Set up a development

Define a property development as a group of lots that share a small set of pricing templates, generate the lots in bulk, then turn each lot into its own project ready for estimating and billing.

When to use this

Use a development when you're delivering many similar dwellings on one site — a residential estate, a townhouse block, a staged land release — and the lots are built from a handful of repeated designs rather than being individually designed.

The point of a development is that you price the design once and reuse it. You set up a Plan for each design, generate as many Lots as the site has, point each lot at the plan it's being built to, and the system creates a project and estimate per lot from that plan. Without a development you'd be building every lot's estimate from scratch.

A development is also the foundation for multi-project billing, which bills all the lots as a single community on one consolidated invoice. You don't have to use multi-project billing — a development is useful on its own — but you do need a development before you can use it.

The three records

Prerequisites

• Project Financials installed and configured — see Install & configure
• The dwelling designs for the site decided, with a cost and sale price for each
• The lot numbering for the site known (how many lots, and what they're numbered from)
• Permission to create projects and contracts

Walkthrough

1. Create the development

1. Go to FullClarity → Project Financials → Developments and click New.
2. Give it a name — usually the estate or site name — and set the Location.
3. Save.

2. Add a plan for each design

Create a plan for each dwelling design on the site — see Create a plan for the full walkthrough, including the estimate each plan needs.

Once the plans exist, attach them to this development: open the development's Plans field and select every design the site offers. It's a multi-select, so a development can carry as many designs as you build, and the same plan can be offered on more than one development.

3. Generate the lots

1. On the development, click Create Lots.
2. Fill in the generator:
   • Prefix — what each lot's name starts with (e.g. Lot ).
   • Start Number — the first lot number.
   • Number of Lots — how many to generate.
   • Default Plan — the plan to assign to all of them.
3. Click Create. The lots are generated and appear in the list below, numbered sequentially from your start number.
4. Adjust individual lots in that list — set each one's Address, correct its Plan where a lot is being built to a different design, and set a Start Date if you have one.

You can run the generator more than once — to add a later stage of the estate, for example — and you can add a single lot by hand rather than generating a batch.

4. Create the lot projects

This is the step that turns lots into real projects you can estimate and bill.

1. Open the head project for the development — the project that represents the site as a whole, with the development selected on it.
2. Click Create Lot Projects.
3. Tick the lots you want to create projects for. You don't have to do all of them at once — it's normal to create projects stage by stage as the site is released.
4. Decide whether to tick Create Contracts?:
   • Ticked — each lot project also gets a contract, built from its plan. This is what you want if you're billing the lots.
   • Unticked — projects and estimates only. Add contracts later.
5. Click Create.

Each selected lot gets its own project, with the plan's estimate copied onto it, and the lot record is linked to that project so you can navigate between them.

What success looks like

• The development lists a plan per design and a lot per dwelling.
• Every lot has an address and the correct plan against it.
• After creating lot projects, each selected lot's Project field is populated, and opening that project shows an estimate carrying the plan's figures.
• If you ticked Create Contracts?, each lot project has a contract with a value derived from its estimate.

Gotchas

• Build each plan's estimate before creating lot projects. The estimate is what gets copied to the lot. A plan with a cost and sale price but no estimate produces an unpriced lot project, and fixing it afterwards means estimating each lot individually — exactly what the development was meant to avoid.
• The head project needs the development selected on it. The Create Lot Projects button only appears on a project that has a development against it. If you can't see the button, that link is missing.
• The button is also hidden on an inactive project. If the head project has been made inactive, reactivate it before creating lots.
• Changing a lot's plan after its project exists doesn't re-price the project. The plan's estimate is copied at creation, not kept in sync. If a lot changes design after its project is built, amend that lot project's estimate directly.
• Correct the plan on each lot before you create its project, not after. Generating a batch assigns the same default plan to all of them, and it's easy to create projects before fixing the handful being built to a different design.
• Lot names come from the prefix and start number, and aren't renumbered. Generating a second batch continues from where you tell it to start — check the existing lots first so you don't collide with or skip numbers.

Related

• Multi-project billing — bill all the lots as one community on a single invoice
• Create a plan — the pricing template each lot is built from
• Create an estimate — building the estimate a plan needs
• Set up billing schedules — the contract and stage structure lot billing is built on
• Customise terminology — renaming Development, Plan and Lot
• Custom records reference