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Frequently Asked Questions

Find answers to common questions about Four Stripes, from getting started and pricing to projects, workflows, and integrations. If you still need help, our team is here for you.

Getting Started & Accounts

Get comfortable with Four Stripes from the start. Find answers to common questions about creating your account, signing in, setting up your workspace, and getting ready to begin your first project.

Go to app.myfourstripes.com in your browser (Chrome or Safari recommended) and log in with your email and password. Because it runs in the browser, your workspace is available on any device and you’re always on the latest version – no app updates required.

From the Sign Up page, enter your email and check your inbox for a verification code. Enter the code to move to the Account Set Up screen, fill in your account details, accept the Terms & Conditions, and submit. You’ll land on Workspace setup, where you add your company name and logo. From there you can invite your team or skip it for now. Once you see the All Set screen you’re taken to your Four Stripes dashboard.

That means an account already exists for that email. Go to the login page and click Forgot Password to reset it, or reach out to your workspace admin if you think you should already have access. Still stuck? Contact support at support@myfourstripes.com or call 1-888-681-0408.

On the login page, click Forgot Password, enter your email, and use the reset link sent to your inbox.

Three moves.

  1. First, open Settings → Workspace → Firm Profile and add your logo, brand colors and client-facing email – everything your clients receive is branded from there.
  2. Second, go to Projects → New Project and set up your first job.
  3. Third, open that project’s Project Roadmap, which arrives already built, and start assigning or editing benchmarks. The welcome video on your first login walks through all three.

Four Stripes shows short guided tips as you move through the app for the first time. Use the “Hints” lightbulb toggle in the left sidebar to turn them on or off. You can turn them back on any time you want a refresher.

Yes. If you work with more than one firm, you can be a member of several workspaces and switch between them from the workspace selector. Each workspace has its own projects, team, settings and subscription.

Click Support in the left navigation, email support@myfourstripes.com, or call 1-888-681-0408.

Account (Settings → Account) is you. Add your photo, name, job title and password. 

Firm Profile (Settings → Workspace) is your studio. The logo, colors and contact details that appear on everything your clients see. Changing your Account affects only you; changing the Firm Profile affects the whole workspace.

Subscriptions, Billing & Workspaces

Your Four Stripes account should be just as easy to manage as your projects. Find answers to common questions about subscriptions, billing, payments, workspace setup, and managing your firm details.

Every new workspace starts with a 30-day free trial on either plan. You’ll add a credit card when you choose your plan at sign-up, but you won’t be charged until the trial ends. If Four Stripes isn’t right for you, cancel before day 31 and you won’t pay anything. You can see how many trial days are left anytime under Settings → Billing.

There are two Founders plans. Both include every Four Stripes feature.

Annual (Best Value): $59 per user/month, billed annually. 

Includes 3 complimentary months in your first year (your 30-day trial counts as part of those 3 months), a savings of $228 per user. We’ll also set up and import your first workspace project for you, a $295 value.

Monthly: $69 per user/month, billed monthly. 

Includes a 30-day risk-free trial, your Founders rate locked for your first year, and flexible month-to-month billing.

Founders pricing is available for a limited time.

Project Roadmap, Finish Schedule + pricing, Client Portal + RFAs, Design Deck, Project and Team management, Time tracking, QuickBooks integration, Project files, Claude + ChatGPT workflows, Priority Tasks + notifications, and Live Office Hours + recorded sessions. Procurement (purchasing, order status, shipping and procurement details) is coming soon.

Pricing is per user. Each person on your team who has a Four Stripes login is billed at your plan’s per-user rate.

Nothing is charged during your 30-day trial. On day 31, the Monthly plan bills your first month, then renews each month. The Annual plan bills the rest of your first year in one payment on day 31, then renews once a year.

Yes. On either plan, you can cancel free of charge any time during your 30-day trial. After the trial, the Monthly plan can be cancelled anytime, and your cancellation takes effect at the end of the month you’ve paid for. The Annual plan is a one-year commitment: cancelling stops your next renewal, and you keep access until the end of the year you’ve paid for. Annual payments are not refunded.

Enter it on the checkout page when you choose your plan and add your card. Look for the promotion or discount code field. The discount shows before you confirm.

Go to Settings → Billing to see your current plan. Click Manage Billing to switch plans, update your card or download invoices. Payment details are stored securely with Stripe, not in Four Stripes.

