Overview & background
Companies and project administrators often need to determine whether or not they should add their subcontractors to Fieldwire. This article seeks to highlight a few scenarios regarding when you should add your subcontractors, and speaks to when you may not want to add your subcontractors.
Keep in mind that Fieldwire is priced per user so adding subs will increase your user count. However, by adding your subs to your Fieldwire plan, you can make use of the full functionality of Fieldwire, saving you time and money on your projects.
When you should add your subcontractors to your Project
You should add your subcontractors if you expect they will be active contributors to your projects; meaning, you fully expect them to add markups, create and comment on tasks, add photos, etc. If you'd like to keep an external record of the work your subcontractors have completed onsite, then opt to invite them to your projects.
When you add your Subcontractors, they will also have access to all of the most up-to-date project information and will be able to view new drawings as soon as they are uploaded.
More significantly, the whole team can collaborate in real-time, meaning your time is saved by using Fieldwire. By being able to document and communicate issues as soon as they arise on site, you will build up a fully time-stamped and traceable record of the whole project.
A lot of users will also leverage Sub-Specific categories for their trades, and leverage these in conjunction with the 'Follower' permission to ensure that the subcontractors will only have access to the tasks they need.
Will I be charged if I choose to add my Subcontractors?
If your Subcontractors do not have a paid subscription of their own, then the Account Owner would be charged a prorated amount for their usage. A lot of users will opt to have their subcontractors purchase their own Monthly Fieldwire subscription prior to being invited to the project. The subscription could run for the duration of the project, and the Subcontractor could opt to then cancel the subscription when they are no longer on the project, and any Project Admin could remove that Subcontractor.
Alternatively, users on an Annual subscription will opt to have some additional annual licenses as 'seats' to cover any additional Subcontractors they may add throughout the duration of the project. Since Annual licenses are not associated with specific users, you could keep a revolving set of users and add or remove them on an as-needed basis. For example, if you have 2 annual licenses, and users A & B, you can replace user B with user C-- since there will be two users, and two licenses, the users would be covered, and the account owner would not receive an overage charge.
If you are on a Monthly subscription, and you invite your Subcontractors, you will only pay for the amount of time they are on the project, so to be cost-effective, just opt to remove them when they no longer need to be on the project.
What If you do not add your subcontractors to Fieldwire
If you choose not to invite your Subcontractors to Fieldwire; you can still keep them up-to-date with project information through Fieldwire's sharing capabilities; namely through Reports and Plan Exports. Take a look at these articles for more information about exporting content:
- Q&A: How can I export (and print) a copy of my plan(s) with Tasks included?
- Practical Guide: How to configure tasks for great reports
You can even share one-off pieces of information like Tasks:
While sharing plans, reports, and tasks are a fantastic way to document site information, they do not allow for real-time collaboration and will not capture comments or responses from the recipients.
More Information
These articles provide more information about adding and setting up users in Fieldwire: