The BOQ is a spreadsheet nobody can version
Rates change, scope changes, and the version a site engineer is working from is rarely the version the office priced.
Sectors
From the tender to the payment, on one platform.
Zoho implementation for construction firms — BOQ and costing, measurement and billing, material inspection, and estimate against actual on every project.
A construction business runs on documents that have to agree with each other: the bill of quantities, the estimate, the measurement on site, and the bill that follows it. When those live in separate spreadsheets, the gap between estimate and actual is only discovered after the money is spent.
What we hear
What engineering and construction businesses arrive with.
Estimate against actual arrives too late
Costing is reconciled at the end of a project or the end of a quarter, by which point the variance is history rather than a decision.
Measurement and billing are re-keyed
What was measured on site is typed again into a bill, and a disagreement between the two is settled by argument rather than by record.
Material arrives without an inspection record
A delivery challan is signed on site and the inspection, if it happens, lives on paper that never reaches the costing.
What we build
What a engineering and construction platform usually contains.
A configurable BOQ with versions
For a construction firm: BOQ and costing built in Zoho Creator, with versioning, so a revision is a new version rather than an overwritten file.
Measurement through to billing
Measurement recorded against the BOQ line it belongs to, and billing generated from it, so the bill and the measurement cannot drift apart.
Delivery challan into material inspection
A digital challan-to-inspection workflow with approvals, so material received is material recorded and material checked.
Estimate against actual, live
Location-wise tracking and dashboards that show the variance while the project is running, not after it closes.
Products this usually involves
Zoho CreatorZoho Projects
Questions
Asked most often in engineering and construction.
Does this replace our accounting system?
No. This covers the project side — BOQ, costing, measurement, billing and material. What happens to the invoice afterwards stays where it is, unless you ask us to connect the two.
Can site staff use it away from the office?
Yes. Creator applications run on a phone, which is where measurement and material inspection actually happen.
How much of our existing BOQ structure survives?
Most of it. The structure is configurable, so the aim is to carry across how you already price rather than to impose a new method.
Tell us what you need Zoho to do.
Describe the problem and we will come back with a ballpark scope and timeline.