I build project and money systems for contractors — civil, interiors, electrical, fabrication: BOQ-based estimates, running-account billing, material tracking to site, labour and subcontractor ledgers, and retention management.
Why is profit a rumour until the last bill clears?
Because contracting separates the moment you price work from the moment you learn what it cost, often by years. In between, the record thins out at every step.
Estimates live in Excel, prepared carefully. Then RA bills get reconstructed from site diaries. Material sent to site vanishes into “adjust ho jayega”. Retention amounts are held and forgotten across financial years. Variations get executed on a verbal instruction and argued about at final account. And the labour and subcontractor settlements happen on Thursdays, from memory, in a conversation where the person with the better recollection wins.
The margin was real at estimate. It leaks during execution — site by site, chhota-chhota — until the year-end surprise. And by then the evidence needed to recover any of it has been lost.
What does the system cover?
- BOQ engine. Items, rates, quantities, with estimates versioned and variations tracked as they are instructed rather than reconstructed later. Variations are the profit-killer in this trade precisely because they are the least documented.
- RA billing. Measured quantities against BOQ, cumulative billing computed correctly, deductions and retention applied by rule — with the measurement backup attached to the bill.
- Material control. Purchased against issued-to-site against consumed, so the site-store gap becomes a number rather than a suspicion.
- Labour and subcontractor ledgers. Attendance or piece-rate, advances, settlements against certified work.
- Retention tracker. Every held amount with its release date, chased rather than remembered.
- Live project margin. Cost against estimate as the work proceeds, not after it.
The two recoveries that pay for the system
Retention. Sums held at 5 or 10 per cent across several completed projects, spread over years, with release conditions nobody is tracking. Every contractor I have spoken to has money sitting here, and none of them could name the total without a search. It is not disputed money — it is simply unclaimed, because claiming it requires knowing what is owed, by whom, and against which condition.
Variations. Work instructed verbally, executed willingly, billed weakly. A variation with a written instruction, a measured quantity and a dated record is a claim; the same work remembered by two people is a negotiation. The system’s job is unglamorous here — capture the instruction at the moment it is given, from the site, in ten seconds — and it converts the single largest source of final-account erosion into billable work.
Neither of these requires you to work differently. They require the record to exist when the conversation happens.
Related reading
/industries/real-estate — the developer on the other side of your contract · /industries/furniture — made-to-order projects with the same BOQ bones · /products/field-operations — site capture, offline-first · /products/services-erp — contract and AMC operations
Your last finished project
Estimated margin against actual, with every variation and retention counted. If that question is uncomfortable, the next site can be set up so it is not. /contact — agli site pe hisaab pehle se.
Questions I actually get
We work on measurement books.
The MB stays. The system mirrors it so the bill and the book agree by construction rather than by cross-checking — which means a client's engineer verifying quantities finds the same numbers you billed, and the deduction conversation gets much shorter.
The client deducts amounts arbitrarily.
Your bill arrives with quantity backup and measurement references attached. Disputes shrink when evidence travels with the invoice, because most arbitrary deductions are actually unverified ones — the deducting engineer had no easy way to confirm what you claimed.
Multiple sites, one accountant?
Exactly the design load: sites feed data from the field, one office console consolidates. Site engineers record measurements and material receipts; the office bills, tracks retention and reports project margin without re-entering anything.
How is retention tracked?
Every held amount recorded with its release condition and date, chased automatically. Retention forgotten across years is one of the largest recoverable sums in this trade, and it goes uncollected purely because nobody owns the list.
Subcontractor and labour payments?
Piece-rate or daily attendance, advances, and settlements against work certified — so the Thursday argument about what was completed becomes a reference to a record both sides can read.
Can it show project margin before the project ends?
Yes — cost against estimate, live, per item. Discovering a loss-making project at final account is the trade's defining failure; the same information at 30% completion is still actionable, and that is the whole point of building it this way.