Construction / Contractor

For a civil contractor, builder or interior fit-out firm. Every job is a project billed to a client against an estimate (BOQ). Work is measured on site and signed for in a measurement book, material is indented, approved and issued to the site's own store, labour is paid off a muster roll, subcontractors get work orders with their own scope and claims, and the client is billed progressively (RA bills) with retention held back.

Set up before your first site

Do these once, in this order. The owner (or an Office login) does all of them.

1. Pick the parts of the job you run Tools > Settings > Projects, Site Work card. A new contractor starts with work orders, indents, RA billing, BOQ variance and the measurement book on, and site wages off; an interiors firm also starts with the measurement book and BOQ variance off. Switch on only what you do today; each switch adds its own screens, reports and permissions.
2. Add your material list under Materials > Items: cement, steel, sand, with the unit you buy and issue them in.
3. Add the people you deal with in the Directory: clients (New Client), Contractors you sublet work to, Labourers on the muster, and Suppliers. Your own engineers and supervisors go under Staff.
4. Open the first project with New Project: site name, client, site address, estimate amount, retention %, dates, and the Site Engineer responsible. Naming the engineer is what puts the site on that engineer's phone.
5. Enter the BOQ on the project's Work Items tab: each line with its unit, quantity, rate and cost rate. The total can be written back as the estimate.
6. Create a login for each person by the job they do, and say which sites they may see (see Who signs in).
7. Run one test day: a diary entry, an indent, one measurement recorded and certified, one RA bill and a receipt. Cancel the test RA bill afterwards; cancelling releases its work to be billed again.

How the work flows

A job moves between the site, the store and the office. Each step says who does it and what prints. A step appears only when its switch is on in the Site Work settings.

The whole journey on one page:

flowchart TD
    A[New Project
client · site address · estimate · dates · retention %] --> PR[(Project created with its site store)]
    PR --> B[Work Items tab: BOQ lines
qty · rate · cost rate · phase dates]
    B --> WI[(The BOQ lines)]
    PR --> C[Site Diary: what happened 
manpower · idle hours · weather]
    C --> PL[(Diary entry)]
    subgraph Measurement
        MB1[Measure a BOQ line
units · L · B · D · location] --> MB2[(Entry: awaiting signature)]
        MB2 --> MB3[Certify] --> MB4[(Completed qty RECOMPUTED)]
    end
    subgraph Material
        M1[Indent: lines · qty · needed by] --> MR[(Requested)]
        MR --> MA[Approve line by line] --> M2[Purchase Invoice for the site]
        M2 --> M3[Issue to Site
from store to site warehouse]
        M3 --> SP[(Stock issued to the project)]
    end
    subgraph Labour
        L1[Muster roll: mark days] --> L2[Settle: wage slip] --> PW[(Wages settled · cash paid)]
    end
    subgraph Subcontract
        S1[Work Order to contractor] --> SC[(The work order)]
        SC --> SS[Scope: their lines · their rate]
        SS --> S2[Claim: gross · retention · advance recovered]
        S2 --> S3[Retention release on acceptance]
    end
    WI --> Measurement
    PR --> Material & Labour & Subcontract
    MB4 --> RA[Raise RA bill
certified minus already billed, at the BOQ rate]
    RA --> SI[Sales Invoice · retention held as a fact]
    SI --> RP[Receive Payment · receipt printed]
    SP & PW & S2 --> BV[BOQ Cost Variance
budget vs consumed · escalation alerts]
    SE[Site Expense] --> SP2[(Expense booked to the project)]

Who signs in

Give every person their own login; never share the owner's. Adding a user on a contracting business asks what the person does first. That choice decides the screen they open on, their phone's bottom bar and the switches they start with. Any switch can be changed afterwards.

1. Open the user form Tools > Settings > Users > Add User, or from the person's own row under Staff.
2. Pick the seat in Does (Site Supervisor, Site Engineer...) and link their staff record in Contact.
3. Set the login: user name and password (or their email address on a cloud business).
4. Say which sites under May see: leave it on every project, or switch on Only certain projects and pick them.
5. Review the switches under May do, add or remove any, and save. The person gets the change at their next sign-in.

A seat whose screen is switched off for this business opens on the Dashboard instead, and a login saved with no seat opens like Office. Reset to seat defaults puts an existing person back on the standard set; it warns first, because it discards anything set by hand. Re-picking a seat on an existing login changes where it opens, never its switches. The full switch list is in What each person may do, and the rules shared by every trade are in Users, Roles & Permissions.

Which sites a person can see

Separate from what they may do. A seat can be left on every project, which is what the office and the billing desk usually want, or pinned to only certain projects for somebody handling three contracts.

A Site Engineer also sees any job that names them as its engineer, without anyone having to list it - which is the point of the seat, since an engineer's sites change every month. So "Only certain projects" with nothing picked is a real setting for an engineer: the button reads Their own sites only and means exactly the sites pinned to me. To give somebody no projects at all, take away their project switches rather than emptying the list.

Where it is in the app

A contractor opens on its own home screen, laid out by the job the person signed in does. Each menu shows only what this seat is granted and this business has switched on; a menu left empty does not appear.

On a computer: the menu bar

Across the top: the seat’s own screen, the Dashboard, then one menu per area. New Project sits in a New submenu at the top of the first menu. Masters sit on the Setup menu, stock vouchers and payroll on Voucher, and Settings on Tools.

