Financial

The month end that
builds itself.

Your application for payment is assembled from work the site has already measured and the client has already signed on their screen. Retention, the previously certified position and the net due this period are worked out for you, and the approved work nobody has claimed yet is put in front of you before it is forgotten.

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6 ledgers retention calculated aged debt by manager reverse charge handled running since 2016

Applications for paymentRetentionCertified positionAged debtTurnover by managerStatements of accountPayment allocationReceiptsCustom invoicesDomestic reverse chargeSubcontractor invoicesJob-costed expensesCommitted order valueUnbilled workHousing Grants Act Applications for paymentRetentionCertified positionAged debtTurnover by managerStatements of accountPayment allocationReceiptsCustom invoicesDomestic reverse chargeSubcontractor invoicesJob-costed expensesCommitted order valueUnbilled workHousing Grants Act

Work to cash, end to end

Every stage between doing it
and being paid for it.

01
Measure it
Signed valuationsVariationsDay works
02
Apply for it
ApplicationWorks scheduleClient QS reference
03
Hold it back
RetentionCertified positionFinal release
04
Collect it
PaymentsAllocationsReceipts
05
Chase it
Aged debtStatementsCorrespondence
06
Check it
Job costingUnbilled workTurnover

Where the cash leaks

The work was done.
The money is the hard part.

Cash is the business, and the application is how it arrives. In most firms it is assembled by hand, from four sources, by one person who cannot take the last week of the month off.

Month end, day one

Somebody rebuilds the measure from spreadsheets, a diary and two phone calls to site.

≈ 3 days

Two months later

Extra work was done on a nod. Nobody can prove it was agreed, so it is quietly written off.

Margin gone

Friday, 15:20

Client asks what has been certified to date. Nobody can answer without opening five files.

Credibility

Retention

Held back on a job that finished eighteen months ago. Nobody is chasing the release.

Cash stuck

Invoice run

Domestic reverse charge applied wrongly. The client's accounts team sends it back.

Rework

Final account

The first time anyone knows what the job really cost. Far too late to have acted on it.

Lesson unlearned

The drain Work done and never claimed, retention nobody released Both are visibility problems

What is in the box

Nine capabilities, one module,
built by people who had to get paid.

The oldest and deepest part of the platform, running the commercial side of a UK contracting business since 2016.

Applications
for payment

Apply

Built from two things that already exist: the job's priced sections, and variations your client has already signed on site.

Contract and variation elements
Custom lines where needed
Maintenance shown separately
Formal interim PDF

Inside · Assemble, IssueLive

Retention

Held

Calculated on the application, carried as a cumulative balance, and released at the end with its own flag so it cannot be quietly forgotten.

Percentage on each application
Cumulative balance carried
Final release flagged
Shown separately in ageing

Inside · Hold, ReleaseLive

Certified
position

Maths

Gross value, discount, retention, the previously certified total and the net due this period. The arithmetic nobody should do by hand.

Previous position summed
Net due this period
First application recognised
Valuation date drives reporting

Inside · CalculateLive

Aged
debt

Chase

Outstanding certified value aged into buckets and grouped by the manager responsible for the job, as at any date you choose.

30, 60, 90 and 120-plus days
Grouped by manager
Retention shown separately
Chase notes per job

Inside · Age, ChaseLive

Payments
and allocation

Cash

Amount, date, mode, transaction number and proof of payment, split across the applications it actually covers.

One payment, several applications
Unallocated portion flagged
Retention withheld captured
Formal receipt produced

Inside · Record, AllocateLive

Statements
of account

Recon

Every application and every payment on a job, interleaved in date order, so what was applied for and what arrived reconcile on one page.

Per job, in date order
Applications and payments
Correspondence log
Cash received across the business

Inside · StatementLive

Invoicing
and VAT

VAT

For billing that does not fit the interim application model, with the VAT treatments a UK contractor actually needs.

Standard, reduced, zero-rated
Domestic reverse charge
Totals validated to add up
Branded invoice with bank details

Inside · Invoice, Charge typesLive

Cost
position

Cost

What a job has cost so far, this week, rather than at the final account. Labour, purchasing and expenses land on the job as they happen.

Labour at dated cost rates
Orders at committed value
Expenses as approved
Cost against project value

Inside · Live positionLive

Unbilled
work

Queue

Approved, signed-off work that has never reached an application. The direct measure of work in progress that is ready to bill today.

Approved but not applied for
Cannot be billed twice
Unsigned variations flagged
Worked as a queue

Inside · WIP queueLive

What is actually held

One module.
Six ledgers underneath it.

All of it reads the same job record site is working against, so nothing is re-entered to become an application, a cost or a statement.

Applications

Contract elementVariation elementGross valueDiscountRetentionPrevious positionNet due

Cash

Payments recordedProof of paymentAllocationUnallocated flagReceiptsCorrespondence log

Reporting

Aged applicationsTurnover by managerStatement of accountUnbilled workPayment reportCash received

Invoicing

Custom invoicesStandard rateReduced rateZero ratedDomestic reverse chargeBank detailsVAT number

Cost

Labour at dated ratesCommitted order valueJob-costed expensesSubcontractor invoicesCost against valueEstimate versus actual

Control

Purchase approvalDivision sign-offSupplier invoice matchingMissing invoice flagsHousing Grants Act mechanismAudit trail

Construction operatives on a UK site in hi-vis

2016Applying for payment since

879Orders raised in five months

711Supplier invoices matched

Counted in the live systems of the two businesses running on Unibuild, July 2026.

