Frequently asked
The questions
The questions
worth asking first.
Two sections. The commercial questions a director asks, and the practical ones a contracts manager asks. Straight answers to both, so the demonstration can be about your business.
Section one
The commercial questions.
What does it cost?
It is quoted per firm, so there is no figure on this site to read off. One figure covers everything: every module, unlimited users, your branded app and its store publishing, the subcontractor and client portals, configuration, training, data migration, support and changes after go-live. It is never per person, so putting the whole site on it costs no more than putting three managers on it. The figure is sized to your firm once, fixed for three years from the date of the quote, and arrives in writing usually the same working day.
Is Unibuild off the shelf, or is it built for us?
It is built for you. Unibuild is not a fixed product you configure yourself and then work around: your forms, your fields, your approval routes, your reports and your terminology are what the platform is shaped to, and anything you need, we build. That is the whole offer, and it is why there is a scoping conversation before there is a quote. What makes it affordable is that we are not starting from an empty screen. The core already runs two contracting businesses every working day and covers the general work of running one, so you get the exact fit of a commissioned system without the months, the cost or the failure rate of commissioning one. Changes you ask for later are inside the monthly fee, not a day rate.
Why is there no price list?
Because one price for everyone means somebody is overpaying. A published rate card charges a five-person firm the same as a fifty-person one and then hides the difference in tiers and add-ons. Your figure is sized once, when it is quoted, on your firm, your trade, what we build for you and where you work. After that it is fixed for three years, and taking on more people never changes it. A contractor in central London and one working out of a small town in County Durham do not have the same money coming through the door. So the number gets worked out properly rather than read off a chart. Ask for a quote and you will have one the same day.
What is support like?
There is no ticketing system and no call queue. You ring and a person who built the platform answers, and that includes the director. Every customer also gets a WhatsApp group with our team in it, which you can message at any hour. Formal cover is UK working hours, and in practice replies outside them are common. Support also covers things that are not Unibuild at all: a spreadsheet that has stopped adding up, a Microsoft 365 account that will not send, office IT that has fallen over. We treat that as part of the job rather than a favour.
How long until we are live?
Most firms go live in about two weeks, in phases. Most start with the module where the pain is loudest, normally timesheets or health and safety, and add the commercial modules once the field habit has formed. Going in stages is what keeps it quick.
We have had a software project fail before. Why would this be different?
Most firms this size have. The usual cause is a platform that was designed in the abstract and then had to be bent to fit a real business during implementation, which is when the cost and the timescale escape. Unibuild starts from a system that already runs two contracting businesses, so implementation is configuration and extension rather than construction. That is a genuinely different starting point, and the demo is where you test it.
How do we know it will fit our business?
The demo is where you find out, and you drive the working platform yourself on your own kind of job rather than sitting through a scripted presentation. Beforehand, the fair thing to ask for is evidence that it has already fitted a business unlike the one it was written for. It has: two firms in different parts of the industry run on it, and each uses modules the other has never switched on.
What happens to our existing data?
Migration is part of implementation and is not charged as an extra. Clients, projects, operatives, rates, suppliers and your existing RAMS and template library are the usual set. We bring it across ourselves, whatever shape it is in, and advise which older records are best kept as an archive.
Can it tell me if a job is profitable?
Yes. It gives you a live cost position against the value of the job while it is still running. Labour flows in automatically at real effective-dated rates, purchase orders at committed value and approved expenses, all attached to the job. You see where a job stands while you can still do something about it, rather than at the final account.
What happens to our data if we leave?
Your data is exportable as CSV, XML, JSON and PDF throughout the agreement, not only on the way out, so you are never in a position where leaving means losing the record. Cancel by email: there is no minimum term and no exit fee, and we hand back a clean dataset within five working days. If you want continuity or escrow terms written into the contract, raise it during the discussion and we will put whatever is agreed in writing.
Section two
How it works in practice.
Will our engineers use the app?
They use one that saves them a job. The field app is built around clocking in by QR, signing what needs signing and capturing evidence where the work happens, not around data entry for the benefit of the office. The mechanism is that the app is how they get paid, so it gets opened every day without anybody having to ask. The evidence rather than the promise: 5,204 clock-in records and 6,643 timesheet day lines in one deployment, and 4,237 of those day lines came from a scan rather than a keyboard. More on the mobile app.
We already use QuickBooks. Will this replace it?
It works alongside it. Unibuild runs the job, the labour, the compliance and the subcontract, and hands the commercial position to your accounts package. What that handover looks like today: approved supplier invoices, credit notes and travel orders are emailed into your bookkeeping capture inbox with the order number, supplier, project and both values already stated, which is live and in daily use. Unibuild syncs with QuickBooks, Xero and Sage 50, any other external system is synced on request, and all data exports as CSV, XML or JSON. The detail is on integrations.
Do we have to move everything at once?
No, and we would advise against it. Take the module where the pain is loudest, get one site running, then add. The evidence that this works is that the purchase order module was introduced into a live deployment in February 2026 and carried 879 orders within five months, so adding a module to a running business is routine rather than a project in itself. A phased rollout also gives the field team time to form the habit before the commercial modules start depending on their data.
Can we control who sees what?
Yes, and more precisely than most systems in this market allow. Each person's web access is an explicit tree of the menus and sections they can reach, rather than inherited from a role template. App access is a separate list set independently, so a supervisor can have full use of the field app and little or no back office access. On top of that sit specific controls on the sensitive things, including whether someone can see hourly rates at all. See access and permissions.
Is there two-factor authentication?
Yes. Single sign-on with Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace is supported, and MFA can be switched on top of it. Mobile login additionally takes a PIN as well as the password, which is what makes a shared site tablet usable by several people who each sign as themselves. Access itself is granted per person, page by page, rather than inherited from a role template. See access and permissions.
Does it make us compliant?
Compliance is a set of duties held by people. What Unibuild does is hold the record of whether those duties were discharged, and make that evidence findable, current and attributable, so when somebody asks you produce it in minutes rather than days.
What certifications do you hold?
Cyber Essentials Plus, and we are ICO registered. ISO 27001 is in progress. We list only what we have been assessed against. If a certification is a procurement requirement for you, raise it early and we will tell you exactly where we are.
Do we pay for subcontractor logins?
No. The subcontractor portal is live and included in the fee, and so is every login for your supply chain. Bringing your subbies on never changes the fee, which is the point of charging per firm rather than per person.
