Working with subcontractors
Subcontractor collaboration in Trueleveler is how a general contractor and a subcontractor organization exchange records. A sub sends RFIs, change orders, T&M tickets and submittals to its GC through a no-login response link, and a GC invites a sub onto a project without using a team seat. Your account type shapes what you see.
Account type
The first time your organization signs in, you're asked whether you're a General Contractor or a Subcontractor. This is asked once per organization (not per person) and shapes onboarding content, tracker copy, and which navigation items you see — a subcontractor org, for example, sees a "Send to GC" action on the trackers below, and a sub-side pay app drafter instead of the GC-side owner pay-app tracker. It is not currently changeable from Settings; contact support if your organization's designation needs to be corrected.
How does a subcontractor send a record to its GC?
If your organization is set up as a subcontractor, four trackers carry a Send to GC action: RFIs, Change Orders, T&M Tickets, and Submittals. Draft the record in your own workspace, then send it — your GC gets an email with a one-click link where they can approve, reject, or comment (RFIs get an answer instead). They don't need a Trueleveler account, a password, or an invite to respond; the link itself is the credential.
Draft the record
Create the RFI, change order, T&M ticket, or submittal in your own project, same as any other record.
Send to GC
Open the record and click Send to GC. Enter your GC contact's email and an optional note.
They respond, no account needed
Your GC contact gets an email with a magic link. Opening it shows the record and lets them respond — RFI answers, change-order approval, T&M signature, or submittal review status — without creating an account.
The response lands back in your tracker
Their answer updates the record’s status in your own workspace automatically, without anyone on your team entering it. Two of those updates carry on into your numbers: an approved change order raises the project budget by its amount, and an approved T&M ticket counts toward job cost.
A related flow: the sub-side pay app drafter lets a subcontractor draft their own AIA-style pay application and send it to the GC for attestation — the GC's response (approved / rejected / commented) shows on the draft, without creating a duplicate record on the GC's own books.
How do I invite a subcontractor onto my project?
The reverse direction: a GC can invite a subcontractor onto a specific project so the sub can see their own records — without adding them as a full project member or consuming a team seat.
Open Command Center
On the project's Command Center page, find the Invite a subcontractor panel.
Enter their email
Optionally add their name and a note. Send invite.
They get a no-login link
The sub receives an email with a link to a read-only page showing their own Change Orders, RFIs, T&M tickets, Submittals, and any Documents folders you've explicitly marked shared — filtered to their vendor record only, never the whole project.
They can save the access permanently
A "Sign in or create a free account" link on that page lets the sub claim the access with a real account — the same no-login link keeps working either way.
Manage or revoke access anytime
The same Command Center panel lists every subcontractor you've invited, with status (invited / viewed / accepted) and a revoke button.
Marking a Documents folder as shared is a separate, explicit step — right-click any folder in the Documents tracker and choose Share with subs. Nothing in Documents is visible to an invited sub until you do this; the default is unshared.
Vendor Directory linking
Every subcontractor invite currently creates a new Vendor Directory entry from the email and name you typed — there's no way yet to link an invite to an existing vendor record, so inviting the same subcontractor to a second project will create a duplicate entry rather than reusing the first one. Automatic linking across projects is planned but not built yet.
Payment approvals
Separate from the sub↔GC flows above: an organization can turn on a payment-approval gate for procurement — above a threshold you set, a payment can't be marked paid until a different teammate holding the approve payments capability signs off. Pending approvals show up in your My Work feed's dedicated Approvals bucket, on the Procurement rail badge, and as an Approvals tile on Command Center — the same underlying count everywhere, so it can't read differently depending which page you're on. See Team & roles for how the approve-payments capability is granted.