Construction management software in the Philippines, a buyer's guide.

A contractor makes or loses money in the gap between the budget and what the site actually used. The system has to show that gap while the project is still running, not at turnover.

• A project budget by cost code, from the awarded bid, with change orders approved and added.
• Material requests from the site, purchase orders, deliveries and receiving reports.
• Stock per site and warehouse, transfers between sites, and a check of material used against plan.
• Daily site reports, manpower on site and equipment use charged to the project.
• Progress billings by percentage of work accomplished, less retention, recoupment of the down payment and withholding tax.
• A work-in-progress schedule per project, and an approval when spending runs over budget.

Most contracts pay by progress: the contractor bills the work accomplished, the client's engineer certifies it, and part of each billing is held back as retention until the project is accepted and the defects liability period ends. A system should compute each billing from the certified accomplishment, keep the running retention per project, and show when it falls due.

Clients withhold tax on payments to contractors and give a certificate, BIR Form 2307, which the contractor uses as a credit against its income tax. Every 2307 should be matched to its billing, or the credit is lost at year end.

Under the Contractors' License Law (RA 4566), a contractor needs a licence from the Philippine Contractors Accreditation Board, and its category and classification limit the size and kind of project it may take. The licence is renewed yearly. A system should keep it, and the licences of subcontractors, with their expiry dates.

Government work is bought under the procurement law, now the New Government Procurement Act (RA 12009, 2024), which replaced RA 9184. Agencies such as the DPWH set their own forms for bids, progress billing and retention. A contractor that bids on public works should ask whether a system can produce those forms.

Site workers are usually project employees under DOLE's rules for the construction industry, and the site must follow the occupational safety law (RA 11058). Payroll should come from the daily time records at the site, with a check that every name paid was actually there.

A spreadsheet per project shows the budget. It does not stop a purchase order from going over it, connect a delivery to the bill from the supplier, notice that a site used more cement than the plan allows, or prove that a worker on the payroll was on site. A system ties the budget, the purchases, the stock, the labour and the billing to one project, with a trail of every approval.

A contractor's largest costs are materials and people, so construction management works best inside one system with HR, payroll and accounting. Labour then posts to the project it was spent on, supplier bills and progress billings post to the books, and the work-in-progress figures agree with the trial balance. Workers' IDs and government numbers are personal information under the Data Privacy Act (RA 10173).