Every building contractor knows the feeling: the site is moving, the workers are working, the materials are arriving — and then the day of reckoning comes and you discover that the job you priced at 200,000 cost you 250,000, with no clear idea where the difference went. The problem is almost never the price of materials or the workers. The problem is that the site was run from memory.
Managing a site professionally does not mean becoming an accountant or buying complicated software. It means holding six or seven numbers, every day, in one place. This guide sets out how organised contractors actually work, step by step, and how to do all of it from your phone with Ochanti.
The short version
- Write the budget down before you start. A site with no written budget can never be overspent — because you will never know that you overspent it.
- Keep each site's accounts separate. Mixing two sites in one notebook hides the losing job behind the profitable one.
- Record attendance daily, not on Saturday. Correct pay = days actually worked × daily rate − advances.
- Enter every delivery note the same day. A note that stays in your pocket for a week becomes a missing number.
- One supplier, one balance, so you know the real credit standing with each one.
- Document with photos. An illustrated daily report protects you in any discussion with the client.
- Hand over printed documents. A quote and an invoice on your company letterhead change how the client treats you.
1. Start with a written budget, not a number in your head
The first mistake most contractors make is starting with an estimate in their head: "this should come in around 200,000." A number that exists nowhere cannot be compared to anything, so it can never be officially overspent — you discover the overspend when the cash runs out.
A written budget does one decisive thing: it turns spending into a percentage. When you know the budget is 200,000 and you have spent 160,000, you know you are at 80% and that the remaining work has to fit into 40,000. That is the difference between a contractor who decides and a contractor who reacts.
Split the budget into at least three lines: labour, materials and other costs (transport, equipment hire, fuel, admin). That split alone will later tell you which line leaked.
2. Keep each site's accounts separate
When you run two or three sites at once out of one notebook and one pocket, the same thing always happens: the profitable site quietly funds the losing one. It feels like things are going fine, right up until both jobs finish and your total profit is close to zero.
Every site needs its own account: its budget, its workers, its materials, its expenses. The rule is simple: every unit of currency that goes out belongs to a site. Even fuel and travel get split across the sites they served.
The practical result is that you can answer the only question that matters at any moment: is this particular site making money or losing it?
3. Record attendance every day, on site
Most labour losses do not come from high wages; they come from memory. On Saturday you try to reconstruct six days of attendance, under pressure from workers standing in front of you, and you pay "roughly". That "roughly" typically costs a contractor a full worker's wage every month.
Daily recording solves the whole problem, as long as it happens on site and not at home in the evening. Three states are enough: present, half day, absent. Never leave it until tomorrow, because tomorrow will have its own attendance to record.
And if you have a distant site you do not visit daily, have the person who is there record it — the foreman or supervisor — provided what they record reaches you immediately.
4. Calculate pay with a clear formula
Pay is not a figure to renegotiate every Saturday. It is the result of a fixed formula that the worker understands as well as you do:
Net to pay = (days actually worked × daily rate) − advances and payments handed over during the week
A half day counts as 0.5, and on most sites the week runs Monday to Saturday. A worked example for a worker on 180 a day:
| Line | Calculation | Amount |
|---|---|---|
| Days worked | 5 days + a half day | 5.5 |
| Owed | 5.5 × 180 | 990 |
| Wednesday advance | — | −300 |
| Net to pay | 990 − 300 | 690 |
When a worker sees the calculation written out like this, most arguments disappear. And when you keep a copy of every sheet, most later claims disappear too.
Watch the difference between daily and monthly workers as well: the first is calculated weekly from attendance, the second is a fixed amount paid on a set date. Mixing the two in one notebook is a permanent source of errors.
5. Enter every delivery note the same day
The supplier note that stays in the car or in your jacket pocket ends up lost, or entered ten days later at an approximate price. And every lost note is money you believe you did not spend, so you end up with a beautiful budget on paper and an empty cash box in reality.
The rule: the note is entered the same day, before you leave the site. And entering it has to take under a minute, otherwise you will not do it.
Always record four things per material: quantity, unit, price and supplier. The unit is not a detail — the price of a "bag" is not the price of a "tonne", and comparing two prices in two different units is the fastest route to a bad buying decision.
