Subcontractor portal software

The subcontractor portal
that stops the chasing.

Unibuild's subcontractor portal is software for UK contractors and FM firms that gives each subcontractor its own login, in your name, logo and colours. They read the orders you approved, raise invoices against them and watch each one move to paid.

Bring one subcontractor to the demo → Ask for a quote

Subcontractor reviewing their orders and invoices in the Unibuild portal

What a contractor portal replaces

Two questions, asked
on a Friday afternoon,
that nobody can answer.

What was I ordered to do, and where is my money. Everything below is your office absorbing the cost of those two questions being hard to answer.

A contractor portal is the account you give the firms working for you: what they were ordered to do, and where their money is. This one is for the firm issuing the orders, whether that is a main contractor letting packages or a facilities management business placing subcontract orders for remedials, specialist call-outs and planned maintenance. The portal your own customer sees is a different thing: the construction client portal, on its own page, for the customer who pays you.

Three months on

The subcontract order was a Word document, emailed once. Nobody can now say what the retention percentage was, or whether professional indemnity cover was a condition.

Unfindable

Every invoice

The subbie invoices on his own numbering with no reference. An accounts clerk spends twenty minutes working out which order it belongs to and which project carries the cost.

20 minutes each

Friday, 4pm

He rings to ask whether his invoice has been passed. Answering means opening three systems, so somebody promises to call back.

Called back Monday

Occasionally

Two invoices for the same work both get paid, because one came in on paper and one by email, and nothing was checking invoice total against order value.

Paid twice

On site

A variation is agreed verbally and appears later as an inflated invoice, with no dated record of what was instructed or what it was worth.

Argued about

At the worst moment

Insurance expires quietly. Somebody notices during a client audit, or at the point a claim is made, that employers' liability lapsed eight months ago.

A real exposure

The mechanism The order stops being a document and becomes a record Everything else follows from that

What the subcontractor sees

Three pages. The contractor portal shows them
their own corner, not your system.

Every record on those pages is filtered to their company alone, and the filter is applied server-side from their own account rather than from anything the browser can change.

My Orders

Read only

Their own approved subcontract orders, newest first: order number, project, order value, commencement and target completion dates.

A LIVE badge while open, COMPLETED once you close it out
A numbered badge for each variation recorded, v1, v2, v3
One-click download of the full order PDF
They cannot change a term, a date or a value

Approved orders onlyLive

The order itself,
as a deed

Document

Two A4 pages on your letterhead: the commercial schedule on page one, the sub-contract conditions on page two, ending with the execution block for director signature and witness.

Sub-contract sum, retention percentage and release conditions
Payment terms, programme, site hours, defects liability period
The three required insurance cover levels stated on the order
That is the document they print, sign and return

Generated, not storedLive

My Invoices

Self service

They raise the invoice themselves against one of their own orders, attach their own document and add remarks. The project and job number come from the order rather than being typed.

Order dropdown restricted to orders that belong to them
Edit or delete only while it is still Pending
Correcting a rejected invoice returns it to Pending cleanly
Searchable, exportable to PDF and Excel

Cost lands on the right projectLive

The Friday
afternoon answer

Status

Each invoice row carries two badges: where it is in your approval route, and what has actually been paid against it.

Approval: Pending, Approved or Rejected
Payment: Unpaid, Partly Paid, Paid or Overpaid
Calculated live from the payments your office recorded
The amount is colour coded to match

Nobody has to ring anybodyLive

Scoped to their
company, twice

Access

The account is created from their record in your office, not self-registered. It carries the subcontractor company it belongs to, and every query is constrained to it.

Portal pages are served separately from the office ones
An office URL bounces them straight back to their dashboard
Only orders you have approved appear at all
Deactivation blocks their access immediately

One account per companyLive

Expiry that
demotes them

Compliance

Two nightly jobs read the certificate and insurance registers. A subcontractor carrying an expired document is demoted out of Approved status automatically, with the reason recorded.

They stop appearing as a firm you can freely order from
Checked every night rather than every quarter
Registers show days to expiry, with a send-reminder action
Ordering from an expired firm becomes a deliberate override

Office side, but it protects youLive

What happens on your side

The portal is the thin end.
The control is all in your office.

The portal exposes the two things a subcontractor chases you about.
Everything that makes those two things safe sits behind it, where they cannot reach.

01The contractor portal only ever shows an approved order: Subcontract orders run a value-banded approval route, with the bands agreed at implementation: a single approval clears the smallest orders, one approval from the purchase order approval committee is needed above that, and two approvals from two different people above the top band. An order already carrying your user ID is excluded from your own queue. A push notification goes to the committee on your own branded staff app when the order is raised, with a WhatsApp message carrying the order number, project, subcontractor and value. Only an approved order appears in the portal, so they never see one still going through your route, and never see a rejected one.
02The overpayment control is a column, not a habit: When their invoice lands in your queue it arrives with the order number attached, and the row shows the order value beside the count and total of every other invoice already raised against that order. The Subcontractor Matrix shows order value against invoiced against paid for every order in one grid. That is how a second invoice for the same work gets caught before it is paid rather than afterwards.
03Payments are recorded on the certificate layout: A payment is recorded against the approved invoice with its own payment number, date, amount and remarks, and the remittance or receipt attached to it. Each payment produces its own A4 payment certificate PDF on the classic subcontract certificate layout. The subcontractor's badge moves as you record them.
04The evaluation is yours, and they do not see it: When the works are finished and the order is marked complete, the post-completion evaluation opens: quality, programme, communication, collaboration, health and safety, budget, problem solving, overall performance and would-you-hire-again. It is deliberately not shown to the subcontractor.

