Keeping track of the finish materials on a custom home is a lot of work, and most offices are running several homes at once. Material Monitor is one list for all of it, shared by the office on the computer and the crew on their phones.
What you get
Whoever orders, whoever runs the job and whoever is on site can each see where a material stands without asking anyone.
Each job's selections come in from a spreadsheet or an export, and every material keeps its status, dates, vendor, rep and model number.
The dashboard works back from the day a material is needed on site and the vendor's lead time, and shows what has to be ordered now.
Each morning the team gets one email with what needs an OK, what needs ordering, what is due and what arrived.
When a superintendent checks in a delivery on the field app, the office sees it as soon as it is saved.
Connect the inboxes your vendor mail already comes into, and it suggests updates with the vendor's words quoted. Somebody in the office confirms each one, with one exception explained below.
Once a material has a tracking number, Material Monitor checks it with the carrier each day, keeps the expected date current and flags a shipment the carrier reports a problem with.
The office console
The office side runs in a web browser at app.materialmonitor.app. Here are five of its pages.
Step 1
The first page the office opens, with every active job, what needs ordering, what is due this week and what needs a follow-up.
Step 2
One house's whole list, grouped the way you order it, with where each material stands.
Step 3
Everything about one material: where it stands, its dates, who sells it and everything that has happened to it.
Step 4
What vendors have said about materials already on your list, each one waiting for somebody in the office.
Step 5
The emails to reps about orders that have gone quiet, written for you and sent by you.
Vendor mail
Two things update by themselves, and only on a material that already has a tracking number: a shipping notice in a connected inbox, which can set the tracking, the expected date and Shipped, and the carrier's own tracking, which can move the expected date or flag a delay. Everything else it reads becomes a suggestion with the vendor's sentence quoted beside it, and a person confirms or dismisses it. No email and no carrier can mark a material received.
The field app
The field app is the crew's half of Material Monitor, for the superintendent or whoever is on site when the delivery comes. What they record on site is in front of the office right away, and what the office changes shows up on their phones.
Check off what came, mark anything short, damaged or wrong, note where it was put and add a photo.
Search any job by room, material or model number and see where it stands, when it is due and who the rep is.
Missing, wrong, damaged or needed for an inspection. A sentence goes to the office by email and stays on their board until it is handled.
There is an iPhone app for the crew. The office invites each person from the console, and they sign in with a six digit code sent to their email.
The morning email
Everyone on the team who wants it gets one email each morning: what is waiting for an OK, what has to be ordered, what was flagged, what arrived and what vendors and carriers reported. The office's own changes are counted in one gray line at the bottom, and on a day with nothing to report, no email goes out.
Built for
Custom homes and complex renovations carry a long list of finish selections, and every one is an order somebody has to place, track and receive.
A few jobs at a time, each with its own long list of finish orders. Whether a coordinator keeps the list or the owner does it at night, it is built for that desk.
Tile, plumbing fixtures, appliances, lighting, cabinetry, doors, windows and hardware. The long-lead orders where a few quiet weeks leave a trade on site with nothing to install.
The list comes in from a spreadsheet or a selections export, and nothing has to move out of Buildertrend or anything else you run.
Who decides
A wrong status turns into a problem on site, so Material Monitor suggests changes and leaves the decision to somebody in your office.
Vendor mail comes into real people's inboxes, so you can connect or forward several and label each one: the coordinator's, the project manager's, the estimator's, an in-house designer's or a shared one. It only asks about a new sender when a message looks like an order, a shipment, a delivery or a quote.
Two things update by themselves, and only on a material that already has a tracking number: a shipping notice in a connected inbox, which can set the tracking, the expected date and Shipped, and the carrier's own tracking, which can move the expected date or flag a delay. Everything else it reads becomes a suggestion with the vendor's sentence quoted beside it, and a person confirms or dismisses it. No email and no carrier can mark a material received.
Follow-ups are drafts that go out from your own email when you send them. It never sends, replies, moves or deletes anything in an inbox.
Who built it
Lock Ten Studio is run by the co-owner of a custom home building company outside Washington DC. Material Monitor came out of the system his own office uses every day to keep track of finish materials on its jobs.
Common questions
No. They keep emailing the same people they email now. There is no portal for them, nothing to sign up for and no new address to learn.
No. Each job's list comes in from a spreadsheet, a PDF or a selections export from the software you already use, and anything missing you add in a line. It works beside Buildertrend if you have it, and it never logs in to any other system.
Yes. The field app is the crew's half of the same list, on an iPhone: they receive deliveries, look up any material on any job and report problems to the office. The office invites them from the console, and they sign in with a six digit code sent to their email.
Only the ones your office connects or forwards from. Vendor mail usually comes into real people's inboxes, like the coordinator's, the project manager's, the estimator's or an in-house designer's. Some offices also have a shared one. You can connect several and give each one a name. It only reads. It never sends, replies, moves or deletes anything, and it only asks about a new sender when a message looks like an order, a shipment, a delivery or a quote.
Both. Material Monitor works with Microsoft 365 and Google inboxes, by connecting the inbox or by forwarding from it to your own private Material Monitor address.
Never on its own. When an order needs a word, it drafts the follow-up, one email per rep with every open item on it, and you send it from your own email in your own words. Your reps hear from you.
Yes. Once a material has a tracking number, Material Monitor checks it with the carrier each day and keeps the expected date current. If the carrier reports a problem, the material is flagged as delayed and the office hears about it. When the carrier says it was delivered, somebody still confirms it arrived.
You dismiss it and nothing changes. Two things update by themselves, and only on a material that already has a tracking number: a shipping notice in a connected inbox, which can set the tracking, the expected date and Shipped, and the carrier's own tracking, which can move the expected date or flag a delay. Everything else it reads becomes a suggestion with the vendor's sentence quoted beside it, and a person confirms or dismisses it. No email and no carrier can mark a material received.
Somebody in the office signs in at app.materialmonitor.app with a work email and a six digit code, names the company, adds the jobs, brings in each job's selections from a spreadsheet or an export and invites the team. Connecting vendor mail is the last step, and the list works without it.
There is no public price yet. Founding builders talk it through directly with the builder who made it.
Yes. Lock Ten Studio makes software for custom home builders and is run by the co-owner of a building company outside Washington DC. Walkthrough is its field-report app, Handover builds the homeowner's manual and Material Monitor keeps track of the materials in between.
Send a short note about your company and what you build, and the builder who made it will write back himself. A small group of founding builders gets in first, helps decide what comes next and gets founding terms.
Get on the founding list
You will get a real reply from the builder who made it. No mailing list and no sales calls.