactly what you sent, to whom and when.
Punch item — a defect or completion item worked to closed at the end of the job.
Substantial completion (SC) — the certified date the work is usable for its intended purpose. Starts the retainage and warranty clocks.
Closeout package — the end-of-job deliverables: as-builts, O&M manuals, warranties.
Warranty callback — a post-completion defect call on a construction project, worked through visits to closure. Not the same thing as a service call.

Service work

Service call — one dispatched service visit (scheduled → dispatched → en route → on site → complete → invoiced), with customer signoff.
Service Ticket — the printed record of a service call you hand the customer. This is the one place STrOp keeps the industry's word "ticket" on paper, because it's the customer-facing artifact the trade already knows by that name.
Service agreement — a recurring preventive-maintenance contract with a service and billing cadence.
Service invoice — the per-call or per-agreement bill in the service module.
Customer / service site / service asset — who you do service work for; their serviceable location; the equipment at that location, with its history.

California compliance

Certification — a worker's credential (OSHA-10/30, DAS status, EPA cards…), with an expiry. Never called a "qualification" in STrOp.
Certified payroll (CPR / eCPR) — the weekly DIR-reportable payroll record on public work, derived from timecards. STrOp produces and submits the reports; it does not run your payroll.
Prevailing wage — the statutory minimum wage package for a craft in a locality on public work. A wage determination is the published rate floor being enforced.
Wage authority — whose prevailing-wage rules bind the job: CA DIR on state public works, federal (Davis-Bacon) on anything carrying federal money, or a state program — Washington L&I, Oregon BOLI, the Nevada Labor Commissioner, Hawaii DLIR. You declare it on the contract. A job funded from more than one carries each, and the floor for each classification is then the higher total package — basic plus fringe, compared whole, never blended. The four state authorities can be declared today and are tagged filing support coming until STrOp files for them.
General Decision — the US Department of Labor's published Davis-Bacon wage determination for a county and construction type. The federal counterpart of a DIR determination; re-issued as numbered modifications, and the contract binds the one in effect when it was awarded.
Skilled & Trained Workforce (STW) — California's apprenticeship-ratio and graduation-percentage requirements, reported per project.
CBA — your union collective-bargaining agreement, supplying classification wage rates and burden (the statutory and insurance loadings on top of wages).
Labor window — when a bid's labor starts and how many months it runs. When a bid has one, its labor rates are the average across the window, not today's rate.
Labor escalation — how much labor rates rise over the labor window. It counts the raises already on the wage card, then your forecast raise %/yr after the last one. It sits inside the unit rates. It is separate from the bid's flat escalation dollar line.
Production rate — what one worker produces in a day on one task, at a stated shift length, e.g. "190 SF/day @ 8 hr". It measures productivity, not cost: the wage comes from each bid's labor rate. Every value you record is kept in the task's history.

Goals

Goal — something your company, a person, or a job is aiming at. STrOp tracks it from the work already in the system where it can, and you log it by hand (with a note) where it can't.
Target — a number per period: "20 bids submitted this month", "$2M awarded this quarter". Periods follow your company's calendar and time zone.
Streak — a habit kept every work day, like a daily report filed. Rain days and weekends don't break it; a work day without the report does.
Checklist — a set of steps toward an outcome, ticked off by hand. (A schedule milestone is a different thing — a dated point on the job schedule.)
Pace — where a target should be by today, counting work days (Monday to Friday) already finished. On track means at it, above it, or within 10% under it; the goal also shows what it takes per day from here.
Badge — an achievement you keep once you've earned it.
Leaderboard — a ranking on one goal among people in the same role. Nobody is on one unless the company turned boards on, the goal is marked for ranking, and they joined.

The assistant

Ask (STrOp Bot) — press ⌘J anywhere. It answers from three places: the STrOp Knowledge Base, your company SOPs, and the project's own records — the contract, the change log, RFIs, the schedule, billing, T&M tickets — plus excerpts from your documents. Every answer cites what it used. It only shows records your role can see, and it never changes anything.

Company SOP — one of your own written procedures, uploaded under Settings → Company SOPs. When your SOP and the Knowledge Base disagree, your SOP wins. Your contract and specs are never overridden by an SOP.

Words we deliberately split

The word	In STrOp it's…
Ticket	A T&M ticket (the signed jobsite artifact), a Service Ticket (the printed service record), or a vendor's delivery ticket #. Help-page filings are support requests — so "ticket" stays a field word.
Company	Always an outside party in your CRM. Your own business is your Organization.
Invoice	Qualified every time: AR invoice (from a pay app), simple invoice (flat fee), service invoice (service work).
Qualification	A proposal clause. A worker's credential is a certification; bidder standing is a prequalification.
Stage vs. status	Projects sit at stages (Qualify, construction, closeout…). Individual records — estimates, PCOs, pay apps — have a status. There is no single "project status."
Estimate / bid / proposal	Priced / number / document.

The abbreviations

AR — accounts receivable · CBA — collective bargaining agreement · CE — change event · CO — change order · CPR — certified payroll report · CSI — the MasterFormat division taxonomy · CSLB — Contractors State License Board · DIR — California Department of Industrial Relations · FWO — field work order · GC — general contractor · GMP — guaranteed maximum price · G702/G703 — the AIA pay-application forms · NTP — notice to proceed · O&M — operations & maintenance manuals · PCO — potential change order · PO — purchase order · RFI — request for information · SC — substantial completion · SCO — subcontract change order · SOV — schedule of values · STW — Skilled & Trained Workforce · T&M — time and materials