--- title: "How It Works | Punch Construction Intelligence Platform" description: "Reach Punch from the portal, your inbox, or the job site. Punch does the work using your company's rules, hands back finished records, and keeps you in control." canonical: https://buildwithpunch.com/how-it-works --- [](https://buildwithpunch.com/) [Book a demo](https://calendly.com/taylor-punch/30min?hide_event_type_details=1&hide_gdpr_banner=1) HOW IT WORKS # A message in. Finished work out. Reach Punch from the office, your inbox, or the job site. Punch follows your company's rules, completes the work, and brings anything that needs your approval back to you. [Step 1 ### Reach Punch anywhere Whether you use the web portal, email, or the mobile app, Punch meets you where you are. ](#reach-punch)[Step 2 ### Punch does the work Your message becomes action, run against your company’s rules. ](#punch-runs-it)[Step 3 ### You get finished records Reports, schedules, and coded expenses come back done. ](#finished-records)[Step 4 ### You stay in control Approvals, flags, and full visibility on every step Punch takes. ](#stay-in-control) In the illustrations:Punch actingNeeds your eyes STEP 1: REACH PUNCH ANYWHERE ## Three ways to start the loop Whether you're at your desk, in your inbox, or on the job site, Punch meets you where you are. Every channel feeds the same loop. ### Web Portal An AI-native interface where Punch does the work right in front of you. Chat with your purchasing agent, watch Punch create and edit purchase orders live as you talk, and approve its recommendations with a single click. A purchase order that traditionally takes hours — sometimes days — to reach the supplier goes out in about 60 seconds. ### Email Work with Punch through your inbox, just like emailing a coworker. Punch reads, takes action, and reports back what it did, and it's a real conversation: reply to ask where framing stands against budget and the answer comes back by email. Forward an invoice, receipt photo, or PDF and Punch ingests it, codes it to the right job, and matches invoices against the purchase order automatically. When Punch emails a supplier, you're CC'd. It also writes back unprompted with exception alerts and a Daily Digest built around the jobs and numbers you watch. A request from the field becomes recorded action — from your inbox. ### Mobile App Submit orders from the job site, approve requests from the road, speak a daily report while you walk the job, or chat with Punch. It's the same experience as the portal, optimized for mobile. STEP 2: PUNCH DOES THE WORK ## Your message becomes action, run by your company's rules However the message arrives, Punch reads it and runs the right process. Each workflow has its own page, where you'll find the depth. [Product ### Daily Reports Walk the job, speak the report — photos, delays, and tasks included. See how it works](https://buildwithpunch.com/product/daily-reports)[Product ### Tasks Every follow-up routed to the right person, tied to the record that started it. See how it works](https://buildwithpunch.com/product/tasks)[Product ### Purchase Orders Tell Punch what you need; the PO, the supplier email, and the tracking follow. See how it works](https://buildwithpunch.com/product/purchase-orders)[Product ### Supplier Pricing & RFQs RFQs out, quotes bid-leveled side by side, budget checked before the PO. See how it works](https://buildwithpunch.com/product/supplier-pricing)[Product ### Warehouse Inventory Materials held in your warehouse, tracked as stock or staged for a specific job. See how it works](https://buildwithpunch.com/product/inventory)[Product ### Built-in Spreadsheets One central project spot to track anything, with Punch or your team keeping it current. See how it works](https://buildwithpunch.com/product/spreadsheets)[Product ### Photos Hub Every jobsite photo described by AI, tagged, and searchable — linked to the report it came from. See how it works](https://buildwithpunch.com/product/photos)[Product ### Invoices & Pay Apps Supplier invoices matched line by line against the PO before payment. See how it works](https://buildwithpunch.com/product/invoices)[Product ### Subcontracts Subcontract commitments created and tracked next to the rest of the job. See how it works](https://buildwithpunch.com/product/subcontracts)[Product ### Scheduling The full Gantt — imported in minutes, kept current by the field, balanced across jobs. See how it works](https://buildwithpunch.com/product/scheduling)[Product ### Expenses Field expenses captured into the same job record as everything else. See how it works](https://buildwithpunch.com/product/expenses)[Product ### Job Costing Know what every job is costing — while there’s still time to act. See how it works](https://buildwithpunch.com/product/job-costing) ### The rules are yours: Punch learns your business Punch learns the way your company works. You tell it the rules in a living **company playbook**, the way you would explain them to a new hire: who approves what, which suppliers to use, how jobs are coded, what needs to be reported, and what should never happen. Each project layers a **project playbook** on top with this job's budget, cost codes, contacts, pricing, and constraints. That context stays with the workflow, so a short field request can turn into finished work without someone stopping to rebuild the background every time. ### Start the job budget from the estimate. Punch learns your estimate formats and how you turn a winning estimate into a job budget. Instead of re-keying the budget, your team reviews the mapping and makes any changes. [See how Punch runs Job Costing →](https://buildwithpunch.com/product/job-costing) ### Before the PO: competitive pricing on tap Before Punch creates a purchase order, it can go get pricing. And it starts from memory: Punch knows your suppliers, remembers the prices you've actually paid for each material from each one, and applies your negotiated