Construction Software for Builders and Contractors

The best accounting software for an Australian builder ties GST-ready bookkeeping to the way builds actually invoice, progress claims at slab, frame, lock-up, fix and completion, plus variations and subcontractor payments. Xero and MYOB are the standard accounting packages but don't model progress billing or job costing on their own, so builders bolt on a separate estimating or job-management tool. OneBookPlus combines progress-claim invoicing, variation tracking, subcontractor management, job-level cost tracking and BAS-ready accounting in one platform from $0/month, fewer tools to reconcile at month's end.

Yes, for residential and small-commercial builders, OneBookPlus is a practical simPRO or AroFlo alternative. simPRO and AroFlo are powerful for large contracting firms with deep inventory and project-accounting needs, and we don't claim to match that enterprise depth. OneBookPlus is aimed at builders who want progress billing, variations, subcontractor tracking, site photos and GST invoicing in one affordable subscription that starts free, without enterprise onboarding or per-seat pricing.

Yes, our free plan includes 10 invoices and 5 quotes a month and up to 250 contacts. Great for sole trader builders or small residential builders getting started. Upgrade to Starter ($29/mo) for unlimited invoices and quotes as your building business grows.

Every progress claim automatically calculates 10% GST, displays your ABN and builder licence number, and meets ATO requirements. Invoice at each project milestone, slab, frame, lock-up, fix, completion. At BAS time, export a GST summary in one click.

Yes. Log variations with costs, get client approval, and add them to the project total. Every variation includes a full audit trail, what changed, when, who approved it, and how it affects the project price.

Absolutely. Track subbies assigned to each project stage, log their quotes and invoices, and monitor payment status. You always know who's been paid and who's outstanding across every active build.

Yes. Take progress photos on-site and attach them directly to the project record. Photos are timestamped and organised by build phase, perfect for client updates, council inspections, and your own records.

Yes. Store your state home warranty insurance certificate against each contract, NSW HBCF (via icare) for residential work over $20,000, VIC Domestic Building Insurance for work over $16,000, QLD QBCC Home Warranty Scheme for work over $3,300, and equivalents in SA, WA and TAS. Attach NCC Volume 1 (Class 2 to 9) or Volume 2 (Class 1 & 10) compliance notes, NatHERS energy ratings (7-star minimum under NCC 2022), and engineer-stamped certificates for AS 1684 timber framing, AS 3600 concrete, AS 3700 masonry, AS 4100 steel and AS 1170 wind/structural loads, all linked to the job for council, certifier and insurer access.

Yes. Build estimates from a cost catalogue and reusable recipes (assemblies), with markup or margin, wastage and PC/PS allowances, then convert an accepted estimate straight into a contract job that bills by progress claim. You can also upload a plan and have AI read the measured quantities off it into a review queue you check line by line. Unlike Buildxact, the estimating, invoicing, online payments and GST accounting all live in the one platform, clients can pay a progress claim online, and it's not a separate tool to reconcile.

Yes, and it's included, not a paid add-on. Describe a job in plain words (or speak it) and a full sectioned estimate streams in, priced from your own cost catalogue and calibrated to what you actually pay your suppliers. Or upload a plan (PDF or photo) and AI measures the room areas, wall lengths and counts off it, drawing each one onto the plan with a confidence score, you can zoom, pan and drag any measurement to correct it, and tap a single symbol to have it find and count every other one. A separate AI reviewer checks a drafted estimate for missing items, pricing outliers and Australian compliance gaps, termite management to AS 3660, waterproofing to AS 3740, smoke alarms, NCC energy efficiency, and lets you add anything it finds with one tap. You review and adjust every line before anything is sent; the AI does the first draft, you make the call.

Yes. Photograph the work as it progresses and AI reads the photos against your job's schedule of values, suggesting a percent complete for each stage, frame, roof, lock-up, with a short reason for each. It drafts the claim; you review and adjust every stage, and nothing is billed until you send it. The claim materialises as a GST-compliant progress-claim invoice (with retention withheld if you use it) that your client can pay online.

Buildxact is a capable estimating and job-management tool, but it has no built-in payment collection, a tax-exclusive-only engine, and its AI estimating is a paid add-on. OneBookPlus builds the estimating, AI plan takeoff, progress claims with retention, variations, subcontractor tracking and GST-ready accounting into one platform, with the AI included in the plan price and clients able to pay progress claims online. A few things Buildxact can't do: tap one symbol on a plan and have AI find and count every other one (their counting is click-by-click), turn site photos into a drafted progress claim, and calibrate estimate pricing to your own recent supplier costs. You can export your data any time, so there's no lock-in.

Yes. When your contract lets the client withhold retention (commonly 5% of each claim during construction), OneBookPlus withholds it on the claim automatically at the percentage you set and keeps a running retention balance per contract: how much is held, when it halves at practical completion, and when the remainder falls due after the defects liability period. Retention tracking comes with the Builder Suite app, $99/mo on top of any core plan including Free, not with the Growth plan, so retention money stops disappearing into part-paid invoices you forget to chase.

