For door, frame & hardware subcontractors
Door and hardware contractor software — hardware schedule to the last closer.
Half of your contract value is product. Hollow metal frames, wood doors, exit devices and electrified hardware have to be submitted, approved, ordered and paid for months before a crew touches the building, and if your schedule of values has no stored-material lines you are financing the whole package out of working capital. Then the job ends the way door jobs always end: four hundred openings complete, three of them waiting on a closer, a strike that came wrong and an owner who changed the keying. SubMark carries the material lines, keeps every schedule revision on a dated record, and tracks the misc-parts tail so three openings stop holding your retainage. One system, office to field — and the field is free.
14-day free trial, no card needed. Sign up from here and door and hardware is already selected when you pick your trade. See pricing →
- Stored-material lines for frames and hardware bought months early
- Hardware and keying revisions logged as changes, not absorbed
- The punch tail tracked so a missing closer stops holding your money
What actually goes wrong on a door and hardware job.
You are a distributor with an install crew, and the contract is written for an installer.
The pack starts your breakdown at material 50% — half the contract value in a single material line, more than glazing carries for its glass and more than a steel package carries for its mill order. That is money that leaves for the mill and the hardware distributor long before a crew mobilizes. If material is one line that only earns as openings get installed, you are paying in thirty days and billing in ninety, on half the job.
Approval gates a lead time measured in months.
Nothing ships until the door schedule, the frame schedule, the hardware sets and the keying schedule are approved. One hardware set revised in review can change forty openings, and the order clock starts over. The schedule nobody adjusts afterwards is yours: the frames you were supposed to set with the framers now arrive after the board is up, and resetting a frame in a finished wall is not the labor you bid.
Your frames belong to the wall trades’ sequence, not yours.
You set frames ahead of the stud and board work, which means your first mobilization runs on somebody else’s schedule and in somebody else’s tolerances. Rough openings come in out of size, areas get turned over late or two floors at once, and frames get set by others and set wrong. All of it changes your install labor, and none of it originates with you — which is why the record of what you were handed, on what date, is worth more on this trade than almost any other.
Electrified hardware is a scope gap with three other trades.
Who furnishes the power transfer, who pulls the wire to the frame, who provides the card reader, who ties the opening to the fire alarm and the access-control head end. The pack asks you to settle where your scope stops with electrical and security before you start, because otherwise the gap is discovered during hardware install, by your hardware tech, on an opening that does not work and a schedule that has no room left in it.
Keying is an owner decision that arrives late and costs real money.
Cores, keyways, master keying, construction cores pulled and permanent cores installed. A keying schedule revised after the cylinders are ordered is a change order in every sense, and it is routinely handled as a favor because it feels like paperwork rather than product. It is product: cylinders, cores, keys, the labor to change them out, and a trip.
Three openings out of four hundred can hold a whole contract.
A missing closer, a strike that came wrong, a door that swelled, hardware stolen off the job, a leaf that needs adjusting after the building got balanced. Each one is a small part and a full trip, and together they are the punch line that holds your final draw and your retainage. On the schedule of values it is five percent. In your closeout it is most of the year.
Before you mobilize
The 4 things door and hardware subs settle with the GC before mobilizing.
What is approved, where your scope stops, what has to be true before you start, and how you get at the work. Every one of them turns into a change order three weeks in if nobody writes the answer down — and the answer is worth nothing if it only lives in one PM’s inbox.
In the pack
Switch on Pre-Construction Review and these 4 questions are already the list, worded the way door and hardware subs ask them.
- Confirm the approved door, frame and hardware schedules, and the keying
- Confirm the rough-opening sizes and that frames land ahead of the wall trades
- Confirm where our scope stops on electrified hardware with electrical and security
- Confirm storage, delivery sequence and who owns final adjustment
Tick them off job by job, with your own note on each. The note is your answer — the pack ships the question and leaves the answer to you.
Pre-Construction Review is an opt-in module — it is not one of the eight switched on at setup. Turn it on in Settings and the list is already there in door and hardware terms, with no upgrade and no setup call. Edit it once and it applies to every job; the tick and the note stay with the job it was asked on. See every module →
The door and hardware job, schedules to final adjustment.
