WO-2048New
Water heater — 14 Oak St
PlumbingCreated just now
Feature · Intake
Your inbox becomes your work orders
The requests are already coming in by email. MasterBuilds turns each one into a structured work order — subject, notes, and photos — on the right business’s board, so nothing gets retyped and nothing sits buried in an inbox.
From inbox to board
From inbox to board, automatically
A request email arrives. MasterBuilds reads the subject, the body, and the attachments, and maps them into a structured build: the subject becomes the title, the message becomes the notes, and the photos ride along. It opens on the right business’s board — the foundation of running several businesses from one workspace.
Inbound email
“Water heater’s leaking — photos attached.”
2 photos
What gets captured
Everything the email was carrying
Intake keeps the parts of a request that matter and drops them onto the card, ready for your crew:
Subject → title
The email subject becomes the work-order title, so the card reads like the job it is.
Body → notes
The message text is saved as the build’s notes — the full context, not a one-line summary.
Attachments → photos
Photos and files come across with the request and attach to the build, so the proof is on the job from the start.
Address → the right business
The intake address it was sent to decides which business’s board it lands on, color-coded to that entity.
It arrives as a New build. You set priority, assign, and schedule when you triage — MasterBuilds doesn’t guess urgency for you.
Nothing slips
No copy-paste, no missed requests
When a request has to be retyped into a system, some of them never make it — they get skimmed, flagged for later, and lost. Email intake removes that step entirely. Every request becomes a card the moment it lands, so the board is the record of what came in, not one person’s inbox.
If you are still tracking jobs in a shared spreadsheet, this is usually the first thing that breaks. Here is when it is worth moving off the spreadsheet.
Where it fits
Intake → board → invoice
Email intake is the front door. Once a request is a work order, it moves through the same lifecycle as every other job: it lives on the status-first board, color-coded by the business it belongs to, and carries through to time and invoicing without a second system.
Intake is also what makes the multi-business model work — because each business has its own address, requests route to the right board on their own, which is the whole point of running every business you own from one workspace. It is all included in the flat $99/month plan, unlimited businesses and crew.
Setup
How to set up email intake
Five steps, no IT project. You can be routing requests the same afternoon you get your workspace.
Give each business an intake address
Every business (entity) in your workspace gets its own intake address. That address is what keeps a plumbing request off the HVAC board.
Point your requests at it
Forward incoming requests from the inbox you already use, or hand the intake address to customers and dispatch so messages arrive on their own.
A request comes in
MasterBuilds reads the subject, the body, and any attachments as the email lands — no plugin to install, no inbox to connect.
It becomes a work order
The subject becomes the title, the body becomes the notes, and photos attach to the build. It opens as a New card on that business’s board.
You triage from the board
Set priority, assign the crew, and schedule it — or archive it if it isn’t a job. From here it is the same status-first workflow as every other build.
Questions about email intake
- What email providers does it work with?
- Any of them. Each business gets its own MasterBuilds intake address, so you can forward requests to it from Gmail, Outlook or Microsoft 365, Yahoo, or your own domain — or hand the address out directly. There is no plugin to install and no inbox to connect.
- What happens to attachments and photos?
- They come across with the request. Photos and files attached to the email are saved to the work order, so the leak photo a customer sent is already on the job when your crew opens the card. Media counts toward your workspace’s weighted usage — a photo counts as one — never a per-message charge.
- What if an email is spam, or isn’t a real job?
- It still lands as a New build on that business’s board, and you decide. If it is not a job, you archive it in a tap — nothing is auto-accepted or auto-scheduled. Because every request becomes a visible card, you triage from the board instead of digging through an inbox.
- Can each business have its own intake address?
- Yes — that is how routing works. Give each business its own intake address and a request sent there lands on that business’s board, color-coded to that entity. Run plumbing, HVAC, and electrical from one workspace and each one’s requests stay on their own board.
- Do I have to change my current email address?
- No. Keep the inbox you already use and forward requests into MasterBuilds, or start giving out your intake address when you are ready. You can do both — forward the backlog today and hand out the address tomorrow.
Turn your inbox into your board
We’re onboarding operators now. Request access and we’ll set up your workspace and your intake addresses with you.