Your project belongs to an organisation, and the organisation pays for the plan and seats your team uses.
Every new project belongs to one, and that is not optional. An organisation is your company inside BuildersAI. It holds the plan, the seats, and the people your jobs share. Older projects made before organisations existed can still sit outside one, but nothing new can.
Which organisation a new project is filed under: whichever one you are working in when you create it. In the browser the create-project card names it under the title, as “It will belong to …”. That is the organisation shown at the top left of the screen, beside the BuildersAI logo. On the phone it is the row under the header on the project list. Check it before you create the project, because you cannot move a project to another organisation yourself afterwards. That one is an email to support@buildersai.co.uk.
If you are in no organisation at all, the browser’s create-project card says “Projects belong to an organisation, and you are not in one yet” and offers a Create an organisation button. It asks for one thing, a name, usually your company name, and you can change it later in organisation settings. The phone offers the same button, on a message headed “Pick an organisation first”.
Before you make one, check whether your company is already here. If it is, ask its owner to invite you instead. A second organisation puts your work under a separate plan where your colleagues cannot see it, and undoing that means moving projects between organisations, which only BuildersAI support can do.
On the web app (app.buildersai.co.uk): Organisation settings sit behind a small cog, not in the sidebar:
- Sign in at app.buildersai.co.uk
- Look at the top left of the screen, next to the BuildersAI logo, where your organisation’s name is shown on the small line above the project’s. Click it to open the list: your organisations are at the top, above your projects. Click the small cog on the organisation’s row. The cog appears only for an organisation you administer, and opening an organisation’s settings does not switch you into it
- Organisation settings open with a list down the left side: Plan & usage, Two-factor, Projects, and Ownership if you are the owner
- On Plan & usage you’ll see:
- Your subscription tier (Free, Trial, Starter, Professional, Business or Enterprise) and status (Active, Past Due, Cancelled, or Read Only)
- Access until date if you’re on a trial or time-limited plan
- A Seats used bar. It has two parts: the solid part is people on a live job, and the paler part is people your company has admitted who are not on one yet. The number above it, “23 / 50”, is the two added together, because that is what the app checks when somebody tries to add another person. A line under the bar says how many of each, and it appears only when somebody is waiting. The bar turns amber at 70% and red at 90%
- A SiteBot this week bar beside it: how much of the plan’s weekly SiteBot allowance the organisation has used, how many questions that was, and when the week resets. Everyone on the organisation’s projects shares it, and only conversations with SiteBot count towards it. Amber and red at the same points as the seat bar. The SiteBot help page explains the allowance and what happens when it runs out
- Choose a plan, below the bars. An owner or admin picks or changes the plan here: a move up takes effect at once, a move down at the end of the paid month. The Card, invoices and billing address button opens Stripe’s secure billing pages for everything else. For anything unusual, email support@buildersai.co.uk
- Prices are plus VAT, which is added when you pay. Give your company’s VAT number at checkout, or add it later through Card, invoices and billing address, and every invoice shows it beside ours, so a VAT-registered business can reclaim the VAT
- Projects lists every project under the organisation, with the member count for each
Working for more than one company: You can belong to several organisations at once, which is normal for a subcontractor working for two main contractors. Click your organisation’s name at the top left to see them all, listed above your projects.
- Each row names the organisation. For one you administer it also shows your standing, its plan and how many projects it has, like “Organisation Owner · Professional · 6 projects”. For one you only work in, the name is all there is to show
- Choosing one changes what the rest of the app is about: which projects are listed, every figure that spans projects, and which organisation a new project is filed under
- Switch while you are inside a project and you land back on All projects for the organisation you picked, because the job you were looking at belongs to the other one
- It works the other way round too. Open a project that belongs to another organisation, however you got there (an email, a notification, a search), and you are switched into that organisation, in the browser and on the phone, so the organisation you are working in always matches the job in front of you
- No organisation shows up only when you actually have projects that are not under one: older ones made before organisations existed, or a demo created before you had an organisation. It is somewhere to find them, not a company. It has no settings, and you cannot create a project into it
- With one organisation it is the only row, with its settings cog if you administer it. Clicking the row takes you to All projects
- On the phone, the row under the header on the project list does the same job. Tap it, pick an organisation, and the project list is scoped to it
On the mobile app: If you are an owner or admin of an organisation, open All projects, the first row of the side menu (☰). The strip under its title names the organisation and has three things to tap:
- The plan and how it stands, with a trial’s days left. It opens the Plan section
- The seats used against the plan. It opens the same Seats used bar as the browser, with SiteBot this week and what the organisation is storing
- A cog, which opens organisation settings: Details, Plan, Usage, Two-factor, Projects and, for the owner, Ownership
Everybody the organisation works with is on the People tab. Project Settings still links to the plan, from any project the organisation owns. There is no longer an Organisation entry in the side menu. See the “all_projects_mobile” topic.