Put plainly They get answers. You keep the controls That is the whole design

Phone and email against the portal

The same four questions, answered two ways.

Subcontractor orders and invoices: phone and email compared with the Unibuild subcontractor portal
The question	Phone and email	Unibuild subcontractor portal
What was I ordered to do?	A Word document, emailed once	The approved order, downloadable as the full deed on your letterhead
Which order is this invoice for?	Worked out by a clerk, invoice by invoice	Raised against their own order, with the project taken from it
Where is my money?	A call on Friday afternoon	Approval and payment status on every invoice row
Is their insurance current?	Found out at audit, or at a claim	Checked every night; an expired firm drops out of Approved status

Three logins, three audiences

Which portal did you mean?

People searching for a contractor portal usually want one of three different things, and this page covers only the second. They are separate logins with separate audiences and separate data, not three views of one screen.

Client
portal

Client

The login you give the customer who pays you. Their projects, programme, approved photographs, asset registers, drawings and certificates, almost all of it read only. Also searched for as a construction customer portal or a contractor client portal.

Your branding, not ours
Scoped per person, not per company
Nothing about your subcontractors appears on it

Who logs inYour client

Subcontractor
portal

This page

The login you give each firm working for you. The orders you approved, the invoices they raise against them, what has been paid and what is outstanding. Used by contractors and facilities management firms.

One account per subcontractor
They see their own orders and nothing else
Stops the chasing calls on a Friday

Who logs inYour subcontractors

Office
system

Own staff

Not a portal for an outside party at all. It is the back office your desk staff work in all day, granted page by page per person, and it is where the records the other two portals publish are actually made.

Your staff, not an outside party
Permissions set page by page
The source of everything the portals show

Who logs inYour office

Questions

The ones asked before a
subcontractor is put on the portal.

Can a subcontractor see anything belonging to another subcontractor?

No. The account carries the subcontractor company it belongs to, and the order and invoice queries are constrained to that company from the account itself rather than from anything passed by the browser. Portal pages are served by their own controllers, separate from the office ones, and the access layer sends any subcontractor session that reaches an office page straight back to their own dashboard.

What subcontractor portal software should a UK contractor use?

One that sits on the same records as your subcontract ledger, so there is nothing to keep in step. Unibuild's subcontractor portal gives each firm a login scoped to its own company. They see only the orders you have approved, raise invoices against them with the project taken from the order, and follow each invoice through approval and payment. Behind it, your office keeps the value-banded approval route, the check against order value and the nightly insurance expiry check. It is live and in daily service in any Unibuild deployment.

How do you set a subcontractor up on the portal?

You create it. Open the company on your subcontractor register and use Add Login: an email address and a password are set against that company. There is no self-registration, and a duplicate email address is refused so a subcontractor login cannot collide with a staff or client account. The same button reads View Login afterwards, and deactivating the account blocks their access immediately.

What stops them invoicing for more than the order is worth?

As shipped, the control sits on your side rather than theirs: every invoice arrives against a named order, and your queue shows the order value beside the running total of everything already invoiced against it. The Subcontractor Matrix repeats that across every order, so the check is a column your clerk reads. If you would rather the portal refused an invoice that takes an order over its value, or held it for a director's approval past a tolerance you set, we build that rule for you. Most firms want the human check. Some want the hard stop. You get the one you ask for.

Our subbies will not take up another system.

The firms that take it up first are the ones generating the most work for your accounts office: the largest ledgers and the most frequent invoices. For everyone else, nothing changes. Orders still issue as PDFs and invoices still arrive by email into the same queue. The portal removes the chasing where it is taken up, rather than being a condition of trading with you.

Does this replace our subcontractor management?

No, it is the self-service front of it. The office side holds the trade classifications, the ratings, the approval and blacklisting workflow, the certificate and insurance registers, the accreditation matrix and the post-completion evaluation. The portal exposes only orders and invoices. If you want the full picture of what your office gets, that is a separate page: subcontractor management.

What happens when their insurance expires?

A nightly job reads the insurance and certificate registers, and any subcontractor carrying an expired document is demoted out of Approved status with the reason written against their record. They stop appearing as a company you can freely order from, which is the point: the control acts on your ordering rather than on their login. The registers also show days to expiry so your compliance manager can chase before it lapses.

Is this subcontractor portal software on its own, or part of a wider system?

It is one part of the subcontractor management module, not a separate product you would run alongside something else. The register of companies, the trade classifications, the certificate and insurance expiry jobs, the value-banded order approval and the payment records all sit in Unibuild already. The portal is the thin self service face put on two of them, orders and invoices. There is nothing to integrate and no second supplier. The people those firms send to site clock in through the same QR code site sign-in as your own operatives, so who was on site is one record for the job rather than one per employer.

We are a facilities management firm rather than a main contractor. Does it still apply?

Yes, if you place subcontract orders and receive invoices against them. The portal is not tied to a trade: it reads the order you approved and the invoices raised against that order, whether the package is fire door remedials, an F-Gas specialist or a lift contractor. The wider argument for FM firms is set out on the facilities management page. We walk you through it in the demo against a real subcontract order ledger.

Would we get the portal, or is it only in certain deployments?

You get it, included in the one monthly fee at no extra cost. The subcontractor portal is available in any Unibuild deployment and is in daily service today, carrying real orders, real invoices and real payments. What differs between one deployment and the next is the subcontract ledger behind it: your approval route, your payment states, your numbering and the terms you issue orders on, because that half is built to how you buy rather than handed to you as a fixed screen. Anything else you need is built for you, and changes asked for after go-live are included in the monthly fee. That is how bespoke construction software works here.

The platform