Construction Project Costing and Progress Billing

The problem contractors hit in SAP Business One

SAP Business One gives you a Project master record and lets you stamp a project code on marketing documents and journal entries. That is enough to report revenue and cost per project. It is not enough to run a construction contract.

On a real contract you commit a budget broken down by cost code — earthworks, formwork, rebar, MEP first fix, finishes — and every purchase order, subcontract, goods receipt, A/P invoice, timesheet hour and plant charge has to land against one of those codes. You need committed cost separated from incurred cost, because a signed subcontract for 400,000 is real exposure even though no A/P Invoice exists yet. You need progress claims that bill a percentage of each line's contract value, less retention, less previously certified amounts, plus approved variations. You need subcontractor payment certificates that value work done, hold retention, deduct advances and materials-on-site, and only then release an A/P Invoice. And at month end you need WIP: revenue recognised on percentage-of-completion, with the over- and under-billing entries posted to the right control accounts.

None of that exists natively. Contractors end up running the contract in spreadsheets and using B1 as a bookkeeping system, which means the cost report the site manager reads and the trial balance the accountant reads never agree.

What ECOSIRE builds

We build a SAP Business One add-on — not a separate system. Everything lives in your company database and reconciles to your General Ledger by construction.

Cost breakdown structure and budgets

A Cost Code master is implemented as a User-Defined Object (UDO) with its own object registration, so codes get standard B1 behaviour: Find/Add mode, authorisations, data ownership and Change Log history. Codes are hierarchical (contract → phase → activity → cost code) and typed by cost class — labour, material, subcontract, plant, preliminaries, overhead. Budget versions are stored in User-Defined Tables (UDTs) with an original budget, approved variations and a current forecast per code, so you can always show original versus approved versus forecast without losing the audit trail.

Commitments and actual cost capture

We extend Purchase Orders, Subcontract orders, Goods Receipt POs, A/P Invoices, Inventory Transfers, Issues for Production and Journal Entries with cost-code User-Defined Fields (UDFs) at row level, backed by Formatted Search and validation so a document cannot post to a closed code or exceed an approved budget beyond your tolerance. Commitment is recognised on the Purchase Order; actual cost on the Goods Receipt PO or A/P Invoice. Plant and internal equipment charges post through a configurable Journal Entry template against the plant recovery account. Labour flows in from timesheet entry with an hourly rate per resource.

Subcontractor certificates

A Subcontract Certificate document (UDO with its own numbering series and approval procedure) values work executed this period against the subcontract's schedule of rates, then applies retention percentage, advance recovery, materials-on-site adjustment, back-charges and statutory deductions. On approval it generates the A/P Invoice via the Service Layer, posts retention to a retention-payable control account, and updates the subcontract's certified-to-date and retention-held balances. Retention release is a separate document that draws down the control account.

Variation orders

Variation Orders are tracked through submitted → under review → approved → rejected states using a UDO with a B1 approval procedure. An approved variation adjusts the contract value and the affected cost-code budgets in one transaction, and the change is stamped so the progress claim can show base contract and variations separately.

Progress billing and retention

A Progress Claim document values each contract line by percentage complete, quantity executed or milestone achievement, subtracts previously certified value, then applies retention and advance recovery. On approval it produces the A/R Invoice through the Service Layer with the retention amount posted to a retention-receivable control account rather than being invoiced. Retention invoices are raised later against that balance. Because the claim writes a real A/R Invoice, your ageing, VAT return and customer statement are correct without a manual entry.

WIP and percentage-of-completion

A period-end routine computes cost-to-date, cost-to-complete, percentage complete and earned revenue per contract, then posts the accrued-revenue or deferred-revenue Journal Entry with full drill-back to the calculation. Reversal on the next period is automatic, so you never carry a stale accrual.

Reporting

Crystal Reports layouts are delivered for the cost-value reconciliation, cost-code performance report, contract profitability statement, subcontractor certificate, progress claim and retention register. All are registered in the Report and Layout Manager so they print and email from the document toolbar. Query-based dashboards expose the same figures inside the B1 client.

Who this is for

Main contractors, civil and infrastructure contractors, MEP and fit-out subcontractors, and design-and-build firms already running SAP Business One 10.0 who manage between a handful and a few hundred concurrent contracts. It suits companies whose auditors require percentage-of-completion revenue recognition and whose clients issue payment certificates against measured work.

It is not the right fit for pure equipment suppliers with no measured work, or for firms that have not yet standardised a cost code structure — we will work through that in scoping, but the structure has to be decidable.

Technical approach

The add-on is built against the SAP Business One Service Layer (REST/OData) for document creation and posting, with the DI API used where a specific object is not exposed by the Service Layer. Custom objects are registered as UDOs so they inherit B1 authorisations, approval procedures, Change Log and data ownership rather than reimplementing them. UDFs and UDTs carry the extension data. Client-side behaviour is delivered as a B1 add-on for the Windows client, with the Browser Access layer supported for the web client where the object allows it. Both SQL Server and SAP HANA are supported; queries are written per platform where syntax diverges rather than lowest-common-denominator.

How delivery works

1. Scoping call. We walk your chart of accounts, cost code convention, contract templates, retention and certificate rules, and your current spreadsheets. Output is a written functional specification with the field-level design and the list of B1 objects touched. 2. Fixed quote. Price and timeline confirmed in writing against that specification. Anything outside it is a change request, not a surprise. 3. Build. Development against a copy of your company database so the add-on is tested with your real chart of accounts, item masters, tax codes and document numbering — not demo data. 4. Install in test. Deployed into your test company. You run parallel claims and certificates against known-good historical periods until the numbers match. 5. Install in production. Cutover with opening balances for contracts in flight: certified-to-date, retention held, cost incurred per code. 6. Support. A support window during which defects against the agreed specification are fixed at no charge, with source code handed over so you are never locked to us.

Lead time is typically two to four weeks from signed quote, driven mostly by how much cost-code history has to be migrated. Nothing here is a shelf product — this is built for your company file, and the quotation reflects the scope you actually need.