One set of figures, from the price to the profit
A quoting app, a spreadsheet and an accounts package each keep their own copy of the numbers. Keeping the three agreed is a job in itself, and it is the job that quietly does not get done. BuildFlow keeps one copy.
You want 20%. You add 20%. You get 16.7%.
A job costs you £40,000. You want twenty percent, so you add twenty percent and quote £48,000. That is not a 20% margin — £8,000 of £48,000 is 16.7%. To actually keep twenty percent you would have to charge £50,000. You are £2,000 short, on that job, and on every job you have priced that way.
| You want to keep | So add this | Adding the first number leaves you |
|---|---|---|
| 10% | 11.1% | 9.1% |
| 15% | 17.6% | 13% |
| 20% | 25% | 16.7% |
| 25% | 33.3% | 20% |
| 30% | 42.9% | 23.1% |
The error survives because both numbers are “20%”, the price looks perfectly plausible, and the shortfall never appears as a line anywhere. It shows up as a business that is busier than it is profitable. BuildFlow works in margin — the number you meant — and shows you the markup beside it, so the difference is visible at the moment you price rather than discovered at the end of the year.
What happens, in order
Five steps, and no number typed twice.
Build the price up
Labour, materials, subcontractors, plant — what each one costs you. BuildFlow works out what to charge and shows the margin moving as you type. You never type a price, because a price typed in has no margin behind it and nobody can tell afterwards whether the job made money.
Send a real quotation
It says in words whether the price is fixed, because "quotation" and "estimate" are different promises in law and identical in most builders' usage. Allowances say they are allowances on their own line. Exclusions get a section. And it says how long the price holds for.
They say yes
The job starts with the address already filled in. The contract sum is set to the net total, the VAT rate comes with it, and every line becomes the scope of works — including the ones marked not included, because that is what the argument at the end is always about.
Bill what is owed
Invoices open on the payment stages that are due and the changes you have not billed, already ticked. Numbered from your own series when you press Issue, frozen afterwards, VAT worked out per line so the invoice and the quote agree to the penny.
Find out what it made
Record materials and subcontractor payments against the job and BuildFlow sets them beside the quote's build-up, kind by kind. "We lost money" is not useful. "The groundworks came in £3,750 over" is something you do differently next time.
“While you’re here, could you just…”
Every change is priced and agreed against the contract sum before it happens, and numbered VO-001 upwards so both of you can point at the same thing. The current total is right on every screen, every invoice and in the handover pack, because it is one figure rather than six copies of it.
A client can accept a variation in the app. If they said yes on the phone you record that instead — with the channel and a note, because “he told me to do it” with nothing written down is how a job ends up in a dispute.
How variations work
What it will not do
Worth being straight about, because a confident wrong answer about any of these is expensive.
Price the work for you
No rate library, no square-metre guesses. Your costs are yours, and a national average would be worse than useless on your street.
Decide your VAT rate
It states the test for 20%, 5% and zero rated and records your answer. Which applies turns on facts the app cannot see.
Take your client’s money
BuildFlow never touches payments. You invoice and record what arrives; the money goes where it always did.
Count your own team’s time
It sees what leaves the bank. Your employed people are paid through payroll, so where you quoted labour and recorded nothing, it says so rather than flattering the figure.