On a phone or tablet: the side menu and the bottom bar

The side menu starts with My Work — the seat’s own screen, then the Dashboard — followed by Projects, Site Work, Materials, Billing and Office (Reports, Directory, Accounts). The bottom bar carries the screens each seat works all day; a screen on the bar is not repeated in the side menu.

A seat whose screen is switched off for this business opens on the Dashboard instead. Two entries carry a red count, refreshed every two minutes: Indents shows indents raised and not yet authorised, and Measurement Book shows measurements recorded and not yet signed.

Screens

Projects

The list of jobs by status (quoted, running, on hold, completed) with progress and money strip. Opening one shows the project home: headline money (estimate, billed, received, retention held, cost so far), receipt history, and tabs for Work Items, Progress, Materials, Wages, Subcontracts. Hold and resume a project with a reason.

Work Items (BOQ)

The itemised estimate: description, unit, quantity, rate, cost rate, completed and billed quantity, planned start and finish per line so the tab can say which phase is late. The total can be written back as the estimate; the table prints as the estimate document.

Site Diary

Dated entries of what happened, manpower count, idle hours, weather and photographs. Exports whole, not just the pages scrolled. With the measurement book on it records the day; with it off, its "done today" figure is also what moves a BOQ line.

Measurement Book

What was actually built, measured on site and signed for by somebody other than whoever held the tape. Only certified work moves a BOQ line, and only certified work can be billed. See Measurement Book.

RA Bills

The client's running account: every bill with its gross, the retention withheld, the advance recovered and what was payable. Cancelling one releases its work to be billed again. See Progress (RA) Billing.

Work Orders (Subcontracts)

Contract amount, retention %, dates and status per contractor, plus the contractor's own scope - which BOQ lines at which rate - and the claims raised against it. Print the order for signature on site; claims post as ordinary purchase vouchers, so TDS, reverse charge and the payment split come with them. See Work Orders & Subcontracts.

Indents (Material)

Multi-line requests from the site, authorised line by line by somebody other than the store keeper, purchased against, then issued to the site store. The destination is never asked: it is always the project's own warehouse. See Material Indents.

Site Labour & Wages

Daily muster roll per labourer, settled into wage slips. See Site Labour & Wages.

BOQ Cost Variance

Budget vs consumed per cost head with escalation alerts. See BOQ Cost Variance.

Money

• Receive Payment - a (partial) client payment against a project, with running balance and a printed receipt.
• Site Expense - books to the site's cost. General overhead (office rent, staff) goes through Expense Entry instead.
• RA billing - see Progress (RA) Billing. The bill IS a sales invoice, so your invoice design prints it.
• Purchase & Sales - a contractor does buy and sell: material purchase, surplus sale, plant hire, ordinary invoices against estimates.

The project’s money

flowchart TD
    A[Estimate agreed with the client] --> B[Advance received]
    B --> C[Work progresses on site]
    C --> D[RA bill raised on measured work]
    D --> E[Client pays · retention withheld]
    C --> F[Costs: material · labour · subcontract · site expense]
    E --> G[Received so far]
    F --> H[Spent so far]
    G & H --> I[Where the project stands today]
    I --> J{Cost running ahead of progress?}
    J -->|yes| K[BOQ variance alert · re-quote or control]
    J -->|no| C
    C --> L[Work accepted] --> M[Retention released · project closed]

Settings

Seven switches decide which halves of the job this business runs. They are first asked when the business is created. Each one removes a section, a tab and the reports behind it when off, so you are never shown a screen for something you do not do.

What each person may do

Eleven switches, on the Projects group of a user's permissions. Ten are write switches and are off for a view-only login; See Project Money is the one read switch, so it survives view mode - a read-only owner reviewing a closed year is exactly who a figure should still be shown to.

Four of these come in pairs that are deliberately not one switch, because on any job of size they are two different people: raising an indent and approving one, recording a measurement and certifying it, billing and releasing retention, and writing a job and seeing what it is worth. Giving both halves to one person is a decision a small business is free to make - it is just not made for you.

Every section in the menu is hidden unless the setting above is on and the person has the switch for it, so a screen you cannot use is simply not there rather than refusing when you open it. Somebody with none of the site jobs sees no Site Work menu at all.

Reports

Nineteen project reports, one menu entry each. Which of them a person is offered depends on three things together: whether the setting behind it is on, whether they hold the switch for that part of the job, and - for the eleven that quote money - whether they have See Project Money.

The money ones are Money Summary, Job Profitability, Billing & Retention, BOQ Cost Variance, Subcontract Status, Work In Progress, Retention Ageing, Contractor Running Account, P&L By Cost Head, Labour Cost By BOQ Line and Cash Flow vs Progress. The rest are the site's own record: Phase Progress, Schedule Slippage, Site Diary, Downtime Analysis, Labour Register, Material vs Estimate, Measurement Register and Material vs BOQ Line.

Also the ordinary business set - Day Book, Expenses, Income, Profit & Loss and the sales/purchase registers, since a contractor does buy and sell - and Loan Reports for advances and subcontractor loans. Per project you can print the RA bill, the measurement book abstract, a subcontractor's bill, the subcontract work order, the material issue slip, payment receipts, site expense vouchers, wage payment slips and the executive project summary.