The phone shows the plan, its price and when it renews, and nothing is bought on the phone: Choose a plan, Change plan and Card, invoices and billing address each open the Plan page of the web app in your browser. The figures are read while you are online rather than kept on the device, so with no signal the screen says so instead of showing an old number.
If you are a project admin who does not run the company account, you get the Subscription section inside Project Settings instead:
- Open the side menu (☰) and tap “Project Settings”
- Scroll to the Subscription section
- If your project belongs to an organisation, you’ll see “Managed by organisation”. Seat limits and billing are handled by your organisation owner
- If your project is not part of an organisation, you’ll see your tier, member count (used / max), and the next billing date on a paid plan. There is no billing button on the phone
Seats at a glance:
- Free: up to 5 people
- Trial: up to 10 people. A trial covers the same number as Starter, so nothing has to shrink when it converts
- Starter: up to 10 people
- Professional: up to 50 people
- Business: up to 100 people
- Enterprise: for more than 100 people, arranged with us
What counts as a seat:
- A seat is a person, not a job. Somebody working on four of your projects costs one seat, not four
- Archived projects do not count, and neither does anybody with a BuildersAI address. A demo project that belongs to your company counts like any other job: your own people on it each hold a seat, and the demo’s made-up crew do not
- A seat is held from the moment you admit somebody, not from the moment they start work. That is the paler part of the bar, and those people are counted when the app decides whether there is room for one more. Two kinds of person hold one: an address you have added as staff or as an organisation admin who has not made a BuildersAI account yet, and an owner, admin or staff account in a company with no live job yet
- A contact reserves nothing. Subcontractors, clients and suppliers cost you nothing until you put them on a project
- This is why somebody can be refused while the bar still looks like it has room. Read the whole number, “23 / 50”, not the solid part
Where the seats actually go: the organisation’s People list, which is everybody your company works with across every project. From All projects, open the People tab and choose People. If you administer the organisation you get the whole list, with the seat marked on every row that holds one (a small people icon in the browser, “Uses a seat” or “Seat reserved” on the phone), so the list and the bar can be checked against each other by eye. A row reading “Invited to test1 as a project follower, applies when they sign up”, with the seat marked reserved, is one of the people holding a place.
What happens at the seat limit:
- A full plan stops you adding people, and it does nothing else. Try to invite somebody over the limit and you will see a “Member Limit Reached” message; nothing else changes
- It never makes a project read-only and never takes a feature away. Everybody already on the job carries on exactly as before: comments, photos, files, plans, work items, check-ins and the site diary all keep working. That holds even if the count has somehow gone past what the plan covers, which can happen after a downgrade
- So never take somebody off a live job to “unfreeze” it. A full plan is not what freezes anything. The one thing that makes a project read-only is the account itself falling behind, meaning unpaid, cancelled or suspended, and that lifts the moment billing is settled
Changing your plan or billing details:
- There is no self-serve billing page in the app yet. To change your plan, your card or your billing details, email support@buildersai.co.uk or speak to your account contact. The plans and prices are listed on buildersai.co.uk/pricing
- For org-managed projects, ask your organisation owner or admin
Handing the organisation over (the owner only): An organisation has exactly one Organisation Owner, who runs the account: billing, the plan, the seats and the two-factor policy. It is the one standing nobody can be given from a list. It moves by handover, and only the owner can start it.
- Open organisation settings from the cog beside your organisation’s name
- Click Ownership in the list down the left. It is only there if you are the owner
- Under “Hand this organisation over”, choose somebody in Hand it to. Only the administrators of this organisation are listed. If there is nobody, make somebody an Organisation Admin first, under All projects, People, then come back
- Click Hand over, read what it says, and click Hand it over to confirm
On the phone: All projects, the cog on the organisation strip, Ownership. The same choice and the same warning.
From that moment they run the account. You stay an Organisation Admin and keep every project, so you lose nothing but the account itself. You cannot undo it, because only an owner can hand an organisation over and you are not one any more. Getting it back means asking them to hand it back.
Who can do what:
- Only the Organisation Owner can hand the organisation over, and only to somebody who already administers it
- Owners and organisation admins open organisation settings, read the plan and the seats, set the two-factor policy, and manage the organisation’s People list. They also administer every project the organisation owns
- Everybody else has no cog beside the organisation name and nothing to open
- Nobody, at any level, changes the plan or the card inside the app. That is an email to support@buildersai.co.uk
Ask me: “What plan are we on?” or “How many people are on this project?” and I’ll look it up for you. I can read the project’s tier, its status and its member count. The organisation’s seat total, the billing dates and the invoices are on the Organisation page, not something I can reach.