Running a Queensland practice's live DA book · free 30-day trial

Town planning,
under control.

From enquiry to invoice, Northing runs the whole life of a DA — the statutory clock, planning profiles and scope letters, council correspondence, consultants, phases and fees — in one workspace built for Queensland practices. Then it runs your Monday meeting.

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DA · MCU/2026-0481
14 Foreshore Drive, Cleveson
Material change of use — Multiple dwelling · Sunshine Coast RC
On track
12 bus. days
schedule Statutory clock
Decision period ends Tue 21 Jul 2026.
An information request stops the clock automatically.
timeline Project timeline
Apr — Jul 2026
Statutory
Phases
LodgedIR — clock stoppedDecision due
forum Referral response — DTMR 2 bd
The problem

The statutory clock doesn't care about your spreadsheet.

Most practices still run DAs across a spreadsheet, a project board, an inbox and someone's memory. It works until a date slips, a file goes missing, or a letter gets drafted from scratch for the hundredth time.

event_busy

Missed statutory dates

Decision periods, info requests and notification windows tracked by hand — one miscounted business day and the clock works against you.

keyboard

Data entry nobody does

Every tracker dies the same way: busy planners stop updating it. If keeping the system current takes effort, the system ends up wrong.

draft

Manual document drafting

Scope letters, reports and fee tables rebuilt from old files every time, copying scheme provisions by hand and hoping they're current.

The journey

One DA, start to finish.

Northing follows the way a DA actually moves through a Queensland practice — and does the heavy lifting at every step.

01
Enquiry

Enquiries arrive sorted, not lost.

A branded enquiry form on your website feeds straight into the workspace. Emails to your practice inbox are read by AI, matched to the right project and planner, and flagged when a client needs a call back.

Nothing sits unactioned in someone's personal inbox.

inbox
Inbound
This morning
language Website enquiry — 14 Foreshore Drive
Dual occupancy · new client to review
mail RE: 8 Range Road — timing?
Matched to RAL/2026-0377 · J. Chen call back
AI triage matched 5 of 5 client emails to the right project this week.
02
Investigation

A planning profile for any lot in Queensland.

Enter a lot and Northing pulls the zone, checks every state and council overlay against live mapping, and drafts the applicable codes straight from the scheme's tables of assessment — with maps for easements, flooding and infrastructure alongside.

The planner reviews and confirms. The desktop study that took an afternoon takes minutes.

map
Planning profile
Lot 22 SP301442 · Low density residential zone
floodFlood hazard overlayapplies
wavesCoastal hazard — erosion proneapplies
check_circleAcid sulfate soilsclear
✨ Suggested from the Table of Assessment: 6 assessment codes ticked, ready for planner review.
03
Scope of work

The scope letter writes itself up.

From the profile, Northing drafts the full scope-of-work letter — overlays, applicable codes, overlay maps, phase fees and the council's current application fees, pulled from a fee schedule that's monitored for changes weekly.

Variants for phase-1-only and compliance jobs included. Review, adjust a figure if you like, send as PDF.

auto_awesome
Scope of work — 14 Foreshore Drive
Grounded in the SC planning scheme
draft
…the site is affected by the Flood hazard and Coastal hazard overlays. Assessment against the relevant overlay codes will be required…
Phase 1 — Planning investigations$2,800
Phase 2 — Prepare & lodge$6,200
Council fee — code assessment$3,290
Council fees pulled from the current adopted schedule — checked weekly for republications.
04
Lodgement & the clock

Forward the council's email. That's the data entry.

Forward a confirmation notice and Northing sets the lodgement date, application number and every statutory deadline. An information request stops the clock; the response restarts it. Attachments file themselves against the project.

Agreed an extension with council? Record the date and every deadline view works to it, with the statutory end kept alongside. Log what council or the state promised and when, and it sits on the project timeline next to the milestones.

Every weekday at 7:30 the whole practice gets one digest: what's due, what's at risk, whose court the ball is in.

forward_to_inbox
Council correspondence
MCU/2026-0481
mark_email_read Confirmation notice received
Lodgement date + app number + deadlines set automatically done
pause_circle Information request — clock stopped
Restarts when your response is sent paused
schedule_send Daily digest · 7:30am 3 deadlines this week
05
Notification & decision

Public notification, packaged. Clients kept in the loop.

