BuildIQ runs a residential builder's work the way the work actually goes: the lead comes in, you price it, the client signs on their phone, the schedule books your subs, the crew logs the day, the changes get signed, the draws get billed, and at the end you know what you made. One sign-in per person. Your name on every document.
What BuildIQ does
Not a spreadsheet and six apps. The bid sheet prices the job, the contract is built from it, the schedule runs from it, the reconcile closes it — and every number on every screen comes from the same place.
Website enquiries land as leads and get chased until somebody calls. Price the job on a bid sheet that knows your rates, send subs the scope and compare their numbers side by side, and see every lead by stage — new, contacted, site visit, bid sent, won, lost, and why.
Spec sheet and contract generated from the bid, with your signature already on them. The client reads and signs on their phone; the record keeps when, from where, and exactly what they were looking at.
Phases cascade when one slips. Subs get a text with their dates and confirm with a reply. Insurance certificates are tracked and the schedule warns you before you book a sub whose cover has lapsed. Inspections are gates the next trade cannot pass. The forecast at each job's own site warns you before rain lands on an outdoor phase.
Clock in against the trade you are on, log the day with the weather, snap photos stamped with the phase, walk the punch list, record the toolbox talk. It works on a phone with a bad signal and syncs when it can.
Change orders the client signs on their phone, and the new total flows to the invoice. Finish selections with allowances the client picks from on their portal — the overage becomes a change order, not an argument.
Draws on milestones, invoices with your terms, sub and supplier bills held against what was agreed, lien waivers checked before a sub is paid, and job costing that never paints a number it does not have.
The crew asks for what they need, the office prices it from what the yard charged last time, the order goes out, the delivery lands on the reconcile. One loop, one screen.
Planned days against actual per trade, hours by trade against the bid, quantities you used last time hinted on the next sheet. Every finished job makes the next bid a little smarter.
From plans to a bid
In developmentWe are developing plan reading for BuildIQ: a plan set read into quantities by trade while you get on with other things, and a second, line-by-line take-off that shows where every quantity came from. You decide what goes on the bid.
Drop a PDF on the Plans page and say what you are building. The quantities come back sorted by trade, with questions about anything that could not be decided from the drawings.
Each line of the take-off gives the sheet, the detail, the measurement and the formula, beside the first read's figure. Anything that differs by more than your limit is flagged.
Tick the lines you accept and they go onto the bid, corrected by the difference so nothing is counted twice. Scope your price book has no row for comes in unpriced, for you to price.
How it works
A job opens on the step it is at, and the documents for that step sit under it. Nothing to hunt for.
The bid sheet, sectioned by trade, with your rates and your assemblies. Pick which sub does each trade — or which of your own crew.
The spec and the contract are built from the sheet. The client signs on their phone. The contract total is frozen from that moment.
Draft the schedule from the bid, book the subs, run the days from the site: diary, photos, clock, punch list, safety, materials, change orders.
Bill the draws, match the bills, collect the waivers, reconcile the costs. The job files itself when it is finished and paid.
Who it is for
Sees every lead, every running job and every dollar owed on one screen, and can answer "did we make money on that one" without opening a spreadsheet.
Prices, sends, books, bills and reconciles from the same job record the field is writing to. Payroll is a download, not a retyping job.
A phone app that shows the day's stops, the schedule, the checklist and the clock — and nothing about money. Ever.
Frequently asked questions
Yours. Company name, logo, licence line and footer address come from your settings and print on every bid, spec, contract, invoice and waiver. Each customer is a separate tenant; nothing is shared between companies.
Yes. Each person signs in as themselves with a role — office or crew — and every diary entry, tick, clock-in and payment records who did it. When somebody leaves, you switch them off.
No. Jobs already under way are brought in with their contract total and where they stand, so you get the schedule and the money picture without re-keying a bid. Your bid sheets, specs and contracts in Excel and Word read straight in.
Today BuildIQ exports customers, vendors and issued invoices in the exact column layouts QuickBooks Online's own importer takes. A live two-way connection is on the roadmap; we will not call it "sync" until it is.
It is an installable web app that keeps working offline and syncs when the signal comes back. The crew never sees pricing: what a crew phone can read and write is decided on the server, not by hiding buttons.