What's New?

Happy November! We can’t believe there is just 60 days left of 2026! It’s gone insanely quick. Here’s your update notes! Please note: there are major changes pertaining to Quickbooks mapping, and settings is completely new with new settings options, and adjustments to existing. please take a moment to review all of settings and ensure that the new ones outlined below are looked at, and ensure if you are connected to Quickbooks, you review the new mapping and options.

White Label

With white label, everything your clients, vendors and the public see carries your brand, not ours.

Your brand, everywhere

• No more “Powered by Workroom.” The wording, logo and badge disappear from everything you share. This is on by default, and you can change it anytime with the “Hide Powered by Workroom everywhere” setting.

• Your colours. Set your main colour, button colour, accent, text colour and page background across all client-facing pages.

• Your fonts. Choose a font pairing for headings and body text, and set the body text size on your PDFs.

• Polished documents. Give your estimates, invoices, retainers, change orders and purchase orders their own colour, banner image and fonts, both on screen and as PDFs.

• Your logo inside Workroom. Put your logo in the app menu and the browser tab, so even your own team sees your brand.

Where your clients will see it

Your branding appears on almost everything you share:

• Estimates, invoices, retainers and change orders, plus their PDFs

• Purchase orders and quote requests sent to vendors

• Your client portal

• Contracts: the signing page, the signed PDF and contract emails

• Public forms

• Shared Library links and Library reports

• Shared projects, Gantt charts and Tasks PDFs

• Your contractor portal and contractor schedule

• Shared document rooms

• Campus pages you share

• Every email your studio sends, including document emails, reminders, portal invites, message notifications, client updates and scheduled reports. They all use your fonts and button colour.

Already included on every plan

You don’t need white label for these. Every studio can:

• Add your logo to PDFs, emails, the client portal and contracts

• Customise PDF headers, taglines, footers and banners

Part 2 of the White label option is ability to add CNAME, which allows you to re-direct the client portal to your own domain. This should be launching here in the coming weeks.

A new Settings

• Settings has been rebuilt from the ground up. There's one menu, grouped into You, Studio and Modules. It has a search that finds any setting, and a Save bar that warns before you leave with unsaved changes.

• New pages:

  • Setup checklist

  • Company

  • Branding

  • Team and permissions

  • Sign-off and approvals

  • Outgoing communication

  • Integrations and apps

  • Imports

  • Activity

  • Link Management

  • One page for each module: Finances, Contracts, Library, Projects, Tasks, Timelogs, Budget, Calendar, Dashboard, Campus, Documents, Email and Walter

• Your own pages: Profile, Notifications, Connected accounts, Keyboard shortcuts, and Hours and time away.

• Hide from the menu: you can now hide Walter, Dashboard, Calendar, Campus, Comms, Retainers, Payments, Reports, Documents and Contracts.

• Phones: Settings works at phone width.

Branding

• Four logo slots: full logo and icon, each in a light and a dark version. A new Where each one is used table sets the logo and height for the app menu, client portal, PDFs, emails, contracts, Spec Set cover and browser tab.

• PDF preview: see your PDF header, tagline, banner and footer on a sample document before saving.

• Purchase order PDFs now carry the same header, tagline, banner and accent colour as estimates and invoices.

• White label:

  • Fonts and colours now carry through to emails and the client portal.

  • "Hide Powered by Workroom" applies everywhere.

  • The app menu and browser tab show your logo.

[NEW] Activity log

• A full studio Activity log: who did what, when, on which record, from which device and roughly where. Logins, downloads, exports and failed sign-ins are included.

• Filtering and export: filter by person, area, action and date, and export the results.

• Readable entries: each entry names the actual record, such as the invoice number, project or person. Changes show as plain before → after values.

• New areas: Contacts and Email have their own areas, and imports file under Imports.

• Who can see it: you choose who can see Activity.

Team and permissions

• A new permission set editor covers every module, with clear counts and help on each permission.

• New permission modules: Dashboard, Client updates, Mood, Walter, Retainers and Payments.

• Payments and retainers permissions are now enforced. People without them don't see the payment, refund or retainer buttons. Existing permission sets keep what they allowed before.

• Handing out access: only admins can give out permission sets.

• Logging time for someone else: choose who can log time on behalf of others, from nobody to everyone, or specific people.