Two mobilizations with a long paper trail between them. Frames go in early with the wall trades; doors, hardware and keying come at the end, after every other trade has had a chance to damage what you installed the first time. This is how the job runs, and what carries each stage in SubMark; the pack’s own phase list is below.
- 01 Bid & estimate
Opening count off the door schedule and the plans, hardware sets priced, frame types and fire ratings, specialty openings, and install labor per opening.
Bid Board, Plans & Drawings with deep zoom, Takeoff, Estimating & Proposals
- 02 Submittals & schedules
Division 08 door, frame and hardware schedules plus the keying schedule, submitted for approval and revised until they are approved, because nothing is ordered before that.
Submittals with a material library, cover sheets and merged PDF export
- 03 Purchasing & lead time
Mill order for the hollow metal, wood door order, finish hardware, and the electrified hardware that has the longest lead of anything in your package.
Purchase Orders, Invoices Inbox tying supplier cost to the job, Job Costing for materials committed against materials invoiced
- 04 Delivery & storage
Product arrives months before it installs, gets checked against the schedules, and gets staged somewhere it will not be damaged or walk off the job.
Daily Labor Logs with photos of what landed and what arrived damaged, Change Events for shortages
- 05 Frame install
Frames set, grouted and braced ahead of the wall trades, with rough openings verified against the schedule before anything goes in.
Crew Scheduling, Daily Labor Logs, Change Events for every opening out of tolerance
- 06 Door hang
Doors fitted, hung and undercut, months later, in a building that has had a finish floor installed since the frames went in.
Time Clock & Labor Logs feeding Job Costing, Daily Labor Logs
- 07 Hardware install
Hinges, locksets, exit devices and weatherstrip, with electrified hardware waiting on power and wire that belong to somebody else.
Daily Labor Logs, Change Events for the interface that was never ready, T&M Tags signed on site
- 08 Closers & specialty
Closers, operators, automatic and specialty openings installed and adjusted — and adjusted again once the building is balanced.
Daily Labor Logs, Crew Scheduling for the hardware tech
- 09 Keying
Cylinders keyed to the approved schedule, construction cores pulled, permanent cores installed and keys turned over with a signed record.
Change Events for a keying schedule that changed after the order, Daily Labor Logs as the dated record of the changeover
- 10 Punch, adjustment & closeout
Final adjustment, the misc-parts list, the warranty and O&M package, then the retainage chase on a contract that has been ninety-nine percent done for months.
Submittals for the O&M package, Lien Waiver Tracking, Schedule of Values & Draw Log for the final draws
Every module named above ships today; the eight below are on from day one, and the rest are a switch in Settings, not an upgrade. The full list is on the product page.
In the pack
These 6 phases load with the Doors, Frames & Hardware pack the moment you pick it at setup.
They are the phase list your foremen pick from on every daily log, so the hours come back tagged to the part of the job they were spent on.
- 01 Frame Install
- 02 Door Hang
- 03 Hardware Install
- 04 Closers / Specialty
- 05 Keying
- 06 Punch
Rename, reorder or delete any of them in Settings — the pack is a starting point, not a cage.
A door and hardware schedule of values that bills the product.
The pack opens the builder at material 50%, frames 15%, doors 20%, hardware 10%, punch 5%. Half the contract value in one material line — more than glazing or steel — and that single number is the whole argument for how your breakdown should be written: the stored-material lines are not a nicety, they are the difference between a profitable job and an interest-free loan to the GC. These are the kinds of lines a commercial door and hardware schedule of values usually needs:
In the pack
Open the SOV builder on a new job and these 5 lines are already in it.
