BOQ software where the bill is data, not a spreadsheet with a nicer border
A bill of quantities is the most re-used document on a project and the least respected one in software. It gets priced in Excel, sent as a PDF, re-typed into a purchase order, and measured against by hand at certification. Every one of those steps is an opportunity for the numbers to stop agreeing, and they always do.
What makes a bill usable rather than just present
- 01Structured lines with quantity, unit and rate — addressable, not cells
- 02Volume groups, so a repeated element is measured once and used many times
- 03A rate library that carries forward between projects
- 04Rate analysis that shows what a rate is made of
- 05A direct path from a bill line to a purchase order
- 06Measurement against the bill at certification, from the same lines
- 07Revisions to the bill that keep a history, like a drawing does
Most BOQ tools are written for contractors, not for the people who write bills
The bill is usually authored by an architect or a quantity surveyor and consumed by a contractor. Software written for the consuming end treats the bill as an import. Software written for the authoring end treats it as a document with structure, history and reuse. That difference is the subject of BOQ software for architects.
Volume groups are the part that saves the week
A tower with forty similar floors is not forty measurements. Grouping the repeated volume once and applying it is how take-off stops being a transcription exercise — and, more importantly, how a change to that element updates everywhere instead of in thirty-nine places minus the one you missed.
The bill is the spine of the money
- It prices the tender
- It becomes the purchase orders that buy the work
- It is what work in place is measured against for the interim certificate
- It is where variation gets argued, so its history matters
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 only need a quick estimate for a small job — a spreadsheet is faster
- Anyone wanting automatic quantity take-off from a BIM model
- Practices working exclusively to a standard method of measurement we do not yet ship a template for
- Contractors who receive a client-issued bill and never author one
The products behind this
Questions people actually ask
Can I import an existing bill from Excel?
Does it do rate analysis?
Is BOQ part of the architecture product or the construction one?
Keep reading
Open a workspace and try it on your own work
A free trial with your own projects in it tells you more in an afternoon than any comparison table. Nothing is charged during the trial.