On the Annual plan, our team will set up and import your first project for you, one per workspace. Send us your existing Finish Schedule and project files, and you’ll start with a real project already loaded. For more projects, or on the Monthly plan, our Concierge Project Migration service is available starting at $295 per project, with discounted bundles for 3, 5 or 10 projects. Contact support@myfourstripes.com to book it.

Your Workspace is your whole team account – it is where your subscription, team members and branding live, under Settings.

A Project is an individual client job inside that workspace, with its own Project Roadmap, Finish Schedule, budget, contacts and files. One workspace, as many projects as you need.

Go to Settings → Workspace → Firm Profile. Add your firm name, client-facing email, website, logo and brand colors. Click Save changes once you’ve made your changes. The live preview on the right is the template for the email your clients receive.

Go to Settings → Manage Team and open the invite window. Enter the person’s email, choose a role, and send. They’ll get an invitation carrying the permissions for that role. Billing, subscription and invoicing actions are limited to Owners and Admins, so a designer can’t trigger them by accident.

Settings → Culture controls what your team sees when they log in. Let the greeting follow the time of day or write your own message, post announcements to everyone’s Home page, and add teammates’ birthdays so Four Stripes celebrates them on the day, in your workspace’s timezone..

Go to Settings → Notifications. Notifications are grouped by category, including Tasks and Deadlines, Projects and Approvals, Procurement and Financial, Comments and Mentions, Design Decks and Files, Product Updates, and Weekly Summaries. Open a category to get more specific, and toggle each email on or off. Changes save as you go.

Settings → Project Defaults holds your firm’s Default Categories, Default Locations and Product Types. Categories and locations are copied into each new project when you create it. After that, each project manages its own list from its Finish Schedule. Changes you make in Project Defaults apply to projects you create from then on, not to projects already running. Product Types are different: one list is shared across every project in your workspace. Your team picks from it whenever they add a Finish Schedule item, and each type controls which fields appear on that item.Settings → Project Defaults holds your firm’s Default Categories, Default Locations and Product Types. Categories and locations are copied into each new project when you create it. After that, each project manages its own list from its Finish Schedule. Changes you make in Project Defaults apply to projects you create from then on, not to projects already running. Product Types are different: one list is shared across every project in your workspace. Your team picks from it whenever they add a Finish Schedule item, and each type controls which fields appear on that item.

Projects

Every project starts with a strong foundation. Find answers to common questions about creating projects, managing project details, budgets, pricing, and keeping the work organized as it moves forward.

Step 1: To create a new project, select the + Add Project button to the right of the screen.

Step 2: Enter the name of your project in the Project Name field and populate the other fields as best as possible.

Step 3: Add a project image (typically the residence or building you’re working on) for easy recognition.

No. Builder is optional, along with everything except Project Name and Client Name. You can assign a Builder at any time from the project’s Overview tab. Simply click on the ⋮ menu at the top right and select “edit project”.

Project Budget is the target amount you set for the job. Project Total and Remaining Budget update automatically as you add costed items to the Finish Schedule, so you always know where a project stands against its budget. Individual categories track against their own budgets inside the Finish Schedule.

Most pricing in Four Stripes is calculated per vendor: each vendor carries its own Designer, Client and Retail multipliers and those drive the numbers on individual Finish Schedule items.

Each vendor has a Base cost type and a set of multipliers, set up under Settings > Contacts > Vendors. When you enter what the vendor quoted for an item, Four Stripes automatically applies those multipliers to calculate the Vendor (Base), Designer, Client, and Retail costs – you can preview the math live while editing the vendor. Cost Markup is the percentage added to Designer Cost to produce Client Cost at the project level – enter it as a whole number, so a 20% markup is 20.

  • Vendor (Base): What the item costs you from the vendor
  • Designer: What you actually pay, once shipping, receiving, storage and delivery are accounted for
  • Client: What you charge your client
  • Retail: What the client would normally pay elsewhere


Enter $1,450 from a vendor with standard multipliers, for example, and Designer, Client and Retail populate instantly. You can preview the exact math live while editing a vendor. Above your items, a summary bar shows the running total for each tier plus your profit margin.

No, there is no project limit.

