Everything we've added to Paradesk since May 2025

A new automation builder

Automations have a rebuilt builder. Write when the automation should run and what it should do in your own words, and a preview beside the editors shows Paradesk's reading as you type: what starts it, the checks it will make, and each step it will take. Steps it can't take are marked with what to change, and when something is unclear it suggests wording to add. Insert menus under each editor add starter wording for events, checks, records, and email, and Paradesk names the automation from what you wrote. It's much easier to set up an automation and to check it before you turn it on.

• See the new builder

Otherwise steps in automations

Automations that start from an email or an event can have Otherwise steps. Write "Otherwise," followed by what to do, and when an email or event doesn't meet your checks, the automation takes those steps instead. For example, create a follow-up task when a payment leaves a balance due, and otherwise email a summary of the payment.

• How Otherwise steps work

Automations can create tasks

An automation can create a task on a project or document, with the title, assignee, priority, and due date you describe, like a task for the project manager to review a draft change order by the end of the week.

• What automations can do

Email steps and an optional run report

Ask an automation to email someone, like "email me a summary of the request," and the email becomes one of its steps, sent to the members of your workspace you choose for it. Retrying a run never sends it twice. The run report, Paradesk's own email about each run, is now optional: add recipients and they get what started the run, what the automation did, and anything that needs attention.

Team Plus and Team Pro plans

There are three plans, each with every feature. Team is $29 per seat per month with 10 GB of storage per seat. Team Plus, at $49, includes ten times the assistant usage and 50 GB per seat, and Team Pro, at $79, includes twenty times the usage and 100 GB per seat. Included assistant usage resets every month on annual plans too, and Company > Usage shows how much storage your workspace has used.

• See pricing

A setup guide for new workspaces

New workspaces get a guide with five steps: add a client, start a project, invite your team, set billing rates, and connect QuickBooks Online. Each step is marked done once its records exist, however they were added, and steps that don't apply can be skipped, like inviting a team when you work alone. The guide sits at the top of the Dashboard and under Finish setup in the sidebar, and pages that depend on a step say what's missing, such as a project's Time page when approved time has no rates yet.

Suggested labor categories for your kind of firm

On the empty labor categories and rate tables pages, Start with a suggested set adds the roles your industries usually bill, on top of Principal, Project Manager, and Administrative. A civil firm gets Senior Engineer, Project Engineer, Engineer in Training, Designer, CAD Technician, and survey crew roles, for example. It also creates a draft rate table with those categories, ready for your rates.

• How time and rates work

Set up your workspace with the assistant

Ask the assistant to help set up your workspace and it starts from the setup guide's open steps. Give it your roles and hourly rates, and it creates the labor categories and puts the rates on a draft rate table, then asks before making the table active. The guide's Set up with the assistant button opens a chat with the request ready to send.

• What the assistant can do

A Today dashboard

The dashboard opens with what needs you today: tasks due, comments that mention you, reviews waiting on you, and email with suggested updates, each with a count. A ring shows how much of the day's work is done. Below it, your tasks, mentions, reviews, inbox, and assigned documents each have their own list.

• How tasks work

Questions to start a chat with

Each new chat with the assistant suggests three questions, like "Which invoices are still unpaid?" or "Which reviews are waiting on me?" Click one to fill it in. Pinning or closing the chat panel now keeps your place on the page.

Assign tasks as you add them

Quick add has an assignee picker, set to you unless you choose someone else.

Turn any markup into a task

Create a task from any markup in a review's Annotations list. The task links back to its markup, and following that link reopens the review centered on the spot. Each annotation card shows its checklist item, who made it and when, and the tasks created from it.

• How checklist reviews work

Open a task from anywhere

Tasks open in a panel over the page you're on, from the Tasks page, document and project task lists, the dashboard, notifications, and search. A link to a task opens the same panel, and refreshing the page keeps the task open.

• How tasks work

Generate an invoice from each contract

In Ready to Bill and the Generate invoice sheet, each contract with work to bill has its own Generate button.

• How billing works

Notifications and @mentions

A bell in the header shows when you're assigned a task, mentioned in a comment, or someone comments on your task, and the same notices go out by email. Mention a teammate with @ in any task, document, or file comment. At 7 each morning, anyone with tasks overdue or due that day gets one email listing them.

• How tasks work

Bulk actions, filters, and saved views for tasks

Select several tasks to complete, reassign, reschedule, or reprioritize them at once. Filter the Tasks page by project, assignee, priority, or status, and save the views you come back to.

A task board, keyboard shortcuts, and quicker task entry

Switch the Tasks page to a board by status and drag tasks between columns. Move through tasks from the keyboard (press ? for the shortcuts), type a date like "friday" or "in 2 weeks" when you add a task, and move a task between a project and any of its documents. Changes the assistant makes are marked in the task's history.

A Tasks page for your own work

Tasks in the sidebar lists everything assigned to you or created by you, grouped by due date, and managers can see every task in the firm. Check a task off with one click and undo it if you need to, add new tasks inline, and link straight to any task.

