Choosing accounting software for a construction company
Almost every general accounting package can hold a contractor's books. The reason contractors keep changing software is not that the books do not balance — it is that four things construction does every month have to be handled by hand: retention, advance recovery, work in place, and cost by project. This guide is about which category of tool handles those, and which one you should actually buy.
01Do you certify measured work, or invoice fixed amounts on dates?
02Do you hold retention, and does anyone track its release schedule?
03Do you take mobilisation advances that must be recovered across certificates?
04Do you need cost by project, or is company-level P&L enough?
05Is payroll a major cost, and does it need to land on projects?
Retention is the test question
Ask any vendor how retention is held, released and reported. If the answer involves a manual journal and a spreadsheet of release dates, you are buying a general ledger — which may still be the right decision, but you should make it knowingly. Retention is the smallest of the four problems and the one that most reliably exposes whether a system understands construction.
Work in place versus invoiced versus received
These are three different numbers and a general ledger holds one of them. A contractor who cannot separate them cannot answer whether a project is profitable until it is finished, by which point the answer is history rather than information. Double-entry for builders works through the mechanics.
Where Ofivio fits, and where it does not
Ofivio Books is a real double-entry ledger whose entries are produced by the work: a certified payment creates its receivable and its retention entry, a goods receipt creates the payable, a payroll run posts wage cost to the projects the crew was on. It is the right answer for a firm that certifies measured work and wants one system. It is the wrong answer if you need statutory e-filing in your jurisdiction, multi-entity consolidation, or manufacturing — and if you need those, one of the categories above is a better buy than we are. The full picture is on construction accounting.
The categories that actually exist
Categories rather than a ranked list of vendors: a category is still true next year, and a ranked list with prices is wrong within a quarter. Named products are examples of the category, not endorsements, and we quote nobody else’s pricing because it changes without notice.
General small-business accounting
QuickBooks, Xero, Zoho Books, Wave
Optimises for
Mature, cheap, every accountant already knows them, excellent bank feeds and compliance
Where it stops
Retention, advances and work in place are manual journals. Job costing is a class field, not a model.
Fits
Contractors under roughly fifteen people whose accountant is happy and whose projects are short
Accounting with a construction add-on
General ledgers extended by a job-costing or project module
Optimises for
Adds project cost tracking without leaving a ledger the team already knows
Where it stops
The add-on rarely reaches the operational side, so the bill, the order and the certificate still live elsewhere and are re-keyed
Fits
Firms whose finance team is settled and whose operations already run somewhere workable
Construction ERP
The established heavy construction suites
Optimises for
Complete: certification, retention, subcontract, plant, payroll, everything, at scale
Where it stops
Implementation is a project with a budget and a partner. Below a certain size the cost is not recoverable.
Fits
Contractors large enough to have a systems owner and a real implementation budget
Project business systems
Ofivio and the small number of tools built for measured work end to end
Optimises for
The ledger is written by the work — certificates, retention, advances and project cost are native rather than journalled
Where it stops
Narrow by design. No manufacturing, no multi-entity consolidation, no statutory filing.
Fits
Firms from about ten to a few hundred people who certify measured work and do not want an implementation project
Who this is not for
If you are on this list, Ofivio is the wrong purchase and we would rather you know now than in month three.
×Firms that invoice fixed fees on dates and never certify measured work
×Anyone whose main requirement is statutory filing inside the software
×Groups needing consolidation across multiple legal entities
×Businesses that want a bookkeeping service rather than software
Yes, and many contractors do successfully. You are accepting that retention, advance recovery and work in place are manual, and that project profitability is assembled rather than reported.
What is the smallest firm that needs construction-specific accounting?+
Roughly the point where you are running more than three concurrent projects with certified payments. Below that the manual work is small enough to live with.
Does Ofivio replace my accountant?+
No. It produces the books; your accountant reviews and files them. Anyone claiming otherwise is selling you a problem.
