WHAT'S INSIDE

Built from actual site experience.

Every contractor's budget sheet looks fine in rand terms right up until it isn't. These are the numbers that catch it earlier — the eight that do the catching first, then the rest of the toolkit as the job gets bigger.

How budget vs actual works, with a worked example →

Progress vs Spend · Free

90% spent, 60% built

On budget in rand, behind on site. siteMargin flags the gap the day it opens.

The ledger showing one line 90% spent but only 60% built, flagged as ahead of progress
Category Breakdown · Free

Know why, not just how much

Variance by trade, not one lump sum. The overrun points straight at its cause.

Variance broken down by trade, each category showing budget and how far over or under it is
Payments & Retention · Contractor

Where cash flow hides

Claimed, Certified, Paid — retention held at your rate. Uncertified amounts get flagged: money you're counting on that isn't coming.

The payments table showing claimed, certified, retention held and uncertified amounts per line
Change Orders · Contractor

Variations aren't overruns

Log each approved variation separately. Your original budget stays the baseline, so variance is measured against what was agreed.

Approved variations listed separately, lifting the original budget to a revised budget
Site Diary & Files · Contractor

Why the number moved

Attach the note and the invoice to any line item. "Supplier price rose in March" is one click away, not buried in email.

A line item expanded to show its note explaining a supplier price rise, with the invoice and photos attached
Accounting sync · Company

Stop retyping your own books

Connect Xero and every paid supplier bill lands on the line item it belongs to, overnight. Read-only — siteMargin never writes anything back to your books. Anything it can't match cleanly waits for you rather than being guessed.

Xero connected, with paid supplier bills matched to their line items
Retention register · Contractor+

The money you forgot you're owed

Every Rand held back across every job, in one place — and which of it sits on work that's already finished. On one job you remember it. Across nine you don't, and the client has no reason to remind you.

The retention register totalling money held across all jobs, with finished jobs marked due for release
PDF Export · Contractor

Walk in ready

One click turns the live sheet into a clean, print-ready summary. Just the numbers your client needs.

A clean one-page cost report showing original budget, variations, actual to date and variance
THE REAL THING

This is the sheet, on a real job.

Nine lines, R1.03 million budgeted. 69% of the money spent, 57% of the work done — and the app has already named the two lines doing it. Nothing here is mocked up.

siteMargin's Cost & Progress page for a real house build: spent 69% of the budget with 57% of the work done, two lines flagged over, a change order waiting on a decision, and the line-item ledger below
WHAT EACH PLAN OPENS

Everything in each plan, in one place.

Every plan collects the same data. A paid plan opens more pages over it — nothing you have entered is ever hidden or deleted when you move between them.

Contractor
R199 a month
Contractor+
R289 a month
Everything in Contractor, plus
  • Retention register across every job
  • Cash-flow forecasting
  • Client progress pages
  • Rate library, with history
  • 3 office seats · 10 free site seats
  • 2GB storage, extendable once-off
Company
R399 a month
Everything in Contractor+, plus
  • Xero accounting sync
  • Portfolio dashboard across every job
  • Scheduled client reports
  • 10 office seats · 25 free site seats
  • 10GB storage, extendable once-off
BUILT FOR SITE, NOT HEAD OFFICE

Run one job or your whole active list.

Multi-project dashboard

Every active job in one list — budget, variance, and status at a glance. Click into any one to see the full picture.

Import your existing budget

Bring in a CSV export from your current spreadsheet in one go — no retyping line items from scratch.

Editable retention rate

Set your contract's retention percentage once — every certified amount, held-back total, and payout recalculates automatically.

AS THE JOB GETS BIGGER

The rest of the toolkit, when you need it.

Quotes

Send a quote, not a spreadsheet. Turn your line items into a client-ready quote and export it as PDF, Excel or Word — whichever they actually want to open.

Orders & tenders

Tracked where the money is. Purchase orders and tenders live alongside the budget they belong to, not in an inbox thread you have to dig through.

Subcontractors

See what you owe each sub. Costs roll up per subcontractor automatically, so you know who's over and who's under without re-sorting a spreadsheet.

Schedule

Flags what's slipping. Lay out the programme in a Gantt view, track progress against it, and see what's overdue before the client asks.

Drawings

Every drawing and contract, versioned. Upload drawings, contracts and specs by category, with version history — so nobody's working off last month's plan.

See it on your own numbers.

Sign up free and see it working on your own numbers in minutes — no waiting list, no sales call.

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