Construction Project Management Application

The problem

Contractors run projects on spreadsheets that no accounting system ever sees. The bill of quantities lives in one workbook, the subcontractor package rates live in another, the site engineer records progress in a WhatsApp group, and by the time anyone raises an invoice nobody can reconcile certified quantity against contracted quantity against what was actually paid. Retention is tracked in someone's head. Variation orders are agreed verbally and argued about at final account. Standard Zoho CRM and Zoho Books do a good job of selling and invoicing, but neither has a concept of a BOQ line, a cumulative certified quantity, a retention percentage held against a payment certificate, or a back-charge against a subcontractor.

This is a build-to-order application. Nothing here is a shrink-wrapped download — ECOSIRE builds it against your contract structures, your rate schedules and your Zoho Books organization, then installs it into your Zoho org.

What ECOSIRE builds

A BOQ and cost-code spine in Zoho Creator

The core is a Zoho Creator application with a report/form structure for Projects, BOQ Sections, BOQ Lines, Cost Codes and Revisions. Each BOQ line carries contracted quantity, rate, amount, a cost code, and a running certified quantity. Deluge validation prevents cumulative certification from exceeding contracted quantity unless a variation order has been approved against that line. BOQ import is handled through a staging form plus a Deluge parser so estimators can upload the tender workbook rather than key thousands of lines.

Variation orders are their own form with an approval state machine written in Deluge — draft, submitted, client-approved, rejected — and an approved VO writes new or adjusted BOQ lines back into the parent project with full audit stamps.

Subcontractor packages and back-charges

Subcontractors are Zoho Books vendors, synced into Creator through the Zoho Books REST API so you never maintain two vendor lists. A Package record ties a subcontractor to a defined subset of BOQ lines at package rates, which may differ from client rates. Work certified against a package generates a subcontractor payment application; approving it creates a Bill in Zoho Books through the Books API with the correct expense account and project reference. Back-charges — materials issued, plant hire, rectification — post as negative lines or as separate debit notes so the net payable is what actually leaves the bank.

Progress billing and retention

A Payment Certificate form aggregates the period's certified quantities into a certificate with gross value, less previous certificates, less retention at the contract percentage, less advance recovery, giving net payable. On approval, a Deluge custom function calls the Zoho Books Invoices API to raise the client invoice with line items mapped to your chart of accounts and, where relevant, the correct GST/VAT tax rate and place-of-supply on the Books organization. Retention held is tracked as a per-project ledger with release milestones — typically practical completion and end of defects liability — and release triggers a further invoice rather than an untracked adjustment.

Site logs, incidents and daywork

A mobile-friendly Creator form set captures daily site reports: labour and plant on site, weather, delays, photographs into Creator file fields, and safety incidents with severity and corrective action. Incidents above a configured severity fire a Zoho Flow or Deluge notification to the safety lead and open a follow-up task. Daywork sheets capture work outside the BOQ and can be promoted into a variation order rather than being lost.

Integration surface

Zoho CRM holds the client and the winning Deal; on Deal close a Zoho Flow trigger or a CRM custom function creates the Creator project shell with client, contract value and contract dates already populated. Zoho Books is authoritative for all financial documents. Zoho People, where you use it, supplies the employee list for site attendance. Zoho Projects can be kept in sync at milestone level if you already run programmes there. A Sigma widget embedded in CRM shows project health — certified vs contracted, retention held, cost-to-date against cost code — beside the client record.

Who it is for

General contractors, MEP and fit-out subcontractors, and civil works firms running between a handful and a few dozen concurrent projects, who already use Zoho Books for accounting and want the operational layer in the same ecosystem rather than a separate construction package that never reconciles. It suits organisations with real BOQ-based contracts, retention terms and subcontractor packages — if you bill purely on time and materials, this is heavier than you need.

How delivery works

Scoping call. We review your contract forms, a real BOQ, your certificate template, your retention terms and your Zoho Books chart of accounts and tax setup. We agree what is in scope and what is deliberately out.

Fixed quote. You receive a written scope with the forms, reports, functions and integrations to be built, the delivery timeline, and a fixed price. Nothing starts until you approve it.

Build. Typical build time is two to four weeks depending on how many contract variants and integrations are in scope. We build in a development Creator application and against a Zoho Books sandbox or a clearly marked test organization — never directly against live financial data.

Install in test, then production. We deploy into your test environment first, load a real historical project so you can compare our certificate output against a certificate you have already issued, and only migrate to production once you sign off on that comparison. Production go-live includes user roles, permission profiles and any required OAuth connections.

Support. A defined post-go-live support window covers defects and configuration adjustment, with handover documentation and recorded training for site and commercial staff.