Sales agency (manufacturers’ rep)
Projects with a spec section and a bid date, takeoffs off the drawings, quotations priced from the principal’s book, orders routed to an authorized distributor and submittals tracked to approved — with a lines-we-carry page and a for-manufacturers page on your website. Daybook speaks rep.
A rep agency is not a contractor, and Daybook does not pretend otherwise: this agency installs nothing and has no crew. What it has is projects — a building, a spec section, a takeoff, a bid date — and the app keeps them as projects, in the same shape it gives a general contractor. Not a template with a different noun in the headline: the sales agency has its own job types, its own checklists, its own quoting words, its own price list, a product catalog that is a line card, and its own website.
The thread from the specification to the commission is the part that earns its keep, because it is the part that is normally spread over three inboxes. The project & bid sheet holds one project: the spec section, the units on the takeoff, the bid date, the principal and the line, and where you stand in the specification — basis of design, an alternate listed, a sample board still owed. The sales call & training report is one entry per call — who you met, the lines you showed, what they said, what you left with them and the next step — and because it attaches to appointments as well as projects, a lunch-and-learn becomes a record rather than a diary entry. The order, submittal & handover closes it: awarded or not, which authorized distributor the order was routed to, what was in the submittal package and when it was approved, what changed between the quote and the order, and which principal the commission belongs to.
On top of everything Daybook does for every trade — the full list is here — sales agency gets its own tools.
The takeoff off the drawings or a flat fee per project, the quotation itself, a re-quote when an addendum lands, a budget number at early design, the specified product per unit, per square foot or per linear foot, accessories, trim and closures, an alternate finish, the submittal package and jobsite support — a list, not a takeoff calculator, because a rep prices from a book. The quote line reads Wall panel — 2,400 sq ft.
The Product Catalog stays open for this trade and becomes the card: Lines & principals, Products & series, Samples & literature. The brand field asks for the principal, the series field groups a family under one card, and the dealer field asks which authorized distributor quotes it — so the card is searchable by product or by principal.
A project & bid sheet with the spec section, the takeoff, the bid date, the principal and where the line stands; a sales call & training report that attaches to appointments as well as projects, with what was shown and what was left behind; and an order, submittal & handover that will not close until the distributor, the submittal package and the principal owed the commission are all filled in — attached to the right records automatically.
Specification, quotation & takeoff, submittals & approvals, training & lunch-and-learn, jobsite support, warranty & claim, and line card & representation — the job types, the quoting examples and the document preview all speak agency, down to a document preview whose service address names the project and is noted as the project, not a place we work.
Architect / specifier, general contractor, distributor, principal referral and trade show as marketing sources; specification, quotation, submittal, training, jobsite support, warranty and line card as job specialties; and architect / specifier, distributor, owner / facility and principal as client tiers — because a manufacturer looking for coverage is a customer too. Seeded on day one, yours to edit.
Line card and principal, territory, spec’d in and basis of design, spec section, takeoff and bid date, submittal, approval and RFI, distributor, commission, lunch-and-learn — drafts and summaries use a rep’s vocabulary, and the auto-classifier files a manufacturer asking about representation as line card rather than a project, anything with a bid date or a takeoff as a quotation even when a spec section is named, and shop drawings after an order as a submittal. It never writes a commission rate and never predicts a bid.
Your account starts with a real sales agency site template — a lines-we-carry page and a for-manufacturers page included — edit it in the app, and the enquiry form asks what product or line, where it is going and what they are after from you, then drops a real lead straight into Daybook.
Your own project beats any feature list — the spec section, the takeoff, the bid date and the distributor, all on one record.
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