• QuickBooks access: a team member whose permission set includes every Settings permission now sees QuickBooks, whatever the set is called.

Out of office

• Hours and time away: set your working hours and an out-of-office period with a back date and a cover person.

• [Preliminary, not active yet] Email auto-reply: an automatic reply now goes out from your connected mailbox even when you're not signed in. It fills in your back date and who to contact, replies once per sender, and never answers automated mail.

• Comms auto-reply: when a client, vendor or teammate messages you directly, or @mentions you, one automatic reply is posted, clearly marked.

• Reply to: choose who gets the reply: clients, leads, vendors and contractors, or everyone else.

Outgoing communication

• Templates: every studio email (estimates, invoices, purchase orders, reminders, portal invites, unread messages, contract invites, team invites, rate increase notices) is now built from a template you can edit, in your email design.

• Payment received email: recording a payment can send the client a thank-you. It's ticked by default, and online payments send it automatically.

Imports

• Studio › Imports brings all imports into one place, with eight "move your studio in" steps: contacts, vendors, projects, products, tasks, time logs, and estimates, invoices and purchase orders.

• From QuickBooks: customers and vendors import directly, and you tick which ones to bring in. Nothing is changed in QuickBooks.

• Take it back out: undo an import. Anything you've worked on since is kept.

• Clearer results: imports report what came in, what came in with warnings, and why any row was skipped.

Canadian and international tax: Fixes and adjustments

• Each tax on its own line: estimates, invoices, change orders and purchase orders show each tax by name and rate, with your tax registration numbers.

• Two-tax provinces show two lines: GST + PST in BC and Saskatchewan, GST + RST in Manitoba, GST + QST in Québec. HST provinces show one HST line.

• Rates for every province and territory, including Nova Scotia's 14% HST.

• Canadian sales tax settings: a new section shows each province's rule and the registration numbers it needs.

• Tax rows always show to clients on Canadian and VAT documents.

• Service lines now take a tax code, like product lines.

• Be sure to check your tax settings and ensure they are correct, as these had to be migrated from the former settings page.

Library

• Subcategories: pick categories and subcategories with full paths ("Furniture › Seating") everywhere: Library, Spec Sets, PDFs, budgets and cost codes.

• Spec numbers: your own spec numbering pattern and codes carry over, new rows number themselves right away, and a category change renumbers correctly.

• Vendor trade discounts: choose what a filled-in trade discount does to the client price: keep it, pass the savings on, or ask each time.

• Library and estimates stay in sync: edits flow between the Library and draft estimates and invoices automatically, with undo.

• Room placeholders: Walter can add simple line drawings for placeholders with no picture. It asks first, and you can undo.

• Imports and the Clipper: bulk-imported and clipped products are now priced by one rate, as in the Library.

Finances

• Refunds: one refund dialog for invoices, retainers and deposits. Refund by item, the whole invoice, or a restocking fee, with clear outcomes.

• Credit memos: customer credits now get numbered credit memos, which you can show to the client.

• Retainers: apply a retainer to a specific payment on the invoice's schedule. Applied payments link to their invoice.

• Design-build firms: a "design-build firm" switch in Settings › Finances keeps retainage, lien waivers, cost codes and project billing in one place. Project billing now lives on the project's Finance tab.

• Line tax codes in QuickBooks: product and service lines go to QuickBooks under the tax code that matches the rate charged. Refunds reverse exactly what was posted.

⚠️QuickBooks: Please re-confirm your settings, and mapping! CRITICAL. ⚠️

• Workroom asks before creating anything in QuickBooks:

  • items: Save lists exactly what would be made

  • customers, project sub-customers and vendors

  • classes

• New connections start blank. Nothing is pre-filled for you, and nothing syncs until you've chosen your settings.

• New mapping rows:

  • an item for products with no category

  • an item for services typed on a document

  • an item for every "other line" (freight, fees, warehousing)

  • Untaxed purchases and card fee tax codes for Canada and the UK

• Reports and checks: a report of every item Workroom has made, and clearer "to fix" counts.

Projects and tasks

• Changing a project's phase type now asks whether to replace or add alongside. Hand-made tasks are never lost.

• New projects get exactly the phases you ticked.

• + Task opens the full task panel.

• Restoring from Trash: a restored task whose phase is gone goes to Ad hoc.

