Managing contractors

This guide is for agency accounts. Owners, Admins and Members can add and maintain contractors. Viewers can read the directory but cannot change it.

Direct landlords do not have the organisation contractor directory. They add useful emergency contacts to portfolio or property knowledge. Where available, Lettie may also offer a Bark referral during a landlord maintenance report.

Why the contractor directory matters

Organisation > Contractors is the agency's source of truth for contractor contact details, trades and working hours. When the same contractor is linked to branch or property knowledge, updating the central record updates every link.

The repair workflow decides whether Lettie contacts a contractor, offers a number to a tenant or keeps the contractor for agency reference. See Organisation settings and notifications.

Add a contractor

1. Open Organisation > Contractors.
2. Select Add contractor.
3. Enter the contractor's Name and Phone.
4. Optionally add Company and Email.
5. Choose one or more Trades, such as Plumber, Electrician, Gas engineer, Locksmith, General maintenance, Kitchen appliances or Other.
6. Add concise Notes if colleagues need extra context.
7. Turn on Set working hours and enter availability if it is known.
8. Save the contractor.

A contractor without working hours is treated as available at any time. Set accurate hours if out-of-hours fallback should prefer somebody who is genuinely open.

Find and filter contractors

Search by name, company or trade. Use the status filter to show:

• Active contractors
• Active and retired
• Retired only

The active count at the top of the page excludes retired records.

Edit a contractor

1. Find the contractor.
2. Open their actions and choose Edit details.
3. Update the relevant fields and save.

Use Copy phone number when a colleague needs to call them. Do not create a duplicate record to change a telephone number: duplicates can leave branch and property knowledge pointing at old information.

Contacts first entered elsewhere in the organisation may appear automatically in the contractor directory. Lettie uses the telephone number to avoid creating another organisation record for the same person.

Share a jobs link

Choose Copy jobs link to give the contractor a view of the jobs on their book.

Treat this as a private access link:

• share it only with the intended contractor;
• do not post it in general notes or public messages; and
• ask the contractor to use the latest link after their telephone number changes.

Jobs access expires after 30 days. Retiring the contractor or changing their telephone number also revokes active contractor sessions.

Retire or restore a contractor

Use Retire when you no longer send new work to a contractor. Retirement:

• preserves their historic assignments;
• removes them from new tenant offers and automated selection; and
• revokes active jobs access.

Use the status filter to find the record later, then choose Restore if the contractor starts working with the agency again.

Retirement is usually better than deleting historic information because old reports remain understandable.

Make routing predictable

For each active contractor:

1. choose accurate trades;
2. record working hours, or deliberately leave them available at any time;
3. keep one current telephone number; and
4. check how they are used in organisation, branch and property knowledge.

Knowledge provides the available contact; the repair policy controls what Lettie does with it. Emergency rules can try an available alternative of the same trade, while planned work can use contractor engagement, quote capture and approval stages.