NTE = "Not To Exceed." It's a dollar limit your client agrees to BEFORE work starts. If the job ends up costing more, you have to stop and get explicit approval — usually in the form of a written quote.
Most field-service tools treat NTE as a freeform note buried in the work-order description. TradelyHQ treats it as first-class data: a column on every work order, with database-level enforcement.
Setting NTE caps
Two ways:
- Default per client + category — go to Clients → pick a client → NTE Profiles tab. Add caps like "HVAC: $1,500", "Plumbing: $1,000". These auto-apply to every new WO opened against that client + category combo.
- Override on a single WO — when creating a WO, you can override the default NTE if the client agreed to a higher number for this specific job.
What happens at WO creation
The matching NTE amount is snapshotted onto the WO row via a database trigger. After that, the cap is immutable — if you change the client's default later, existing open WOs keep their original cap. (Otherwise an admin could silently raise the cap on a job mid-stream and nobody would notice.)
What happens when a tech sees the job will go over
- The tech taps "Quote Needed" from their mobile portal — a single button on the WO detail screen.
- Admin sees a red 🏷️ Quote Needed banner on the WO and a one-click Open Quote Builder button.
- The quote-builder pre-fills the tech's estimated cost (with your default markup applied).
- You send the quote to your client → they approve → a fresh WO spawns automatically with the new agreed amount as the NTE.
Why this matters
Every commercial maintenance contractor we've talked to has at least one story of a tech doing $3,000 of work on a $1,500 NTE because nobody flagged it. The contractor either eats the loss or has an awkward conversation with the client. TradelyHQ makes the flag mechanical: the tech doesn't decide to flag, they're prompted to.
Reports
Owner-tier client users see NTE compliance % in their portal Reports tab — % of WOs that closed under their cap over the past 90 days. This is also their lever for renegotiating caps if they're consistently low.