• Task templates keep their "Waits on" setting.

Client portal

• Overview shows all of the project's details and every contract sent. Declined and expired contracts are shown with a label.

• Seen ticks are accurate, and messages no longer vanish while sending.

Integrations

• Real logos on every integration card.

• Clear errors: if a connection fails, the page says why.

• Integration votes: vote for the integrations you want next.

Fixes and speed

• Faster pages: the Contacts, Vendors, Purchase orders, Tasks and project home pages load faster, and background checks pause while the tab is hidden.

• Sessions: signing in on one device no longer signs you out on others.

• Form submissions always email the studio owner and every "send to" address, once each.

• Notes and rich text: pasting no longer deletes text.

• Comms edits: mentions show as names.

• Contacts and Vendors: column headings don't overlap, and counts match the list.

• Logos, email templates and team settings save correctly again.

Already live (October 24–31)

• Safari and iPhone: downloads, links, drag and drop, dates, full-screen layouts, Mood zoom and the portal chat chime all work properly.

• Mood boards:

  • hide pages from the client

  • drag page tabs to reorder them

  • choose pages when printing or saving a PDF

• Finances:

  • Library product details (lead time, spec #, link, status, tag) and up to 12 custom fields reach the line

  • set any status by hand

  • convert any sent estimate to an invoice

  • record a client's response

  • duplicate an expense

  • delete a bill

  • make a new tag from the tag menu

• Deposits: a deposit required on approval is collected before the estimate is approved, and the client goes straight to the pay sheet.

• Pricing: choose Markup % or Margin % studio-wide.

• Discounts: a split discount option.

• Card fees: a studio default for who pays the processing fee.

• Payment schedules: edit dates in place, and payments without dates are allowed.

• Client portal Finances: redesigned. Clients see each document's schedule, payments and balance due, and can pay chosen schedule rows.

• Revision requests: clients can request revisions on products. They show in yellow, and your team acknowledges them with a note.

• Comms:

  • chats for selected people only

  • control over clients' one-on-one messages

  • Attach and Send always on screen

• Contracts: your logo on contracts, signed PDFs and contract emails. The project overview lists every contract, with view and download.

• Rate increases: several per project, per service, once or yearly.

• Library: archive and restore products, plus client and split discounts.

• Contacts, Vendors and Contractors: sortable columns.

• Quotes: upload a vendor's quote PDF.

• Spec Sets: hide the client's name, or show chosen people instead.

• Drag to reorder: statuses, phases, lead stages, roles and folders, with Sort A–Z.

• Time:

  • time log import reads start and end times

  • not-yet-invoiced time is priced at the rate it was logged at

  • delete a time entry from its panel

• Popups no longer close when you drag a selection outside them.

• Faster: creating projects and opening project home.

This is our biggest update yet. Finances is rebuilt from the ground up, QuickBooks now stays in step with everything you do, and your Dashboard is all new.

A new Dashboard

Your Dashboard is now built around your day, and it's yours to arrange.

• A greeting from Walter each time you sign in, and a daily brief of what moved and what needs you.

• Needs attention: one list of everything waiting on you. That covers late invoices, unanswered estimates, overdue tasks, purchase orders waiting on vendors and expiring contractor documents. Snooze anything until tomorrow, Monday or next week.

• Widgets for your whole studio: Today, My tasks, Calendar, Projects, Procurement, Leads, Comms, Email, Money, Team & Time, For you, and Quick actions. Each comes with several views to choose from.

• 31 small tiles for the numbers you check most, such as what's outstanding, what's ready to invoice, margin this month, unread messages and arrivals.

• Project tiles: pin a project to your Dashboard and watch its tasks, finances and next steps turn through.

• Make it yours: drag, resize, duplicate and close widgets, or start from a ready-made Dashboard type for your role (Principal, Designer, Purchasing, Bookkeeper and more).

• Name it: choose what Walter calls you.

• Everyone sees only what they should: each person's Dashboard shows only the projects, figures and records their role can open.

Finances, rebuilt

Estimates, invoices, retainers, purchase orders, change orders, bills and expenses now share one editor, so everything looks and works the same way.

Estimates and invoices

• Options and alternates: offer finishes and alternates, and let your client choose. Prices, tax, freight and deposits follow their picks.