Project Roadmap

The Project Roadmap helps you see what’s happening now and what comes next. Find answers to common questions about phases, benchmarks, subtasks, assignments, due dates, and tracking progress throughout a project.

The Project Roadmap organizes a project into phases. Phase I: Schematic Design, Phase II: Design Development, and Phase III: Construction Admin and FF&E with each containing benchmarks and their subtasks.

It arrives already built, so you’re editing a real project plan rather than building a task list from scratch. It gives your whole team one place to track progress through every stage of a job. The Roadmap is easily adjustable to suit the way your team works on a project.

Yes. When you set up a new project, you can start from a roadmap template that fits the job, such as hard scope only, hard scope plus FF&E, FF&E only, or a blank roadmap you build yourself. Editing one project’s roadmap changes only that project, so your other projects aren’t affected.

Open the project and click the Project Roadmap tab in the top navigation. You can also jump straight there from the Current Benchmark card on the project Overview via View Full Roadmap. Once inside, you can expand all phases, filter by assignee or status, and search across the whole roadmap.

It pulls from the current or next upcoming benchmark on that project’s Project Roadmap, so the project list always shows you where each job actually stands.

Benchmarks are the major milestones within each phase of a project. Subtasks are the individual pieces of work required to complete a benchmark. As you mark subtasks complete, the parent benchmark’s progress updates itself.

Within a phase, click the ⋮ menu at the far right of the benchmark and choose Edit Benchmark to rename it in your firm’s own language, or Delete Benchmark to remove one you don’t use.

Open the benchmark to reveal its subtasks, then click the ⋮ menu at the far right of the subtask and select Edit or Delete.

At the top right of the Project Roadmap, click Add + and choose Benchmark or Subtask. You can also add a subtask from within a phase – below the existing subtasks you’ll see + Add Subtask.

Yes. Grab any subtask by its drag handle and move it into the order your team actually works in.

Click any subtask row to open the Edit Task panel, where you can set the Due Date, Status and Primary Assignee, then Save Changes.

Not Started, In Progress, In Review and Completed. Change a subtask’s status from the status pill on its row; the parent benchmark’s status and progress bar update automatically.

Priority Tasks is your personal to-do view across every project. Any roadmap subtask assigned to you appears there, and also on the Priority Tasks card on your Home page, alongside your other deadlines. Click a task to jump to it in its project’s roadmap.ly.

Finish Schedule

The Finish Schedule keeps product details, pricing, selections, and approvals connected in one place. Find answers to common questions about adding and importing items, managing categories and locations, pricing, statuses, and sharing schedules.

Open a project and click its Finish Schedule tab. You can toggle between By Category and By Location views, and use the search box or Status filter to narrow the list.

Click Add Item (or New Item on a schedule that already has entries) to open the Add Finish Item panel. Item Name and Category are required.

You can also add an image, Location, Status, Product Type, Source Link, Vendor, Subcontractor, Description, quantity, unit and pricing. Click Add Finish Item to save.

Yes. Four Stripes takes Excel or CSV files, one sheet at a time. If your schedule has a tab for each category, import them one by one. If everything is on one sheet, it comes across in a single pass. (Apple Numbers files aren’t supported, so export to Excel first.)

Before you import, make sure your items have somewhere to land. In the Finish Schedule, open the ⋮ menu → Manage → Locations and add the rooms your spreadsheet uses. If your sheet says Primary Bath, add a Primary Bath location. Do the same for Categories. Five minutes here saves a lot of clean-up later.

To import, open the ⋮ menu → Import and upload your file. On the Review Import screen, our AI matches each of your columns to a Four Stripes field and shows a confidence score. Your headers don’t have to match ours. Columns it isn’t sure about are marked Manual and left out rather than guessed. Change any mapping you like, or choose a different sheet, then click Confirm Import. Nothing enters your schedule until you do.
When the import finishes, Four Stripes lists any rows it skipped and why. These are usually section headers, subtotals or blank lines. Click Import another sheet for the next tab, or View items to see your schedule.

A Review flag isn’t an error. It marks a spot where Four Stripes had to make a guess during import. Hover over the flag to see exactly what happened. For example, if the spreadsheet said Mudroom and there’s no matching location, the item comes in as Unmatched Location. Categories it doesn’t recognize go to Miscellaneous. Nothing is dropped. Open the item, fix the flagged field, and save. The flag clears itself.

