Construction accounting, written by the work that already happened
General accounting software can hold a construction company's books. What it cannot do is produce them from the work. Retention has to be remembered. An advance has to be manually recovered across certificates. Subcontractor back-charges get netted off in a note nobody can find six months later. And the number every director actually wants — is this project making money right now — is a spreadsheet somebody rebuilds each month from the ledger and their memory.
What construction does to a ledger that general accounting does not expect
- 01Retention held against every certificate, released on a schedule, and visible as a balance
- 02Mobilisation advances recovered proportionally across later certificates, automatically
- 03Work in place recognised separately from what has been invoiced and what has been received
- 04Subcontractor bills measured the same way the client certificate is measured
- 05Material committed on a purchase order treated as cost before the invoice arrives
- 06Profitability per project, per phase, without a month-end rebuild
- 07Payroll for a workforce that moves between projects week to week
Double-entry, but the entries write themselves
Ofivio Books is a real double-entry ledger — journals, trial balance, P&L, balance sheet. The difference is where the entries come from. A certified interim payment creates its own receivable and its retention entry. A goods receipt creates the payable. A payroll run posts the wage cost to the projects the crew was actually on. Nobody journals a certificate by hand, which is the step where construction ledgers usually diverge from reality. The mechanics are in double-entry for builders.
The four balances a contractor is always asked about
| The question | Where the answer lives | Why a general ledger struggles |
|---|---|---|
| How much retention are we holding? | Certificate register, per contract | Retention is a manual journal, so it drifts |
| How much advance is still unrecovered? | Advance schedule against certificates | Recovery is remembered, not calculated |
| What has this project actually earned? | Work in place vs invoiced vs received | The ledger knows invoiced, not measured |
| What are we committed to but not billed for? | Open purchase orders | A PO is not an accounting document |
One set of books per client, and your own
A practice that keeps books for the firms it works for needs more than one ledger, and those ledgers must not be able to see each other. Ofivio Books holds a set of books per client alongside the firm's own, on the same login, with the separation enforced below the application rather than by a dropdown someone can change.
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 whose accountant is happy in a general ledger and who do not certify work — if you invoice a fixed fee on a date, you do not have a construction accounting problem
- Companies that need statutory filing done inside the software for a jurisdiction we do not support — Ofivio produces the books, your accountant files them
- Anyone needing consolidated group reporting across many legal entities with intercompany elimination
- Businesses that want a bookkeeping service rather than software
The products behind this
Questions people actually ask
Is this a full ledger or a project cost tracker?
Does it handle retention and advances automatically?
Can it run payroll for site labour?
What currency and tax rules does it assume?
Keep reading
- Construction management software built around the site, not the spreadsheetSolutions
- Accounting that is a consequence of the work, not a second jobSolutions
- Payroll that comes out of the roster and lands in the ledgerSolutions
- Quantity surveying software for the people who have to defend the numberSolutions
- Double-entry for builders: construction accounting without the mysteryFinance
- What is an IPC? Interim payment certificates for people who have to live with themGuides
- Why generic accounting software mishandles an architecture practiceFinance
- Ofivio Books, explained: a ledger the work writes for youProducts
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.