One month end

Five days, and nobody
rebuilt anything.

A month end that used to take the best part of a week, on a firm running eleven live jobs. Every step reads work site had already measured and the client had already signed.

FriAlready done

Site measured the week and the client signed it.

Every week of the month, a supervisor valued the work against that job's own rate card and the client's representative signed on the screen. Nothing about month end starts from a blank page.

Rate valuations

Mon 09:00Assemble

The application pulls the approved work in.

Contract lines from the job's priced sections, variation lines from the signed valuations. Anything already billed on a previous application is marked so it cannot be claimed twice.

Applications

Mon 11:30Calculate

Retention and the previous position work themselves out.

Gross, discount, retention, the certified total from prior applications, the net due this period. The arithmetic that gets quietly wrong by hand, done the same way every month.

Certified position

Tue 09:15Issue

Formal interim application goes to the client's QS.

A multi-page document following standard UK practice, including the note that it is not a tax invoice, with the schedules of variations behind it. Emailed from the system, and the send is logged.

Document engine

WedChase

Aged debt reviewed by manager, not by job.

Outstanding certified value in 30, 60, 90 and 120-day buckets, grouped by whoever is responsible. Jobs where payments were never fully allocated are flagged explicitly. Chase notes recorded against each.

Aged applications

ThuCash in

Payment lands and is split across what it covers.

Recorded with the amount, date, mode and proof of payment, then allocated across several applications. Anything unallocated is flagged rather than sitting in limbo. A receipt is produced.

Payments + Allocation

FriClose

The unbilled queue is worked before the month closes.

Approved, signed work that has never reached an application, on one screen. Two variations found from a job that finished in March. Applied for in the next cycle instead of never.

Unbilled work

Before you ask

Three things this module does not do.

The three questions asked in every commercial conversation, answered before you have spoken to anybody.

No CIS handling

No UTR, no verification number, no deduction, no monthly return. CIS sits with your accounts package today. The hours and subcontract records are already held in the right shape for it, so it is defined work rather than a research project. Raise it early if it matters.

No payroll export

Hours, overtime multipliers and a dated cost rate per person are all held correctly, which is why historic job costs do not move when you award a rise in April. What there is not is a payroll file. It is the most common first piece of tailoring we do.

Payment notices run one way

Subcontract orders carry a Housing Grants Act payment mechanism, so you pay your own supply chain provably. Serving a payment or pay less notice to your client is not built. For a main contractor that is the gap worth closing first.

We would rather you read that here than find it in a demonstration. Everything else on this page is running in a live business today.

Asked in every demo

What a commercial manager
asks in the first ten minutes.

The full list lives at /faqs. These six come up in every conversation about the money side.

Will this replace our accounts package?+

No, and you should be wary of anyone who says their product does both operations and accounts well. Unibuild runs the operation right through to the application for payment: the estimate, the labour, the measured work, the purchase orders, the subcontract accounts and the costs. Your accounts package does the accounting. Supplier invoices are already forwarded automatically to bookkeeping capture, which removes the scanning and forwarding job entirely.

Can it tell me whether a job is making money?+

It gives you a live cost position, which is the useful half of that question and the half most firms cannot answer at all until the final account. Labour flows in at real dated rates, purchase orders at committed value and expenses as they are approved, all against the job. On jobs priced through a structured estimate it goes further and compares estimated hours and quantities against what site actually used, section by section. What it does not do today is a complete profit and return calculation, and we would rather say that than show you a report with a column that does not compute.

How does the application actually get built?+

From work that already exists in the system. The contract element comes from the job's priced estimate sections, so the client sees a billing structure matching the tender. The variation element comes from the rate valuations your site measured and your client signed on the phone. Once a variation is pulled into an application it is marked as billed and cannot be claimed again. The commercial team is assembling, not reconstructing.

Does it handle the domestic reverse charge properly?+

Yes. Charge types are configurable and include standard, reduced, zero-rated and the domestic reverse charge that applies across much of the construction supply chain. It is unglamorous and it catches a lot of firms out, which is precisely why it was built in rather than bolted on. Note that Unibuild is not filing your VAT: the invoice is produced correctly, and your accounts package files it.

What stops work being done and never billed?+

The platform knows which approved variations have not yet reached an application, and presents them as a queue rather than leaving somebody to notice. It also flags variations that were submitted but never signed. That is the difference between hoping nothing was missed and being shown what was.

Our retention is a mess. Does it help?+

On the receivable side, yes. Retention is calculated on each application, carried as a cumulative balance, shown separately in the aged debt report and released at the end with its own flag. Being straight with you: retention on the subcontract payable side captures the percentages but does not yet track running balances the same way, so that half is a known gap rather than a finished feature.

No card, no lock-in