From brief to build: one workflow for interior design studios

Ask any interior-design studio where a project lives and you will get a list, not an answer. The brief is in an inbox. The bill of quantities is in a spreadsheet someone version-named three times. The quote is a PDF exported from a different spreadsheet. The work order is a message thread. Procurement is whatever the studio manager can reconstruct from memory on a Friday afternoon. Every one of those hand-offs is a place where a number gets stale, a revision gets lost, or a client asks a question nobody can answer without opening five files.

IN65 starts from a different premise: a project should not change tools every time it changes hands. One workflow carries a job from the first brief to the finished install, and every artifact along the way is derived from the one before it rather than re-typed into a new document.

The brief becomes structured, not just stored

When a client submits a request, it lands in your workspace as a structured record — scope, budget range, and contact all captured in fields rather than buried in an email body. That record is the anchor. Everything downstream references it, so when the scope shifts in week three, you are editing one source, not chasing a change through four disconnected copies.

The BOQ is where the numbers actually live

From the brief, a designer builds the bill of quantities directly against your catalog. Modules, materials, and labor lines pull real pricing, real lead times, and real supplier links. Because the BOQ is data and not a formatted grid, it can do things a spreadsheet cannot: recalculate a tier change instantly, flag a discontinued item, and generate a client-ready quote without a single copy-paste.

Quote, work order, and procurement are the same object in different states

This is the part that most tools get wrong. In IN65, the quote you send, the work order you route to the factory, and the purchase orders you raise to suppliers are not three re-keyed documents — they are views of the same underlying project as it moves through its states. Accept a quote and the work order already knows every line. Route a work order and procurement already knows what to buy and from whom.

• Client accepts the quote — acceptance is captured with actor, amount, and timestamp.
• The work order inherits the accepted lines; nothing is retyped.
• Procurement raises supplier POs straight from the same line items.
• Every state change writes to an audit log you can hand a client without editing.

The goal is not to add software to a studio. It is to remove the seams between the tools a studio already juggles.

The payoff is not just tidiness. When the brief, the BOQ, the quote, and procurement share one spine, margin becomes something you can see in real time instead of something you reconstruct after the project ships. That is the whole thesis behind IN65: one workflow, from brief to build.