Projects on the road

For services and project-based businesses, the mobile app has a full PM module. It is the same Projects backend the web app talks to, but the mobile UI is tuned for someone on a site, not behind a desk.

This page is for project managers, site supervisors, and field workers.

What lives in projects

A project has:

• A scope (description, budget, BOQ if any)
• Tasks (assigned, due-dated, dependencies)
• Milestones
• Updates (notes, photos, recordings)
• Approvals (formal sign-offs from clients or internal stakeholders)
• Finance (budget vs. actual, expenses, invoices, collections, payments)
• Issues & risks (open list with severity)
• Attachments (drawings, contracts, photos, signed PDFs)

Most of these are accessible from a single project detail screen — tabs at the top.

The home view

The mobile Projects screen defaults to:

• My tasks — anything assigned to you, sorted by due date
• Updates — recent updates on projects you follow
• Approvals waiting — items you need to sign off

Three tabs, no scroll-down rabbit hole. Tap a task to open it; everything else is one tap away.

Task updates

Updates are the main mobile-native interaction. On a task, you can:

• Add a text note
• Attach a photo (camera or gallery)
• Record a voice note (transcribed to text, attached as both)
• Mark % complete
• Change status (in progress / blocked / done)

Updates are local-first — they sync when network returns. A photo taken in a basement with no signal is queued, uploaded later, and shows the same to everyone.

Approvals

An approval is a structured ask: "Please sign off on this task / milestone / change order."

When you have an approval waiting, the mobile app:

• Shows it as a chip on the home view
• Sends a push (if enabled)
• Reminds you the morning of the due date

To approve:

1. Open the approval
2. Read the description and attachments
3. Tap Approve or Reject
4. Optionally add a note
5. If the policy requires it, sign on-screen (touch / pen)

Rejections require a reason. The system routes the rejection back to the requester with the reason.

Signatures

For change orders, completion certificates, and other formal sign-offs, mobile has built-in signature capture:

• The signer taps Sign
• A signature pad opens (full-screen on phone)
• They sign with a finger or stylus
• The signature image is attached to the document
• A PDF is generated server-side combining the document + signature + timestamp

The PDF is then accessible to all parties via the approval record. Signatures are not visually compared (we don't do biometrics); they are timestamped, audit-logged, and tied to the signing user's account.

Site visits

For field teams, Site Visit is a structured visit log:

1. Tap Start visit at the site
2. thola geo-tags the start with timestamp
3. You add notes, photos, voice memos through the visit
4. Tap End visit; thola geo-tags the end

The visit is attached to the project and shows on the timeline. Anyone reviewing the project can see when site visits happened and what was captured.

Worker tasks

For workers who are not full employees (subcontractors, day labour, vendor staff), thola supports a worker task flow that doesn't require them to have a full thola account.

• Manager creates a worker task assigned to a phone number
• The worker gets a WhatsApp link
• They tap, see the task in a lightweight web view (no install required)
• They update via the same interface
• The PM sees their updates inline

This is one of the most-used features at construction and field-service customers.

Project finance

The Finance tab inside a project shows:

• Budget vs. spent — at the project level and per category
• Open POs linked to the project
• Expenses logged against the project (with attachments)
• Invoices raised for the project
• Collections received against those invoices

All of this is connected to the main Finance module — project-level numbers roll up to the workspace-level dashboards.

Risk & health

Each project gets a health score — a 0–100 number reflecting on-track status. It blends:

• Tasks past due
• Milestones at risk
• Open issues with severity
• Budget burn rate vs. expected

A project in the red gets surfaced as a workspace-level Red Flag. The Project agent will suggest interventions before it crosses into critical.

Common questions

Can multiple workers update the same task at once? Yes. The op log is per-task-update, not per-task. Two updates on the same task are appended in order; nothing gets lost.

Can I create a project from mobile? You can create the scaffold (name, basic details, first tasks) from mobile. For complex setups with budgets, BOQ, custom approval routing, use the web app.

Are project documents searchable on-device? Yes — within the workspace data already synced to the device. For older documents not in local cache, search hits the server.

→ Next: Attendance & fieldwork