• How tasks work

Task details you edit in place

Open a task to change its title and details right where they are, and changes save as you go. Its activity timeline shows comments alongside every change to the task. Assignees can edit their own tasks, and engineers and designers can create them.

Add contacts on their own

Add a contact from the Contacts page without attaching them to a client. Each contact can have several labeled email addresses and phone numbers with one marked primary, tags group them, and Paradesk suggests matching contacts so nobody gets added twice.

Phone layouts for dialogs, the board, and timesheets

Dialogs open as drawers from the bottom of the screen, the board works by touch, and timesheets read well on a small screen. Add Paradesk to your home screen and it opens full screen like an app.

Automations

Owners and admins set up automations that watch projects, tasks, documents, invoices, proposals, or a project inbox. When the condition you write matches, on a schedule, on a record event, or when email arrives, the assistant prepares drafts and emails the people you choose.

• How automations work

Assistant usage included with every seat

Each seat includes assistant usage every month. Company > Usage shows what's left and who used it, and you can buy more on the card on file or turn on auto-reload.

• See pricing

The assistant reads attachments and manages the board

Attach images, PDFs, spreadsheets, and Word files to a chat. The assistant can also set up board columns, move documents, summarize a project, show who is carrying which tasks, and hand tasks from one person to another.

Per-seat pricing

The Team plan is priced per seat with every feature included. Choose the number of seats at checkout, and add or remove seats from Company > Seats with a prorated preview.

• See pricing

Email addresses and one inbox

Every project, client, and contact can have its own email address. Forward or copy mail to it and import it into Paradesk, and it lands in one inbox for the firm and on the record's Communication page. The assistant matches each message to its project, reads the attachments, and suggests tasks, comments, or documents for someone on your team to apply.

• How email and the inbox work

Project portals for your clients

Give a client's contacts access to a project portal. They sign in with a one-time code sent by email and see what's been billed and what's outstanding, download invoice PDFs, and view the contract's fee schedule. You choose what each portal shows.

Export any list

Export projects, clients, contacts, documents, reviews, proposals, checklists, invoices, and vendors as CSV, Excel, PDF, or Markdown. Finished exports stay on the Exports page for 30 days.

More for Claude, ChatGPT, and other MCP assistants

Connected assistants can now create and edit records across projects, billing, and reviews, and read the email imported into Paradesk. Pages your team has open in Paradesk refresh when an assistant changes something.

• See everything an assistant can do

The Paradesk assistant

Open Chat from the header to ask about your projects, time, and billing, or have the assistant create and edit records for you. It knows which page you're on, asks for missing details before it changes anything, and shows the tools it used.

• How the assistant works

Proposal attachments, PDFs, and activity

Attach files to a proposal and choose which ones the client sees, download it as a PDF, preview it the way the client will, and see when they first opened it.

A new sidebar

Work, Billing, and People are grouped in one sidebar, with a workspace switcher at the top and breadcrumbs in the header.

Project tasks

Tasks can belong to a project as well as to a document, and each project has its own Tasks page.

Invoice a client without a contract

Create an invoice with your own line items from a project's Invoices page without setting up a billing contract first. The project budget shows that money as uncontracted.

Proposals

Draft a proposal with fees, kickoff tasks, and an optional first invoice, and email it to your client. When they accept it online, Paradesk sets up the client, project, and contract, creates the kickoff tasks, and drafts the invoice.

• How proposals work

Project budgets by phase and fee line

The Budget page shows what's budgeted, billed, and available for each phase and fee line, and flags lines at or over budget. Each line opens a ledger of every invoice that billed it.

Credit notes for over-billed phases

When a phase has been billed past its budget, create a credit note that brings it back within budget.

Billing dashboard

See overdue invoices, receivables aging, invoices that need attention, and QuickBooks Online sync health across the firm.

Project overview and phase pages

Opening a project shows billing progress by phase, what needs attention, and open invoices. Each phase has its own page with its documents and billing lines.

AIA G703 continuation sheets on invoices

Invoice PDFs include a continuation sheet with the scheduled value, previous and current billing, work completed to date, balance to finish, and retainage for each line.

Project expenses

Log expenses against a fee line, approve them or mark them non-billable, and bill them on invoices alongside time.

• How time and expenses work

Billing schedules by phase

Organize a contract's fee lines by project phase. Each line bills by percent complete or by approved time and expenses up to a budget, and Generate invoice builds the invoice phase by phase.

• How billing works

QuickBooks Online item mapping

Choose the QuickBooks Online item each kind of invoice line posts to, or create one from Paradesk. An invoice that can't sync yet says why.

QuickBooks Online

Connect QuickBooks Online, link or import clients and vendors, and send issued invoices to QuickBooks. Payments sync in both directions.

• How the sync works

Invoices

Generate a draft invoice from a contract's progress and approved time, adjust the lines, and issue it. Email it as a PDF, record payments, and see each client's balance and aging.

• How billing works

Contracts, retainage, and change orders

Set up a billing contract for each project with a schedule of fee lines and retainage. Change orders go through approval and update the contract value.