No. Spreadsheets don’t store images in a way the software can read, so imported items arrive with an empty image slot. Your product links do come across, though. Map your URL column during Review Import, and the Source link on each item opens the manufacturer’s page with their photos, specs and current pricing. To add an image in Four Stripes itself, open the item and upload it. You can do this as you go. pricing. To add an image in Four Stripes itself, open the item and upload it. You can do this as you go.

There isn’t a separate notes field on Finish Schedule items yet, so map your notes column to Description on the Review Import screen. That keeps the information with the item instead of losing it.

Yes. Four Stripes connects directly to Claude and ChatGPT, so your AI assistant can read and update your workspace. For example, attach a vendor quote PDF and ask your assistant to import it into a project’s Finish Schedule. If the vendor isn’t set up yet, it will tell you, so you can add the vendor and its pricing formula first. Pricing is then calculated using that vendor’s multipliers. Always review the imported items before sending them to a client.

Items are archived rather than deleted straight away, so nothing is lost by accident. Archiving removes the item from the active schedule and from your budget totals. To bring it back, open the archived view and click Restore. To remove an archived item for good, choose permanent delete and type DELETE to confirm. If you don’t see the delete option, your user permissions most likely need to be changed. Lead designers, project owners, admins, and team leads can delete items by default. If your role is Team Member, ask your workspace owner to turn on the delete setting for that role.

Source Link is where you paste a URL to the product page on the vendor’s website, so anyone on the project can find the item quickly.

Click the ⋮ menu at the very right of the item field in the Finish Schedule to open it, make your changes, and save.

Draft, Pending Client Approval, Approved – Ready to Invoice, Rejected by Client, Invoiced, Ready to Order, Ordered and Completed. New items start as Draft.

From the Finish Schedule, click the ⋮ menu and choose Categories or Locations under Manage. You can add, edit and reorder either list. To remove one you no longer need, archive it. Archived categories and locations are hidden from the project but not permanently deleted. To set the categories and locations every new project starts with, go to Settings → Project Defaults.

Yes. From the Finish Schedule, click the ⋮ menu and choose Import, then upload your spreadsheet and map its columns to the matching Four Stripes fields.

Use the search box at the top of the Finish Schedule to filter items by name as you type, and the By Category / By Location toggle to change how the list is grouped.

From the Finish Schedule, open the ⋮ menu and choose Send Finish Schedule. You can send the entire schedule or just one category, then copy the shareable link. Anyone with the link can view that selection for 30 days.

RFAs

RFAs make it easier to keep client approvals moving forward. Find answers to common questions about creating Requests for Approval, sending selections to clients, and tracking approvals within a project.

RFAs (Requests for Approval) are an easy way to send Finish Schedule items to your client for approval. Select the items you want to include in the Finish Schedule and choose Create RFA; you can then track and review all RFAs for the project from its RFAs tab. You can select multiple items within the RFA tab to send a batch of items for approval.

Your client gets an email and approves or rejects the items in their Client Portal. You’ll be notified when your client opens the RFA and when they respond. The RFA list keeps a record of every request and its status, including approved and rejected requests.

If your workspace is connected to QuickBooks, an approved RFA creates the invoice in QuickBooks for you, so there’s no double entry. Approved items move to Approved – Ready to Invoice on your Finish Schedule.

No. Once your client approves an RFA, it stays as the record of exactly what they signed off on. If something needs to change, update the item in your Finish Schedule and send it in a new RFA. Your client approves the corrected version, and you have both on file. Yes, RFAs can be deleted, however if you don’t see that option, your permissions may need to be updated. Lead designers, project owners, admins, and team leads can delete RFAs by default.

For all other roles, deleting is turned off by default. The workspace owner can change this in the Roles and Permissions tab on the Settings page.

If your role is Team Member, ask your workspace owner to turn on that setting for that role.

Design Deck

Keep your latest design presentation easy for your team to find and share. Find answers to common questions about uploading, updating, and sharing Design Decks within a project.

Open a project’s Design Deck tab and click Upload Design Deck to add a new file. Select Set as Current Design Deck when uploading so the team knows it’s the file to work from. Older versions are archived automatically, so the current deck is always the one on top. Share the latest Design Deck directly from Four Stripes by clicking Share.