• Line by line: clients approve, decline or ask for changes on each line, then sign. Signatures, initials and multiple signers are all supported.

• Your deposit, your way: take a deposit on the whole document or line by line, and let clients pay it when they approve.

• Anything approved can be paid for: if a client approves one item and declines the rest, they can pay for that item.

• Convert to invoice: an approved estimate becomes a draft invoice with only the client's choices, and can make purchase orders for each vendor at the same time.

• Payment schedules in dollars or percentages, change orders with client approval, and reminders that go out on their own.

• Preview as client shows exactly what your client will see.

Getting paid

• Pay online: clients pay by card or bank transfer through WorkPay or Stripe, right from the invoice.

• Overpayments: record what the client actually paid; anything extra stays on their account as credit.

• Refunds and credits: refund a payment, take an amount off the balance, or credit the client's account. Each one does exactly what it says.

• Retainers: collect money before anything is approved, then apply it to invoices as you go.

• Ready to invoice: gathers your billable time, expenses and fees in one place.

Purchasing and procurement

• Purchase orders by vendor, with each vendor's own view, payment schedules and acknowledgements.

• Bills: match a bill to its purchase order and see price changes, freight and returns at a glance. Bill a price difference to the client in one step.

• Vendor returns with restocking fees and credits that are applied to the vendor's next bill.

• Expediting: track every piece from order to install.

• Reports: vendor, purchase order, product, installation, margin and variance.

Expenses

• Log card charges, checks and mileage, attach receipts, and bill clients with markup.

For design-build studios

• Retainage, cost codes, allowances and contingency, cost-plus billing, pay applications and lien waivers.

Bring your history

• Import past invoices, estimates and expenses. Past documents stay in your records and never reach QuickBooks.

QuickBooks, in step with everything

• Everything goes to QuickBooks when you save it:

  • invoices, estimates and payments

  • deposits, refunds, credits and retainer draws

  • purchase orders, bills, bill payments, vendor credits and expenses

• The right accounts, automatically:

  • Product money is held in Client Deposits until the piece is installed.

  • Design fees post to Design Income, and billed time posts to its service's income account.

  • Re-billed expenses post to reimbursable income.

  • Tax is never counted as income.

• Drafts never go. Archiving changes nothing in QuickBooks; only Void and Delete do.

• Sync Center: see what's synced, what's waiting and what needs a fix, in plain words. A record that differs from QuickBooks turns amber and says why.

• Before the first sync: your clients and vendors are matched to the ones already in QuickBooks, so nothing is duplicated.

Client portal

• Approve products: clients see "Review item" on pieces waiting for them, open the piece beside the list, and approve it or ask for changes. Once they answer, the piece shows Approved or Not approved.

• Clear amounts: clients only see what they owe and can pay, and a draft is never shown to them before you send it.

Comms

• Ask a question: send a message as a question. It waits in the Dashboard's Needs attention for the people you asked until they reply.

Tasks

• One rule for overdue: a task is overdue the same way everywhere. A finished task or one on an on-hold project is never overdue.

• Progress by estimated hours: a new setting in Settings › Tasks.

• Campus lessons now appear in Tasks for everyone assigned.

Leads

• A won lead leaves every open-lead count, and the default first stage is Discovery.

Settings and permissions

• Permission presets now match each role exactly: Standard contributor, Manager, Purchasing Agent and Bookkeeper.

• Protected statuses: the product, estimate, invoice and purchase order statuses Workroom relies on can't be renamed or removed, so nothing that depends on them breaks. Your own custom statuses stay fully editable.

• Settings › Dashboard: set your studio's default Dashboard for each role.

Fixes

• Email attachments: they always end in .pdf, including from your connected Gmail or Outlook.

• Automation emails: {company-name} now fills in your studio's name, and it's in the merge-field list.

• Dates: new documents and payments use your studio's own date, even late in the evening.

• Purchase orders: a new one keeps its project, and its bill saves.

• Header timer: it keeps its real start time after you reload.

Everything that has reached Workroom since the October 13 update.
Watch a demo of our new Spec Sets below!

Well hello friend. Welcome Spec Sets.

Spec Sets (Library)

• One Spec Sets window for spec sheets, schedules, room finish matrices and selection boards, opened from the Library.