- Material 50%
- Frames 15%
- Doors 20%
- Hardware 10%
- Punch 5%
What most commercial door and hardware subs add
- 01 Submittals, schedules & keying schedule earned months before delivery
- 02 Hollow metal frames — material stored-material line
- 03 Hollow metal doors — material stored-material line
- 04 Wood doors — material stored-material line
- 05 Finish hardware — material stored-material line
- 06 Electrified hardware & access-control devices longest lead in the package
- 07 Specialty openings — coiling doors, operators, lead-lined, acoustical
- 08 Freight, delivery & on-site storage
- 09 Frame install — Level 1 / Area A
- 10 Frame install — Level 2 / Area B
- 11 Door hang
- 12 Hardware install
- 13 Closers, operators & specialty adjustment
- 14 Keying & core changeover moves when the owner changes his mind
- 15 Punch, final adjustment & misc parts the tail that holds your last draw
- 16 Warranty, O&M & closeout documents
Three things worth arguing for before the contract is signed. Break the stored material into frames, doors and finish hardware as separate lines rather than one material line, because they are ordered, delivered and invoiced on three different clocks and a single line earns at the speed of the slowest one. Break frame install out by level or area, because frames are released to you in the sequence the wall trades are framing and that is the only percentage you can defend on a walk. And give keying, punch and final adjustment their own lines — if keying sits inside hardware install, an owner’s late keying decision holds a tenth of your contract, and if the misc-parts tail has nowhere to live, three openings hold all of it.
That longer list is an illustration, not a template — your SOV is negotiated with your GC. SubMark gives you the SOV to build, and tracks every draw, retainage amount and payment against it. It is your record of the job, not a replacement for the GC’s billing system — you submit the draw the way each GC requires and log it here.
Read next
Schedule of values for subcontractors: how to build one that bills clean
How to get stored-material lines for frames, doors and hardware in before the SOV locks on the first pay application you build and submit in SubMark — the single highest-value thing a door sub can do in week one.
What a change order log has to hold
A revised hardware set touches forty openings. These are the columns that keep that from being absorbed as a favor.
The subcontractor change order process, start to finish
Late keying decisions and electrified-hardware scope gaps, from the day your tech finds them to the day they are on a draw.
When does retainage actually get released?
Why three unfinished openings out of four hundred keep an entire contract — and your retainage — open.
Inside SubMark
One calendar for every crew on every job.
A frame crew in the tower, two installers hanging doors in the podium, and a hardware tech promised to both on Thursday. SubMark schedules every worker in one calendar and flags the double-booking before somebody drives across town for nothing.
On from day one, in every trade’s setup.
Nothing is paywalled by tier. These eight are switched on in every one of the 29 trade packs, door and hardware included, from the moment you finish setup.
T&M Tags
Field tickets priced off your own rate lists and signed by the GC on the spot.
Change Events
The field logs a scope change with photos the day it happens, then it converts to a CO.
Draw Calendar
Every GC’s billing cutoff and submission method in one calendar, with reminders.
Submittals
Submittal packages with a material library, cover sheets and merged PDF export.
Daily Labor Logs
Weather, narrative, labor, materials and photos, with a submit-and-review workflow.
Timesheets
Weekly rollups with worker signatures and supervisor approval, plus a payroll summary export.
Where Workers Are
A live view of which workers are on which job today.
Safety
Toolbox talks, inspections, incidents, and certification and COI tracking with expiry dates.
Pick Doors / Frames / Hardware at setup and SubMark loads the pack: the phase list your foremen pick from — Frame Install, Door Hang, Hardware Install, Closers / Specialty, Keying and Punch; work types for frames, doors, hardware and specialty; worker types for Foreman, Installer, Hardware Tech and Helper; a material list built around hollow metal frames, hollow metal and wood doors, hinges, locksets, closers, exit devices and weatherstrip; project statuses that run Pre-Construction, Install, Hardware, Punch, Complete; and a schedule-of-values breakdown weighted material, frames, doors, hardware and punch. The pack also writes four pre-construction review items in your trade’s terms: the approved door, frame and hardware schedules and the keying; the rough-opening sizes and whether frames land ahead of the wall trades; where your scope stops on electrified hardware with electrical and security; and storage, delivery sequence and who owns final adjustment — waiting for the day you switch that module on, because the pre-construction review is one of the switches in Settings rather than one of the eight that are on from day one. Anything the pack gets wrong, you change in Settings.