Files

Keep important project files connected to the work they support. Find answers to common questions about storing, uploading, and managing files in Four Stripes, including Google Drive integration.

A small amount of storage is available through the software. However, we recommend integrating your workspace with Google Drive so each project’s Files tab is backed by your connected Google Drive. Drag and drop files straight into a project, and they stay in sync with your Drive.

Client Portal & Communication

Give clients a clearer view of their project without exposing the day-to-day working details behind it. Find answers to common questions about the Client Portal, project updates, weekly summaries, and collaborating with team members and outside partners.

Open a project’s Client tab. Click Generate Client Portal Link to create a link your client can use to view progress, and use Set Up Client Summary to turn on a weekly summary email.

This summary is AI-generated from your activity on the project that week, so your client automatically receives a polished, branded recap without any extra work on your end.

Open the project’s Collaborators tab. Add Collaborator brings in members of your workspace.

Invite External is for builders, architects and subcontractors who need access to this project but aren’t on your team.

Check that the builder is assigned to the project itself, not just saved in your Contacts. Invite External sends invitations to the Builder and Architect assigned to the project. To assign them, click the ⋮ menu at the top right of the project, select Edit Project, and choose the Builder or Architect. Then send the invitation again from the Collaborators tab. If they’re already assigned and the email still doesn’t arrive (including in spam), contact support@myfourstripes.com.

Yes. Each project has a Notes section for your internal team. Notes are hidden from clients and outside collaborators.

Each project has an Activity Log that records every update. Filter it by team member or by section of the app to see who made a change and where.

Time Tracking

Keep track of where your team’s time is going across every project. Find answers to common questions about tracking time, assigning it to project work, and marking time as billable

Use Time Tracking from the main sidebar for a view across all projects, or from a project’s own Time Tracking tab. Click Start Timer, choose the Project, Benchmark and Subtask, mark whether the time is Billable, and add a client-facing or internal note. Because time is tracked to the benchmark and subtask, you can see the hours going into each stage of the job and use them to plan future projects.

Yes. Time Tracking reports can be exported as a CSV for payroll, billing or your own records.

Settings: Locations, Categories, Clients & Vendors

Set up the details Four Stripes uses across your projects so you don’t have to recreate them every time. Find answers to common questions about contacts, vendors, pricing, project defaults, categories, locations, and workspace settings.

Go to Settings → Contacts. Clients, Vendors, Architects, Builders and Subcontractors are organized as sub-tabs in one unified Contacts screen, each searchable.

In Settings → Contacts → Vendors, click Add Vendor or open an existing vendor to edit it. Set a Base cost type and your Designer, Client and Retail multipliers. A live preview shows exactly how a sample quote would translate into each cost field, so you can check the math before you save. Set it once and every item from that vendor prices itself.

The builder’s project manager lives on the builder’s contact card. Go to Settings → Contacts → Builders, click the pencil next to the builder, select Add Contact, fill in the details and click Save Changes. The new contact will then appear on any project that builder is assigned to.

Clients are usually added while creating a new project — choose + Add new client in the New Project modal. You can also add or edit one directly under Settings → Contacts → Clients.

If your project has a new Project Manager that isn’t in the system yet, you can add another by going to Settings > Contacts > Builders. Select your project and click the pencil to the right of the project. Select Add Contact and enter the contact information and all necessary fields. Then click Save Changes. You’ll notice the Project Manager will now appear as a contact within the Project.

Settings → Project Defaults sets the Product Types, Default Categories and Default Locations that every new project starts from, along with default category budgets. Set these up once and each new project arrives pre-configured — you can still add, edit or reorder categories and locations inside any individual project from its Finish Schedule.

Integrations & AI

Your project tools should work together, not create more work for your team. Find answers to common questions about using AI with Four Stripes, connecting Claude or ChatGPT through MCP, importing project information, and working with QuickBooks.

QuickBooks for invoicing from approved RFAs, Google Drive for project files and Design Decks, and Claude and ChatGPT through our AI connector. Roadmap due dates can also be sent as calendar invites to any calendar app.

Once connected, your AI assistant can read and update your workspace. Ask it a question about any project, such as the countertop spec in a specific room, and get an answer instantly. You can also have it import a vendor quote or an existing Finish Schedule into a project, or help organize and update project details. You stay in control: review anything it adds before it goes to a client.

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