6. Unify your suppliers and track the credit
Credit at the supplier's is part of the trade. The problem is not the credit but the fact that it is written in three places: their book, your book, and the shared memory of both of you. And when the same supplier appears as "Saada Ltd", then "Saada", then "Hadj Mohamed", you have three accounts for one supplier and no reliable balance at all.
The rule: one name per supplier, one running balance = total purchases minus total payments. And when you settle, say exactly which items you settled, not just "I gave him 5,000".
Watch price movements too: if cement is 72 a bag at one supplier and 68 at another, the gap on 400 bags is 1,600 — an entire margin that costs you one phone call.
7. Document the day with photos
Documentation is the difference between a contractor who is believed and one who is argued with. Most client disputes are not about quality; they are about what happened and when: "you never told me", "that wasn't in the agreement", "the delay is on your side".
A short daily report settles that permanently: work done, who was present, materials received, money spent, notes and site visitors, plus two or three photos. Five minutes at the end of the day saves you a month of argument.
And if your client follows from a distance, send them the report weekly. You will notice the "so where are we?" calls stop — and their signature on the next instalment arrive faster.
8. Hand over professional paperwork
A quote scribbled on a sheet of squared paper tells the client one thing: this is a small operator. The same quote, printed on your company letterhead with your phone number and legal details, says something completely different — and is often accepted at a higher price.
The minimum set of documents you should be able to produce at any moment:
- The quote — before you start, itemised.
- The purchase order — so the supplier delivers only what you asked for.
- The receipt — for every instalment you collect.
- The invoice — on delivery, not a month later.
- The site report — at the end of the job, for the client or the bank.
And if your client works in French or English, hand them the document in their language. That small detail is what separates you from your competitor.
The organised contractor's routine
Everything above fits into a simple routine that takes no more than ten minutes a day:
| When | What | How long |
|---|---|---|
| Every morning | Record attendance | 1 min |
| On every purchase | Photograph the note and log the materials | 1 min |
| End of day | Write the daily report with two photos | 5 min |
| Saturday | Open the payroll sheet and pay the calculated amount | 10 min |
| Weekly | Check the percentage of budget consumed | 5 min |
| Monthly | Settle suppliers and issue invoices | 30 min |
Five mistakes that cost more than you think
- Paying from memory on Saturday. Two uncounted absence days for a single worker is over 1,000 a month.
- Mixing two sites' accounts. The loss stays invisible until it is impossible to recover.
- Delaying delivery-note entry. Every lost note makes your budget lie to you.
- Keeping everything in one notebook in the car. Notebooks get lost, soaked and smudged — and have no backup.
- Not documenting client-requested changes. Every change agreed verbally is extra work nobody will pay for.
How Ochanti shortens all of this
Every step in this guide can be done with a notebook and a pen. The trouble is that a notebook does not calculate, does not alert you, does not produce a PDF, and does not follow you to a second site sixty kilometres away.
Ochanti was built to run exactly these steps from your phone: a budget per site with alerts at 80% and on overspend, one-tap attendance, a weekly payroll sheet that applies the formula and deducts advances, supplier notes read from a photo, a running balance per supplier, a daily report with photos, weather and signature, and eight PDF documents on your company letterhead in Arabic, French or English. All of it works offline, because most sites are out of coverage.
Frequently asked questions
How much time a day does it take to run a site properly?
Under ten minutes a day, if recording happens at the moment things occur: one minute for morning attendance, one minute per delivery note, five minutes for the daily report. It is postponing that turns ten minutes into a full day of catch-up at month end.
Do I need an accountant to manage a construction site?
An accountant is essential for your tax and legal obligations, but they do not run your site day to day. What a site needs is daily tracking of attendance, materials and expenses against a written budget — and that is the contractor's job, or the supervisor's, not the accountant's.
How do I manage two sites in two cities at the same time?
By separating each site's accounts and delegating the daily recording to a supervisor on location, as long as what they record reaches you immediately. In Ochanti you create a supervisor account per site: they record attendance, materials and expenses and only see their own sites, while you keep the full picture, the invoices and the clients.