• Ready-made layouts to start from (spec book, FF&E schedule, finish schedule by trade, budget by room and more), plus your own layouts saved and reused.

• Real PDFs, with sharp, selectable text and links that work. Also available as Word and spreadsheet files.

• Add mood boards, PDFs from the project's Documents, product attachments and your own cover to a Spec Set.

• Project schedules: save a schedule to a project, then post new versions to your Comms rooms. Each version shows what changed since the last one, and you can share a live link that always shows the latest version.

• Update schedules: when products change, refresh every schedule for that project from the Library in one go.

• Add to documents: file the PDF in the project's Documents, in a folder named Spec sheet, Schedule, Matrix or Boards.

• Add as product attachment: a spec sheet for a single product can be attached straight to that product.

Client portal settings

• A Client portal tab on every project. Choose who has access and which sections each person sees.

• Preview portal: see exactly what a new client will see, before you invite anyone.

• Clients see when you've written to them, with message counts, dots on their chats and a sound.

Automations: approval step

• A new Check step pauses an automation until someone approves it. They get an "Automation Needs Approval" task that says what it's about, with Approve and Not approve.

• Not approve stops the automation there. Approving later, even days later, lets it carry on.

Scheduled jobs (Settings › Assistant)

• Optional jobs that post into a team Comms room:

  • a weekday brief;

  • a weekly check of purchase orders against the Library;

  • a weekly install-readiness check.

Reinstate archived contacts

• Archived contacts, vendors and contractors now have a Reinstate button in the Archived view, which puts them back in your main list.

Improved

Estimates and invoices

• Totals now count sub-items correctly, so margins, client subtotals and PDFs agree with each other.

• When a client approves only some items, they're charged only for what they approved.

• Markup and the internal memo are hidden from clients by default. They appear only if you turn them on, in the client view and in PDF exports.

• New estimate and invoice numbers follow your numbering settings, and the settings preview shows exactly what the next number will look like.

• Invoices made from Ready to invoice carry the project code (INV-CODE-001).

• Editing an estimate is titled "Edit Estimate".

• The estimate editor opens faster.

Client portal

• Home always opens on a project, and Overview is its own page.

• Notifications and the side rail name the project they're about.

• Invoices and estimates open in the side panel.

• Form responses you choose to share show on the Overview, and the contract there opens when clicked.

• Rooms and phases from the project's settings show on the portal.

• Product names, photos and client prices show correctly, and archived products stay out of view.

Library

• Bulk edit offers your own statuses, rooms and vendors.

• Purchase orders fill Sidemark and your other Library fields from the product.

• Products clipped from the web land in the right fields.

• Inside a project, room choices come from that project's own rooms.

Budget: Allocated amounts in budget categories show as money ($54,361), like the columns next to them.

Apps and sidebar: Calendar, Leads, Quotes, Automations, Ready to Invoice, Forms and Asana are back on the Apps page, and switching one on shows it in the sidebar.

Confirmations: actions that create something, like Create POs, Reinstate or Add as sub-item, now use a green confirm box instead of the red delete-style box.

Fixed

Client portal

• Clients no longer see "That isn't available from your account" popping up again and again.

• A client with more than one contact record keeps a single login, so every project you share with them shows up.

• Hidden invoices stay hidden everywhere in the portal, including Waiting for you.

• A client's message always lands where your team can read it.

• Changes to a person's own portal sections save.

Invoices and payments

• A paid invoice opens in the editor with all its lines, including invoices made from Ready to invoice.

• Payments can be recorded on a new retainer; it no longer shows $0 due.

• Invoice numbers never pick up a retainer's prefix.

• Push to invoice and the expense picker on invoices work as expected.

• A card processing fee is added only when WorkPay is connected and the document passes the fee on.

• The send dialog points to the right place for email templates (Settings › Studio › Outbound email).

Contacts and team

• Contact edits save every field, and a failed save tells you why.

• Renaming a team member updates their name everywhere, Tasks › Workload included.

• Product changelog entries show the right person's name, once.

Calendar: contacts added as guests show in the event's guest list.

Timelogs

• Time on a paid invoice shows as Paid.

• The edit window shows the same phase as the list.

Contracts: an attached PDF opens for clients signing on their phone, older iPhones included.

Library: sub-items show again under their products.

Tasks: a project you add shows up right away, with its name.