The worker types are already there too — Foreman, Installer, Hardware Tech and Helper — on every worker record and on every daily labor log. The only thing left to enter is your own rates.
Questions
Doors, Frames & Hardware subcontractors ask us these.
Can we bill frames and hardware before they are installed?
You build the schedule of values, so yes — and on this trade it is the whole game. Carry frames, doors, finish hardware and electrified hardware as their own stored-material lines and bill them as they are delivered and stored, separately from the install lines that may be six months behind. The pack starts the breakdown at material 50%, which you then negotiate with the GC. SubMark tracks what you billed on each line, what was certified, what retainage is held against it and when the money landed. What it is not is an inventory system: it does not hold warehouse stock levels or serialize product.
Is there a cost per opening?
No, and that is worth saying plainly because you bid, buy and walk by the opening. Job costing is per job, grouped by cost type — labor, crew lump sum, materials invoiced, materials committed, QuickBooks costs and subcontractors — against your budget lines. There is no per-opening cost record and no per-opening roll-up. The practical approach is to carry install as budget lines by level or area, the way the frames are released to you, so a floor that fought you is visible instead of averaged across four hundred openings.
How do we handle a revised hardware set or a late keying decision?
As a change event the day it arrives, carrying the revision, the openings affected and the cost — product and labor both — then a priced change request to the GC. Approved change orders are added to the schedule of values automatically, so the money follows the paperwork instead of waiting for someone to rebuild a spreadsheet. If the work is already happening, a T&M tag priced off your own rate lists and e-signed on site covers the labor, and several tags convert into one change order later. SubMark does not price the hardware set for you.
Does it track submittal revisions and lead times?
Submittals, yes: packages with a material library, cover sheets and merged PDF export, each with a status and a dated history, which is where the record of "we submitted on the 9th and got it back on the 4th of the following month" lives. Procurement is more limited and worth being straight about — there is no expediting dashboard, no lead-time countdown and no vendor acknowledgment tracking. Your purchase orders and the submittal record are where the dates live, and a PO shows committed cost against invoiced cost once the material starts arriving.
What about frames and doors damaged by other trades?
Photographs on the day, on that day’s log, plus a change event naming the opening and the damage, and a T&M tag for the repair signed on site. This is the most common unbilled work in the trade, because a dented frame looks like a punch item rather than somebody else’s damage — which it only stops looking like if there is a dated photo of the frame in good condition when you installed it, and another one of the dent.
Does job costing see the material we bought?
Yes, and for a trade that is half material it is the number to watch. Purchase orders carry committed cost, and materials invoiced and materials committed are separate buckets in job costing, so a package where you have ordered everything and been invoiced for a third of it reads honestly instead of looking like a job under budget. Supplier invoices reach the job through the invoices inbox once you switch it on in Settings, and QuickBooks bills and purchases pull in on top of that.
Is there a punch list we can close out opening by opening?
No, and this is one to be clear about. SubMark has no punch or deficiency item list for any trade, so there is no opening-by-opening record to close out. What you do get is Punch as a phase on the daily log and as a line on your schedule of values, so the parts list and the trips are recorded, dated and billable — which is the part that was costing you money. We would rather say that than let you discover the difference in month three.
Do we have to stop using the GC’s billing portal?
No. Keep submitting through whatever portal, template or email each GC requires. SubMark is where the schedule of values lives — stored material split by product, frame install broken out by level, keying and punch on their own lines — and where every draw you submit is logged against it, with retainage held and payment tracked across every GC. Procore, Textura and GCPay are recorded as the submission method on a job; nothing is sent on your behalf.
Does it connect to QuickBooks?
Yes. Connect QuickBooks Online once and bills and purchases pull into job costing — hourly, if you switch auto-pull on — so mill invoices, hardware distributor invoices and freight sit against the right job. Draws go across as QuickBooks invoices and POs as purchase orders, one at a time with a click. A coverage meter shows how much of the cost pulled from QuickBooks is coded to a job at all; it is company-wide rather than per job, so read it before you trust a clean variance on a material-heavy package.
Do my field crews cost extra?