rates and project quotes automatically. Ask for material in plain English and it matches your request to the right supplier line item. When you need fresh numbers it sends RFQs directly and levels the returning quotes side by side so you pick the best price line by line. If the order would push a cost code over budget, Punch tells you in the chat before the PO goes out. [See how Punch runs Supplier Pricing & RFQs →](https://buildwithpunch.com/product/supplier-pricing) ### Built-in spreadsheets: one central place for everything you track That bid-leveling sheet isn't a one-off. It's one of Punch's built-in spreadsheets. Every project has a central spot for them, everyone on the job can open them, and they can track just about anything: hardware packages, allowance selections, inspection dates, whatever this job needs written down in rows and columns. The difference from the spreadsheet sprawl you know: these don't live on someone's desktop, and you don't have to maintain them. Ask, and the Punch agent builds the tracker and manages it for you. Or open it and work in it yourself, like any spreadsheet. Either way it stays in one central location the whole team shares, which is what keeps the project organized. [See how Punch runs Built-in Spreadsheets →](https://buildwithpunch.com/product/spreadsheets) Ask for a tracker and Punch builds it — then keeps working in it, right where the whole team can see it. STEP 3: YOU GET FINISHED RECORDS ## From field update to finished record What comes back from the loop isn't a to-do list. It's the finished work. Walk the job and talk: Punch turns the spoken walkthrough into an organized daily report covering labor, deliveries, delays, and photos, then generates the follow-up tasks and alerts from the same update. The photos work harder than attachments: Punch's AI describes and tags each one, and they land in a searchable hub organized by project, each photo linked back to the report it came from. The schedule stays current the same way, with Punch reading field activity against your company rules and alerting the right people when things move. And expenses go from receipt to books: coded to the job, routed for approval, synced to your accounting system. This is where the loop pays off: time spent on paperwork drops by about 90%. [See Daily Reports in depth →](https://buildwithpunch.com/product/daily-reports)[See Scheduling in depth →](https://buildwithpunch.com/product/scheduling)[See Expenses in depth →](https://buildwithpunch.com/product/expenses) ### From the record to the right person Whether it comes from a spoken update, a forwarded email, or a flag Punch raises on its own, the follow-up that belongs to a record gets created as a task, scoped to the project, and routed to the right person. No handoff meeting. No sticky note on the door. The whole team sees open tasks in one shared view. Assignees get notified by email, push notification, or in the portal, and they can assign or reassign work just as easily. When a task is marked done, it closes the flag that opened it. The daily report, invoice issue, or cost-code warning that started the chain stays current, not just the task list. Every channel feeds the same task system: a spoken job walk, an email exchange with the agent, a rule triggered by company context, or someone creating a task manually. All four land in the same place, tied to the same project and record. That means the next person who picks it up has everything they need without asking. [See how tasks flow from Daily Reports →](https://buildwithpunch.com/product/daily-reports)[See Tasks in depth →](https://buildwithpunch.com/product/tasks) STEP 4: YOU STAY IN CONTROL ## Punch does the work. You make the calls. Nothing commits without you. Punch's recommendations come to you for one-click approval in the portal, by email, or as a push notification, and orders that need sign-off wait until they get it. When something doesn't add up, Punch flags it instead of pushing it through: invoice discrepancies, budget warnings, and order confirmations reach you in real time, and Punch waits for your instructions before approving payment. You set the guardrails up front, including which materials can be ordered, which suppliers can receive orders, and what pricing applies on each project, so off-list orders are blocked before they go out. And you always see the whole conversation: you're CC'd on all supplier communication, so every step Punch takes is on the record. Nothing commits without you — approvals, flags, and the whole conversation on the record. THE PAYOFF ## Every job makes the next one smarter Run bid-to-books through Punch and something compounds along the way: data. Every purchase order records what you actually paid per material and per supplier. That history rolls up across jobs, makes price drift visible, and feeds the spend reports you'll bid and buy with on the next one. [See how the data compounds in Job Costing →](https://buildwithpunch.com/product/job-costing) Every purchase order records what you actually paid — and becomes the pricing you bid the next job with. GETTING STARTED ## One call. Live in less than 48 hours. It starts with a scoping call where we learn how you run jobs. From there, you can go live in less than 48 hours with whichever workflow matters most to your team, and you're looking at real data from your own jobs almost immediately. It's not a trial and it's not a lite version; it's day one of the rollout. A broader rollout across purchase orders, invoices, subcontracts, and scheduling takes weeks, not months, and the data starts compounding across every workflow you add. [See how pricing works →](https://buildwithpunch.com/pricing) ## See Punch work on one of your workflows. Bring one real workflow. We'll show you how Punch handles it using your rules, your approvals, and your job information. [Book a demo](https://calendly.com/taylor-punch/30min?hide_event_type_details=1&hide_gdpr_banner=1)