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Hi all, I’m pretty new to both Airtable and Make, and I’m helping a friend in the construction business (mainly renovations), set up an Airtable system for his workflow. I’m stuck on the best way to create Quote Request records for subcontractors.

Here’s the setup:

  • Jobs table – All jobs for each project (linked to Projects table).
  • Each Job is allocated a Trade (Electrics, Carpentry, Plumbing, etc.).
  • After reviewing all Jobs for a project, my friend allocates specific Subcontractors (multi-select linked to Subcontractors table) who should receive quote requests.  This is done by Trade.  He has Subcontractors that could cover more than one Trade.
  • He does not want to auto-allocate subcontractors by trade, as he may not ask all subcontractors in a trade to quote.  However, not sure whether auto-allocating and then removing subcontractors not wanting to send quote requests to, may somehow be a better option - thinking about time consumption in deciding and allocating subcontractors in comparison to just removing those not relevant? 

The goal:
Once subcontractors have been allocated to a Job (although ideally a group selection by Trade), I need Airtable/Make to:

  1. Create a Quote Request record (in the Quote Requests table) for each Subcontractor combination tSubcontractor x Jobs].
  2. Include all relevant Job details (Room/Area, Description of Work, Photos) in that Quote Request.

My questions:

  • What’s the best Airtable trigger field for Make to use in this setup?
  • Would you recommend creating a junction table between Jobs and Subcontractors to make this easier?
  • Any guidance on how to structure the Make scenario so it creates one Quote Request per subcontractor allocation, without duplicates?

Extra context:

  • His projects start at the project assessment stage (pre-quotation), as his client base is almost guaranteed to accept quotes (99% of the time).
  • Airtable’s native automations don’t seem to be able to handle the multi-select “Subcontractors to Quote” field properly - hence using Make.

Thanks in advance for any help you can offer!

Hey ​@csquared2511,

In short:
1.Best trigger? That will probably depend on your use case but I believe I would have a checkbox or single select at a Project level which could be checked or selected to “Create Quote Requests” for all Jobs without any quote request -which would be based on Job trades. Or you could handle it at a Job level if you do not have too many jobs.
2. Yes I would suggest having a junction table between jobs and Subcontractors -but this would probably be the Quotes table. 
3. I don’t really think you need Make to be honest -unless I am missing something. You might want to check out the video below for the matchmaking process. The “Matches” on the video would be your Quote Requests.

So you would have Subcontractors (Startups on the video)
You would have Jobs (Investors on the video)
This should be matched by a given criteria which is Trades in your case (Sectors and Stages on the video)

 



Does this help? Otherwise please let me know and I’d be happy to dig deeper. Else, feel free to grab a slot and we can go through this together!

Mike, Consultant @ Automatic Nation
 

Does this look right?  If so I’ve set it up here for you to check out

This is all handled within Airtable, and this is what the automation looks like:

re: Would you recommend creating a junction table between Jobs and Subcontractors to make this easier?

 

Hm, the Quote Requests table is technically a junction table between the two, no?

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re: Any guidance on how to structure the Make scenario so it creates one Quote Request per subcontractor allocation, without duplicates?

 

Hm, this is interesting, this implies that you’re currently able to assign the same subcontractor multiple times to a single job, but if it’s just a linked field to the Subcontractor table this shouldn’t be possible and so I feel like I don’t understand how your data’s set up.  Could you provide a screenshot of your tables please?

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re: thinking about time consumption in deciding and allocating subcontractors in comparison to just removing those not relevant? 

Depends how many subcontractors per trade there are and how many you usually ask for quotes?  Like if there are 10 subcons and you usually ask for quotes from 8 of them, then that makes sense.  If you only ask for quotes from 2 then nah

 

 

​@Mike_AutomaticN and ​@TheTimeSavingCo , thank you so much for your responses!  Not only have you both provided me with clear solutions, but it has also helped me realise that Airtable automation has far more advanced functionality than my limited experience has allowed me to realise so far.  Thanks again!

Glad to hear that ​@csquared2511!!

Feel free to send over as many questions as needed :D

Mike, Consultant @ Automatic Nation 

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