Northing generates the notice pack — press ad and neighbour letters with a QR code linking to a public page for the application. As each phase completes, a client update goes out with a click-to-accept link, so sign-off is recorded, not assumed. Scheduled client updates keep them informed between phases without anyone writing an email.

campaign
Notification & phases
MCU/2026-0481
Public notice pack
Ad + neighbour letters + QR → public DA page generated
task_alt Phase 2 complete — client notified
Accepted by the client · Tue 14 Jul accepted
Decision notice lands the same way the confirmation did — forward the email, the record completes itself.
06
Invoice

Every job knows what it's worth.

Phase fees from the scope become fee lines on the job, disbursements sit beside them, and every job shows value, invoiced and remaining at a glance. Raise a draft invoice in Xero from the fee line itself — synced nightly, approved by your bookkeeper as usual.

payments
Financials
14 Foreshore Drive
Job value
$9,000
Invoiced
$2,800
To invoice
$6,200
receipt_long Phase 1 — Planning investigations ORC1043 · draft in Xero
Synced with Xero nightly — no double entry, no forgotten fee lines.
Monday morning

Press one button. Walk the week.

The weekly review takes the room through every job the way a practice meeting actually runs — phase by phase, then enquiries and scopes — and puts what could be missed at the top.

Nothing on it is guessed. Every line comes from a recorded date, a task, an email or a promise someone logged.

Everyone Me Any mix of planners
checklist
Weekly review
The week ahead for the whole firm
01Can't miss this week
Statutory dates, overdue tasks, promises that slipped3
02Waiting on someone else
Council, referral agencies, clients, consultants — longest wait first11
03Projects by phase
Every active job, stale ones flagged42
04Enquiries and scopes of work
Quietest first, so stale ones get archived18
05Needs a decision or a check
Finished phases, invoices not raised4
06Blind spots
Jobs the clock can't protect until a date is recorded2
Consultants you've asked for a report and not chased in a fortnight get a nudge. A surveyor past the date they agreed to shows up on screen one.
Under the hood

Built on the Queensland framework, not bent onto it.

No generic boards bent into shape. Everything above runs on foundations made for QLD planning work.

schedule

The statutory clock, automated

Business-day countdowns for every decision period, information request, referral and notification window — calculated against the QLD statutory framework, clock-stops included.

menu_book

AI grounded in the scheme

Documents and assessments cite the planning scheme's actual zones, codes and tables — retrieved, not remembered. If the scheme doesn't state a benchmark, Northing won't invent one.

account_balance

Every Queensland council

All 77 councils are in from day one, with state overlay checks for any lot in Queensland. Council schemes, overlays and application fee schedules are added per council and monitored weekly — twenty councils already carry their 2026–27 fees, benchmarked side by side.

groups

One workspace for the practice

Principals, planners and admin see the same live picture — dashboards for anyone or any mix of people, a comms log and key-events log on every job, consultants with agreed dates, and client contacts with proper roles for letters and invoices. Admin, member and viewer access, and a practice inbox that files council email against the right job.

payments

Financials that follow the work

Scope fees become fee lines, fee lines become Xero draft invoices, disbursements ride alongside, and every job shows value, invoiced and remaining — without a separate spreadsheet.

dns

Australian-hosted, monitored

Your practice data stays onshore, backed up nightly, with uptime and data-source monitoring watching the platform around the clock.

Built with planners

Made by planners, for planners.

Northing is built hand-in-hand with a working Queensland planning practice. Their whole DA book now runs on it — every job, every statutory date, every council email — and their Monday meeting is run from the weekly review.

Practices joining in 2026 get founding-firm pricing and a direct line to the people building it. No fabricated logos, no inflated numbers — a free trial and a straight conversation.

handshake
Running a QLD practice's live DA book
Validated against real applications, week by week.
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Founding-firm pricing in 2026
Free 30-day trial, then a plan sized to your team.
dns
Australian-hosted
Your practice data stays onshore.

Run your practice on Northing.

Start a free 30-day trial — no card, your councils ready on day one. Or leave your email and we'll walk you through it on a real job.

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