Labor categories and rate tables

Set labor categories and dated rate tables for the firm, a default category for each person, and rate overrides for a project.

Timesheets and time approval

Fill in your week in My time and submit it. Project managers approve, reject, or mark entries non-billable on the project's Time tab, and the rate locks in when an entry is approved.

• How time and expenses work

Connect Claude and other MCP assistants

Paradesk's MCP server lets assistants that support MCP sign in with a Paradesk account and search your workspace.

Sign in with Google

Sign up and sign in with your Google account.

Search the whole workspace

Search clients, contacts, projects, documents, reviews, tasks, and more from the header, or narrow the search to one type.

Download a review with its markups

Download PDF exports the drawing with every markup on it.

Dashboards for your work and the firm

Your work lists your reviews, documents, and tasks. The company dashboard shows the document pipeline, team workload, aging reviews, and projects that have stalled.

Documents and Reviews pages

Search, sort, and filter every document and review across all projects.

Checklist categories

Group the items in a checklist template into categories.

Document types

Give each document a type, shown on its board card. Project and set documents can also be viewed as a table.

Response options for each checklist

Each checklist template sets its own answers for reviewers and marks which ones pass and which block. A blocking answer flags the item.

Files and folders on documents

Upload files into folders on any document, preview them, and comment on them. When you upload a revision, you can pick a file that's already there.

Documents in development

Create a document before it has a file or an assignee. It stays in Development until you start review, which needs a PDF and a checklist and notifies the first reviewer.

Project phases

Add phases to a project, set the current one, and move documents between them. New documents go into the current phase.

Clients and contacts

Clients have company details and any number of contacts, and a Contacts directory lists everyone.

Switch between workspaces

If you belong to more than one firm's workspace, switch between them without signing out.

Document pages and tasks

Each document has its own page with its tasks and reviews. Tasks have an assignee, a due date, and comments, and can be dragged into order.

The board

See documents from every project on one board, drag them between columns, and filter by project, assignee, phase, or review status. Owners, admins, and project managers set up the columns.

• How projects work

Smart Sync (beta)

Enter the address of a city, county, or DOT checklist page, and Paradesk pulls out candidate checklists for you to edit and publish. Paradesk checks the source each week and shows you what changed before you accept it, and reviews in progress keep the version they started with.

• How checklist reviews work

Outside reviewers

Assign a review step to someone outside your firm by name and email. They get a link, then answer checklist items, add markups and attachments, and submit, all in the browser without a Paradesk account.

• How external review works

Review workflows

Build each document's review workflow from Review, Revision, Accepted, and Rejected steps. Each person gets an email when it's their turn, and a reminder after the number of days you set.

• How workflows work

Ellipse markups

Draw ellipses on drawings along with the other markup tools.

A new PDF viewer for drawing review

Select, move, resize, and delete markups, draw smoother pen strokes, add callouts, and see every markup in the annotation history. Changes save as you work.

Import checklists from CSV

Create a checklist template from a CSV file, or add items to one from a CSV.

Delete projects, sets, and checklists

Delete a project or set along with its documents and reviews, or delete a checklist template you no longer use.

Review emails

When a document moves to the next review step, its reviewer gets an email, and the person responsible for the document hears when review is finished.

Sign up and subscribe online

Create an account and your firm's workspace, choose a plan, and pay by card. Owners manage the subscription from company settings.

Edit a checklist item in one review

Change or remove an item in a single review without changing its template.

Draft a checklist with AI

Describe what a checklist should cover, and Paradesk drafts the items for you to edit.

Invite your team

Invite teammates by email as an owner, admin, project manager, engineer, or designer, and manage members from company settings.

Document activity history

Every action on a document is recorded in its activity history, which you can download as a CSV file.

Clients

Keep a list of clients and link each project to one.

Keep or reset answers on a new revision

When you upload a revision, choose whether to clear the checklist answers and markups or carry them forward.

Projects and drawing sets

Create projects with a job number, client, and project manager, and organize their documents into sets.

Checklist templates

Build checklists once in the Checklists library, put the items in order, and choose them when you add documents.

Isolate one item's markups

Show only the markups for the checklist item you're working on.

Review stages

Give each document an ordered set of review stages, each with its own reviewer. Accepting a document moves it to the next stage, and rejecting it sends it back for revision.

Mark up drawings

Draw on the PDF with pen, highlighter, arrow, rectangle, and comment tools. Each markup belongs to the checklist item it's about and saves with the review.

Documents with checklists and an assignee

Add a document to a set with its PDF, the person responsible, and the checklists it will be reviewed against, and drag documents and checklists into order.

Upload a new revision

Upload the next revision of a drawing from the review screen, and review continues on the new file.

Filter a checklist by status

Filter a review's checklist items by status to see what's left.

Checklist reviews of drawings

Each document gets a review for every checklist it's checked against. The review screen shows the drawing beside its checklist, and the reviewer answers each item.

• How checklist reviews work