Trade Partner Portal

Last reviewed May 2026 · Trade Partners

The Trade Partner Portal gives your framing crews, plumbers, electricians, and every other trade a mobile-first view of the work assigned to them — at no cost to you or to them.

What is the Trade Partner Portal?

It's a separate, free portal for the companies and individuals who work on your jobs. Trade partners log in at sub.lotwright.com and see only the jobs they're assigned to, the tasks they're responsible for, the plans tagged to their trade, and any invoices they've submitted.

Builders retain full control — trade partners cannot see other subs' pricing, your internal margins, or jobs they're not assigned to.

Invite a trade partner

1. Go to Vendors in the sidebar and add the trade company to your vendor directory (company name, primary contact email, trade type).
2. Click Invite to Lotwright on that vendor row.
3. Lotwright sends an invitation email with a secure, single-use link that expires in 14 days.
4. The trade partner creates their account and is automatically connected to your organization.

Once connected, you can assign them to tasks on any job's schedule. They'll see those tasks appear in their portal immediately.

What trade partners see

In their portal, trade partners can:

• My Jobs — A list of all jobs they're assigned work on, across all their builders.
• Tasks — The specific tasks assigned to their trade, with status (pending → in progress → complete).
• Plans — Any plan pages you've delivered to their trade, with acknowledgment required on revision.
• Invoices — Invoice submission and status tracking (pending → approved → paid).
• Messages — Direct messaging with your super or project manager.

Trade partners can only see adjacent schedule phases in read-only context — they see what comes before and after their work but cannot modify it.

Plan delivery and acknowledgment

When you upload plans to a job, you can tag specific pages by trade — "Pages 3–5 go to Framing," "Pages 8–9 go to Electrical." Lotwright delivers those pages to the appropriate trade partners.

Each delivery creates a timestamped, SHA-256 cryptographically signed record. Trade partners must acknowledge receipt before their status changes from "Delivered" to "Acknowledged." This acknowledgment record is court-admissible evidence in warranty disputes — proving what plan version a trade saw and when.

See the Plan Delivery guide for the full detail on forensic records.

Invoice submission

Trade partners can submit invoices directly through their portal. The invoice appears in your AP queue with fraud detection signals pre-run — insurance expiry status, vendor account age, and duplicate detection. You review and approve (or reject) from the AP queue.

All approved invoice amounts flow into the 1099-NEC tracker automatically — no manual data entry at year-end.

Insurance expiry warnings

Lotwright tracks insurance expiration dates for each vendor. When a trade partner's insurance is approaching expiry:

• 7 days before — Warning shown to you and the trade partner.
• 1 day before — Final reminder with a one-click upload link for the trade partner.
• Expiration day — The trade partner's tasks flip to "insurance lapsed" status. They can still see jobs but cannot mark tasks complete or submit invoices until a current certificate is uploaded.

You can configure whether to hard-block or soft-warn in Settings → Workflow.

Cost to you

The Trade Partner Portal is free — included in every Lotwright subscription with no per-trade fees. You can invite unlimited trade partners across unlimited jobs.