Software for construction and renovation firms

Where the time goes

Most small and mid-sized building firms run on tools that were never meant to work together. Hours go into a timesheet app. Supplier bills go into Xero. The valuation for each job lives in its own Excel workbook, rebuilt every month by the one person who understands the formulas.

The cost shows up at month end. Someone exports the timesheets, exports the bills and codes each line to a job by hand. A change to a worker's rate means checking every open workbook. A client who asks how a figure was reached gets a spreadsheet that only makes sense to the person who built it.

For firms that work open-book or at cost plus a margin, the monthly valuation is how they get paid. A slow valuation means slow cash, and an error in a workbook is an awkward conversation with a client who can see every line.

What we build

One system that holds the jobs, the cost codes and the costs, and works out the numbers the way your quantity surveyor would. Labour hours and supplier bills come in from the tools you already use, and every line is tagged to a job code.

The valuation is calculated from those lines through labour, materials, preliminaries, overhead and profit, retention, VAT and amount due. Each line goes to the right VAT rate, including the reduced and zero rates that apply to some residential work. Draft valuations update when a rate changes. Issued valuations stay exactly as they were sent.

Clients receive each valuation as a private link that they can print or download as a spreadsheet, with no login to manage. Every change to a code or a rate is logged with who made it and when.

Around that core we add whatever the office still does by hand. That might be variations and change orders, purchase orders, retention tracking, snagging lists or a phone view for site managers to log progress and photos.

What it connects to

Xero stays your accounting system. The new software reads supplier bills from it, either through the Xero connection or from its exports. Timesheet tools such as Timely work the same way. Where a tool has no usable connection, we start with its spreadsheet exports, which is how the West Country Renovations system began.

Questions