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

In plain terms

A subcontractor portal gives each firm working for you its view of what it was ordered to do and where its money is. Unibuild’s is for UK contractors and FM firms of 5 to 300 people. Logins are unlimited inside one monthly figure, with a 14-day trial and no card.

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. Logins on both are unlimited and inside the fee: what no per-user fee changes.

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

See the portal from the subcontractor’s side, then ask for a figure.

Book a 30-minute demo → Ask for a quote

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.

The 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.
The 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.
Payments 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.
The 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

Client testimonial

SME Building Services,
in their own words.

Niki Scarth, office administrator at SME Building Services, standing in the firm’s Croydon office with the SME Building Services mark on the wall behind her — **Niki Scarth**Office administrator, SME Building Services LtdCroydon · on Unibuild since 2023
Read the SME case study

It has always been a pleasure to work with Darshan and his team to create our completely bespoke system, which I can only describe as brilliant.

The system is constantly growing and improving. Whenever we need something added or changed, whether it's a new form that would work better for us or a new idea to improve the way we work, Darshan works his magic and makes it happen!

It has genuinely changed the way we work for the better, improving our record-keeping, automating processes and standardising practices across the company, saving us both time and money.

It's also improved the service we provide to our clients, who love being able to view their job and asset information live, at the click of a button.

Thank you, Unibuild!

Questions

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

Is there a subcontractor portal for facilities management companies?

Yes. Unibuild’s subcontractor portal is used by facilities management firms as well as main contractors: any business that places subcontract orders and receives invoices against them. It is not tied to a trade: fire door remedials, an F-Gas specialist and a lift contractor all work the same way. The wider argument for FM firms is set out on the facilities management software page. We walk you through it in the demo against a real subcontract order ledger.

Is the portal an extra cost?

No. It is included in the one monthly figure, quoted in writing and fixed for three years, with unlimited users and no charge per subcontractor login. It is in daily service carrying real orders, invoices and payments. The ledger behind it is set up to how you buy: your approval route, your payment states, your numbering and your order terms. Changes asked for after go-live are included in the fee. That is how bespoke software works here. Ask for your firm’s quote.

Is there a free trial?

Yes, 14 days of the full platform, no card. You can put one subcontractor on the portal during the trial, against a live order, and see whether the Friday afternoon call stops.

How long does it take to go live?

Most firms go live in about two weeks, in phases. The portal follows the subcontract ledger: once your register, approval route and order terms are set up, a subcontractor’s login is created from their company record in a minute.

What do our subcontractors see and do on the portal?

Three pages, in your name, logo and colours: each subcontractor’s dashboard is their own corner of your system. They see the orders you have approved and download each one as the full deed on your letterhead. They raise invoices against those orders, with the project taken from the order rather than typed. Each invoice then shows where it sits in your approval route and what has been paid against it, so nobody rings on a Friday to ask.

Can a subcontractor see anything belonging to another firm, or to us?

No. Each login belongs to one subcontracting company, and every order and invoice it can reach is limited to that company. A subcontractor who tries an office page is sent straight back to their own dashboard. They never see an order still going through your approval route, a rejected order, or the evaluation you write when the works are finished.

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

Every invoice arrives against a named order, and your queue shows the order value beside the running total already invoiced against it. The subcontractor matrix shows ordered, invoiced and paid for every order in one grid. A hard stop can be built in too. The portal can refuse an invoice that takes an order over its value, or hold it for a director past a tolerance you set.

Can a subcontractor on a monthly arrangement invoice us every month?

Yes. Each month’s invoice is uploaded on the portal or emailed to your firm’s unique invoice address, and Unibuild logs it the same way every time. One-off invoices work the same. Recurring invoices.

How do we give a subcontractor access, and take it away?

You create the login from their company record on your subcontractor register, with an email address and a password. There is no self-registration, and an email address already in use is refused. Deactivating the account blocks their access immediately.

What if some of our subcontractors will not use it?

Nothing changes for them. Orders still issue as PDFs, and they email invoices to your firm’s unique invoice address, where Unibuild logs them into the same queue with nothing to upload. The firms that take it up first are usually the ones with the largest ledgers and the most frequent invoices, which is where the chasing calls come from.

What happens when their insurance expires?

Overnight checks read the insurance and certificate registers, and any subcontractor carrying an expired document drops out of approved status, with the reason written on their record. They stop appearing as a firm you can freely order from. The registers show days to expiry, so your compliance manager can chase before it lapses.

Can we check a subcontractor’s RAMS before they start?

Yes. A subcontractor’s RAMS is submitted into Unibuild, reviewed by AI for vague controls and gaps, and approved or returned with comments, with a name and a date on every decision. Their operatives then sign it in the app or through a signing link. AI RAMS review.

Can their operatives clock in on our sites?

Yes. The people those firms send to site clock in through the same QR code site sign-in as your own operatives, without needing a staff record. Their hours are grouped by firm, so the office can check each invoice against them, and who was on site is one record for the job.

How does the portal connect to the rest of Unibuild?

It is the self-service front of the subcontractor management module, on the same records, so there is nothing to integrate and no second supplier. The office side holds the register, trade classifications, certificate and insurance registers, value-banded order approval, payments and post-completion evaluation. The portal shows a subcontractor two of those things: their orders and their invoices.

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 to its own company. They see only the orders you have approved, raise invoices against them 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 overnight insurance expiry check.

Can subcontractors accept jobs and post updates in the portal?

Yes. A subcontractor accepts a job by taking the approved order from the portal, the full deed on your letterhead, and signing and returning it. The signed order sits on the record. Updates travel on the records the job produces: invoices raised against the order with their remarks, RAMS submitted for review, and their operatives’ clock-ins on your sites, grouped by firm. The portal is shaped to how your firm lets work, so an acceptance step or a progress note against the order is configured for you during setup.

Which platforms give subcontractors portal access without a per-seat charge for every trade?

Unibuild does. Every subcontractor login is inside the one monthly figure, with no per-seat charge for any trade. A fire door firm, an F-Gas specialist and a lift contractor each get an account at no extra cost. Per-user systems meter each login, which is why a portal on them tends to be rationed to the biggest firms. Here the figure is quoted in writing and fixed for three years, and the number of subcontractors on the portal never changes it.

What is the cheapest subcontractor portal we can build or buy?

The cheapest portal to run is one you do not pay for per login and do not maintain as a second system. Unibuild’s is included in the one monthly figure, quoted in writing and fixed for three years, with unlimited subcontractor logins. It reads the subcontract ledger your office already keeps, so there is nothing to build, host or keep in step. Building your own means paying for the portal and for the ledger behind it, twice.

Last reviewed November 2026