No. Field users are free and unlimited, and so are the subs you invite into a job. You pay one company subscription: $249 a month with your first 3 office users included, then $39 a month each. The whole breakdown is on the pricing page.
See it on a door and hardware job.
Start the trial, confirm door and hardware on the first screen, and the pack loads your phases, checklists and worker types in your own words. Or take a 30-minute walkthrough with the person who built it, on your kind of jobs, instead of a canned demo script.
14-day free trial, no card needed. See the whole product →
$249/mo for your company, your first 3 office users included, $39/mo each after that. Field crews are free and unlimited. See what's included →
Other trades
Electrical
Gear you pay for months before you bill it, rough-in hours that disappear, and every tenant change landing on your scope.
HVAC / Mechanical
Equipment bought a year before it is billed, shop fab the GC will not pay for, and a closeout that holds your last 10% for six months.
Plumbing
First in the ground and last out of the building — with a quarter of the contract value stuck behind the finish trades.
Drywall & Framing
A third to half the contract spent on board before anything is hung, five finish passes nobody can measure, and three punch walks and a clean-up that are all on you.
Concrete
Pour days that cannot move, ready-mix invoices you reconcile weeks later, and forms that are capital cycling across placements.
Fire Sprinkler
Weeks of hydraulic engineering before you can bill a dollar, and every phase gated behind an inspection you do not schedule.
Glazing & Glass
Custom material you cannot order until you field measure, cannot return once you do, and cannot bill until a water test passes.
Roofing
A tear-off that owns the building until dry-in, rotten deck nobody bid, and a warranty package standing between you and retainage.
Low voltage
Drop counts that move with every furniture plan, cable sitting in a locked IDF for months, and a final 10% that waits on a test report.
Fire alarm
A quarter of the contract behind an acceptance test you do not schedule, retests you never bill, and device counts that move all year.
Painting
The last trade on the schedule, four return trips for other people’s damage, and prep bid against a wall nobody left you.
Flooring
A slab that fails its moisture test, prep bid against a flatness spec nobody hit, and a whole building’s material stored for months.
Masonry
Scaffold that is capital, grout lifts gated by an inspector, and a mock-up panel holding up the whole brick order.
Structural & Misc Steel
Two thirds of the contract is detailing, mill material and shop work, earned before a single piece is erected, and the last five percent is a handrail holding your retainage.
Wood Framing
Fourteen buildings billed as one percentage, a lumber package that is 40% of the contract before a wall goes up, and blocking you owe six other trades that nobody drew.
Excavation & Sitework
The only schedule of values on this site that opens without a single line for product you buy: your contract is production, billed against quantities somebody else surveyed.
Waterproofing
Work that is buried within a week of going in, blamed for every drop of water for the next ten years, and finished with sealants months after everyone forgot you were on the job.
Demolition
A scope nobody can see until you open the wall, extra work that leaves in the dumpster before anyone prices it, and retainage held for a year after you demobilized.
Insulation
A four-day window between rough-in inspection and board that nobody protects, half the contract sitting in material you staged weeks early, and firestopping everyone assumed was yours.
EIFS / Stucco / Plaster
A schedule set by cure time that nobody believes, a weather barrier you bury on day two and get blamed for in year three, and joints drawn by somebody else that crack on your wall.
Acoustical Ceilings (ACT)
Grid that cannot start until every trade above the ceiling is finished, tile that drops in the last three weeks of a two-year job, and a finished ceiling the whole building then uses as an access hatch.
Paving & Asphalt
Material with a clock on it and a crew on the clock whether you place or not, a subgrade somebody else owns, and six months of construction traffic on the binder course you have to warrant.
Tile & Stone
A finished floor installed on somebody else’s slab, to a flatness tolerance the concrete sub was never asked to hit, with waterproofing and movement joints that belong to nobody until the warranty call comes.
Millwork & Casework
Half your contract earned in your own shop before anything reaches the site, built to a drawing of walls somebody else framed, with the furnish-and-install line drawn in a meeting you were not in.
All trades
SubMark ships a setup pack for 29 commercial trades. See the full list.