For most residential and small-commercial builders, no: the ledger, GST on claims and materials, profit and loss and the BAS summary are part of the same system your jobs, claims and variations live on. The practical question is usually your accountant, not the software. They keep working the way they already do: give them their own read-only login to the books, or export the chart of accounts, journals, contacts and transactions to CSV whenever they ask for them. If they insist on running their own ledger you can leave them to it and use OneBookPlus for the jobs, claims and variations, but you are back to reconciling two systems, which is the thing this was meant to stop.

Three things generic packages don't model: progress claims (revenue arrives in stages tied to construction milestones, with GST payable as each claim is issued), retentions (money the client withholds that isn't overdue, just not yet due), and job costing (knowing whether an individual build made money, not just the business overall). OneBookPlus handles all three natively: claims come off the contract's schedule of values, retention is withheld and tracked to release, and every expense and subbie invoice is recorded against its job so quoted-versus-actual margin is live per build.

Buildxact starts at $199/mo and Xero at $37/mo (both AUD, per their published pricing, and both figures read from our competitor registry rather than typed here), so $236/mo before you add photo storage or a CRM. OneBookPlus core plans run $0 (Free), $29 (Starter), $49 (Plus) or $69 (Growth) per month, and the optional Builder Suite estimating and cost-control add-on is $99/mo on top of any core plan with unlimited users. A builder who needs full estimating, AI plan takeoff, progress claims with retention and accounting pays $128 to $168 a month all-in, one login, one set of numbers.

For most residential and small-commercial builders, yes, and this is the structural difference rather than a feature you tick off a list. The frame-stage claim, the bricklayer's invoice and the timber merchant's bill all post to the same double-entry ledger that produces the profit and loss, balance sheet, cash flow and BAS summary, so the claims register and the books cannot drift apart: there is nothing to sync because there is only one set of records. That ledger and the BAS report are included from Starter at $29/mo. One boundary worth stating plainly: the BAS figures are prepared for you, BAS-ready, and you lodge them yourself. Most job-management tools in this trade stop before the ledger. Tradify has no built-in accounting and requires Xero or MYOB; ServiceM8 has no built-in accounting and requires Xero; AroFlo requires Xero or MYOB for accounting; simPRO still requires Xero or MYOB for accounting. Buildxact's own recorded weak points are accounting-sync friction with Xero, MYOB and QuickBooks Online, and no built-in payment collection at all.

Both, and you choose per contract rather than per subscription. On a staged contract the accepted estimate becomes the schedule of values, so you claim a completed stage, slab, frame, lock-up, fixing, completion, or a percentage complete against any individual line. Claimed-to-date is tracked against the contract so a claim can never quietly overshoot it, approved variations lift the contract value before you claim them, and retention is withheld at your percentage and tracked through to release. The claim goes out as a GST-compliant tax invoice showing this-claim and to-date totals with an online payment link. On a cost-plus job you invoice from received purchase orders and supplier bills with your markup applied instead. One thing we are careful about: these are progress-claim tax invoices, not statutory payment claims under the Security of Payment legislation in each state, which is a separate legal instrument with its own wording and service rules. Progress claims and retention are part of the Builder Suite app, $99/mo on top of any core plan.

Everything sits on one drag-and-drop job calendar with month, week and day views down to 15-minute precision and colour-coded statuses, so Tuesday's slab pour and Thursday's frame inspection are on the same screen as the two other builds still running. The dispatch board gives every team member their own column plus an unassigned lane for work nobody has picked up yet, conflict detection stops you booking the same chippy in two places, recurring schedules cover standing site visits, and daily run sheets go out for the morning. Build stages sit on that calendar with crews and subbies assigned to them. What it does not do is a Gantt chart with task dependencies and a critical path, so if you need a linked programme where slipping the slab automatically pushes every downstream trade, that is not this. Invoicing several jobs in one batch is a Plus $49/mo feature.

Yes. Supplier bills and materials purchases are coded to the job, so the timber merchant's invoice, the concrete order and the crane hire land against the build that consumed them, and the GST credits flow into the BAS summary. The Receipt Inbox takes receipts by email into a staging queue with OCR-suggested fields ready for one-click expense creation, and you can drag a supplier PDF or a photo of a docket straight in and have the supplier, date, GST and total read off it for you to check. All of that is included from Starter at $29/mo. Where it stops, honestly: there is accounting-grade inventory with on-hand quantities, low-stock alerts and stock-take, but no van-stock or multi-warehouse module, and no automatic supplier-account sync, so trade-account statements from your merchants still arrive as bills to record rather than syncing themselves. There is no live bank feed at the moment either, so bank transactions are entered or imported rather than arriving on their own.