Real Estate & Construction
Contractor bills are the single biggest cost leak. The flow is agreed BOQ rates, the contractor raises a running-account bill, it is measured and certified by the site engineer, then paid on the promoter's say-so, and whether the bill rate matches the agreed rate is checked by eye, if at all. Over-rate and over-quantity lines slip through into payments that cannot be recovered. Cement, steel, sand and aggregate are written in a register, and what was ordered, what the structure should have consumed against the theoretical norm, and what is actually in stock are rarely reconciled, which is exactly where pilferage and over-ordering hide. Steel, cement, MEP material and consumables are bought project-wise or centrally against site indents, the same item is bought at three prices because there is no rate discipline, and invoices are paid against orders nobody matched to a gate receipt, so overbilling, duplicate payments and off-contract rates slip through, especially across a dispersed operation running many sites at once.
Who has it
Residential and commercial developers carry the contractor running-account bill check as the signature back-office build, with infrastructure and project-construction firms running it across their sub-contract packages; developers also run the site-stores material reconciliation, while civil, MEP and EPC contractors and infrastructure firms run material control and centralised buying against site indents across many sites. The vendor-invoice control here is a distinct build from the contractor-bill check and the material-consumption reconciliation: it governs what is paid to vendors, not what is certified to contractors or consumed on site.
What we build
A standardised certification workflow that checks every running-account bill line against the agreed BOQ rate and the measured quantity, flagging over-rate and over-quantity lines before payment, with retention and the approval gate built in. Tightened site-stores discipline (gate-entry note, issue slips, stock register), an automated three-way match of purchase order against goods received at the gate against vendor invoice, and a reconciliation of ordered material against the theoretical consumption norm against actual stock, with variance beyond a tolerance flagged for the project head. A clean vendor and rate-contract master and a deterministic three-way match (goods received vs PO vs invoice) that flags price drift, short-supply, duplicate billing and GST mismatches, run consistently across every site against the central rate contract.
What is automated, where AI helps, who signs off
The reliable spine
The reliable spine is deterministic checking: every running-account bill line matched against the agreed BOQ rate and the measured quantity, the three-way match of purchase order against goods received against vendor invoice, and the reconciliation of ordered material against the consumption norm against actual stock, with variance flagged and approvals gated.
Where AI helps
AI is held to reading the firm's own bills, invoices and gate receipts and lining them up against the rate contract and BOQ, surfacing over-rate lines, duplicate billing and GST mismatches for review; it never approves a payment or sets a rate.
Who signs off
A named person signs off anything touching money, stock, a customer promise, a regulated filing, a payment, a price, a credit decision or a people decision.
What changes day to day
Over-billing is caught before payment, not at audit; certification runs to a workflow; the promoter stops paying above the agreed rate on the engineer's eye alone. Pilferage and over-ordering surface against the consumption norm; off-rate buying and unmatched invoices are caught before payment; the site stores run to a discipline instead of a register. Clean invoices flow through for one-click approval while only genuine exceptions reach a person; off-contract buying and duplicate payments are caught before payment; buying runs to a rate, not a relationship, across all sites.
Illustrative outcome
Over-rate and over-quantity lines worth a low single-digit percent of contractor outflow caught in the first read across pending bills. Material variance and over-ordering reduced; vendor-invoice leakage caught each cycle. Vendor-invoice and off-rate leakage caught and recovered each cycle; finance re-keying hours removed. Illustrative; final numbers come from your own data.
Illustrative; final numbers come from your own data.
Path to the build
Book a free 60-minute call, then a free Blueprint on the firm's own records. Deep-dive and build, followed by run and govern so the workflow keeps paying back.
Related builds
A free 60-minute call. No cost, no obligation, just a clear read on what is worth building.