Concreting software for quoting, pours and GST invoicing

Concreting businesses in Australia run on a paperwork problem that's easy to underestimate. You're measuring driveways and writing quotes on a notepad, texting form-up photos to builders, and then spending your evenings trying to match Xero invoices against deposits from three different jobs. Many concreters pay from $37/mo for Xero and from $48/mo per user for a job app like Tradify or Jobber, and still end up with a glovebox of concrete dockets and Bunnings receipts that never get logged against the right slab. The result: you don't really know how profitable a pour was until your accountant tells you months later, if they can even untangle which docket went with which job.

OneBookPlus gives you one app for your whole concreting business. Build itemised quotes on your phone, finishing labour priced by the square metre, concrete supply by the cubic metre, plus formwork, reo, mesh, pump hire and saw-cutting all itemised with GST calculated automatically. When the customer or builder accepts via the quote link, the job drops straight onto your calendar. Pour the slab, log the batches and materials, snap form-up and finished-surface photos, and convert the quote to a GST invoice with one tap, or raise a progress claim against the next stage on a longer job. Log every supplier cost against the job so you can see the true margin on each slab. No more guessing, no more double-entry, no more Sunday night sorting dockets.

Quoting per m² and per m³

The thing generic job apps get wrong for concreters is how you price. A slab is two costs in one quote: the finished surface (priced per square metre for the finish: standard, broomed, exposed aggregate, coloured) and the concrete itself (priced per cubic metre based on the slab thickness and the supplier's rate). OneBookPlus lets you build both into the same quote, alongside formwork by the linear metre, reo and mesh by the sheet, pump hire as a day rate, and saw-cutting and sealing as their own lines. The customer sees a clear, professional breakdown rather than a single lump sum, and accepts on their phone. The accepted quote becomes a live job with all those line items carried straight through to the invoice, so nothing gets re-keyed or forgotten. If you are still working out what your hourly and per-metre rates need to be, the tradie quote calculator and the markup and margin calculator will do the arithmetic before you commit to a price list.

Pour-day scheduling

A pour is a logistics exercise. The agitator delivery window, the pump, your crew, and the weather all have to line up on the same morning. The week view shows every pour and every crew member at a glance. Lock the pour date, assign the crew, and note the concrete order and pump booking against the job. If rain rolls in, drag the pour to a new day and the customer and crew reminders update automatically. For concreters subbing to builders, you can see at a glance which slabs are formed-up and ready versus which are still waiting on set-out, so you never send a truck to a site that isn't ready.

Wet weather and the pour window

Concreting is the one trade where the calendar is not really yours. The forecast decides when you pour, and once the truck is ordered the decision has a cost attached, so the reschedule call usually gets made the night before or at first light. The problem is rarely the decision, it is everything downstream of it: ringing the batching plant, moving the pump, telling three crew members, and telling the customer or the site supervisor who has a bricklayer booked behind you. On the week view you drag the pour to the new date once, and the crew assignment and the customer reminder move with it, so nobody turns up to a site that is under water. The job keeps its history too, the original date, the moved date and the reason sit on the record, which matters when a builder later asks why the slab went in a week after the program said it would. Where a wet-weather delay has contract consequences on commercial work, raise the variation against the same job so the approved contract value and the claim schedule stay in step with reality.

Progress claims and cash flow

Bigger civil and commercial slabs rarely pay in one invoice at the end. They run on progress claims against agreed stages, deposit, set-out, pour, finish, and waiting until the whole job's done to bill it is what strangles a concreter's cash flow. OneBookPlus lets you raise each stage as its own GST invoice that draws down the contract value, with the balance owing always clear on the job. The deposit funds your concrete order, the set-out claim covers the form-up, the pour claim lands the day you pour, and the final claim closes it out. Automated reminders chase any claim that goes overdue, so the money keeps moving while the job's still on the ground. There is more detail on how claims, retention and variations are structured on the progress claims feature page, and you can model what a staged job does to your bank balance with the cash flow forecast calculator.

Reading the concrete docket back into your margin

The docket the driver hands you is the most honest document on the job, and it is the one most likely to end up folded in a visor. It records what was batched, what mix and what strength, what time it left the plant and what time it was discharged. Read against your quote, it answers the only question that matters after a pour: did the slab take the volume you priced. Over-order and the extra goes down the drain with your margin; short-order and you are paying for a second small load, a return trip and the waiting time that goes with it. Photograph the docket onto the job the moment you sign it, along with the pump invoice and any waiting-time charge, and the job carries its real cost rather than the cost you assumed at quoting time. Do that for a season of slabs and your per-m² and per-m³ rates stop being a guess: you can see which finishes, which access conditions and which builders actually leave you money, and price the next quote from evidence. It also makes your tax invoice and GST-credit position easy to reconstruct if the ATO or your accountant asks.

Invoicing, GST and BAS

Every invoice and progress claim carries your ABN and calculates 10% GST on labour, concrete supply, pump hire and materials, meeting ATO tax-invoice requirements without you doing the maths. Where your work type and contract value require a building or trade contractor licence in your state or territory, show that number on the quote and invoice too. Customer and builder payments made through the invoice link clear the invoice on their own, and supplier costs, concrete, reo, pump hire and fuel, land in the right accounts as you enter or import them. There is no live bank feed at the moment, so anything paid outside the link is imported from a statement. Come BAS time, your GST summary is already prepared: GST collected on invoices, GST credits on purchases, and the net owing. Export it in one click, or check a single figure first with the GST calculator and the BAS calculator. This is general information about how the software works, not tax advice, confirm your specifics with your accountant or the ATO.

Getting started

Sign up free, no credit card, no lock-in contract. Choose “Concreter” as your business type and OneBookPlus pre-configures concreting service categories, typical job types (driveway, house slab, shed slab, path, exposed aggregate, commercial slab) and invoice templates. Import your customer and builder list via CSV from Tradify, Jobber, or a spreadsheet, set your per-m²/m³ rates and progress-claim stages, and set your invoice branding and numbering. You can send your first quote the day you sign up. If you also run the whole build rather than just the slab, the builders page covers estimating and contract administration in more depth, and the OneBookPlus versus Tradify comparison sets the two tools side by side line for line.