One account for the stock, the order behind it, and the lorry it went out on.
Heavy side and light side, the trade counter and the yard, account customers and cash sales, deliveries and collections. Stock held by the bin it is actually in rather than as one number on a report, goods received checked against the order that ordered them, the delivery fleet and the forklifts sitting on the same expiry register as everything else, and the margin on a branch visible while there is still time to do something about it.
Which is worth settling before a demonstration rather than after one, because it changes what you are looking at.
Unibuild is construction management software for UK contractors, built inside a contracting business in 2016 and run there every working day since. It is not a merchant package off the shelf, and there is no version of this that installs on Monday and serves a trade counter on Tuesday. What exists is a platform with stock by location, purchase orders and goods received, cost control, a fleet register, an expiry engine and a people system already in it, and a bespoke build on top of that for the way a particular merchant works.
That is not a hypothetical. A heating and plumbing merchant in Kent has run its stock, purchase orders, goods received notes and cost control on a system we built for it since 2017, with tablets at the trade counters, and the whole thing is written up in its own case study. Bespoke work is included in the monthly fee, which is the only reason this is a sensible route for a merchant rather than an expensive one.
Built for this business
What a merchant requires, and what Unibuild provides.
A merchant and a contractor look alike in a database, right up to the point where one of them sells the material and the other one fits it. Each requirement below is followed by what the platform does about it.
The businessThe platform
The stock is the business
A total is not a stock position
Everything a merchant owns is sitting somewhere, and the difference between knowing how much you have and knowing where it is turns out to be most of the working capital.
The same product lives in a rack, a bay, a yard and a branch at the same time
Heavy side moves by the tonne and light side moves by the box, out of one system
Minimum and maximum levels are per location, not per product
A count that cannot be taken in the aisle is a count that gets postponed
Stock held by bin location, counted where it stands
Assets and inventory holds stock by location rather than as a single figure, with bin locations, movements and counts, so a shortage is traced to a place instead of being absorbed into a variance. Related: stock control and knowing what you own.
The margin is lost between the order and the invoice
A merchant buys thousands of lines a month, and the gap between what was ordered, what arrived and what was invoiced is where the money quietly goes.
Part deliveries, substitutions and short shipments against one order
Supplier price changes that arrive on the invoice rather than on the order
Credits for damage, returns and pallets that have to be chased rather than received
Nobody reconciles a five pound difference, and there are four hundred of them
Goods received against the order, and the difference visible
Purchase orders carries the order, the goods received note, the supplier invoice and the credit as one chain rather than as four documents in three systems, so a price difference is a flagged line rather than an accepted one. Financial management holds the statements and the ageing behind it.
A merchant does not have a price list, it has hundreds, and the quote given across the counter has to survive being turned into an order a fortnight later.
Account pricing, special prices and one off deals sit on top of trade price
Quotations expire, and a quote honoured after a supplier increase is a loss
Specials are ordered in against a customer who may change their mind
The person quoting is standing up, at a counter, with somebody waiting
Quotations with their own dates, and price lists that hold
Quotations holds the enquiry, the quotation, its revisions and its expiry with the win rate behind them, and advanced estimating carries the price lists and markup the quote is built from. Counter screens themselves are bespoke work, which is what the case study above describes.
A merchant with a yard is running vehicles, and the regulatory load on those vehicles has nothing to do with selling anything.
Flatbeds, crane offloads, tippers and vans, each on its own service and test cycle
Daily walkaround checks and defect reporting are a record, not a habit
Loads have to be secured, and the driver carries the consequence
City deliveries increasingly require a standard the customer names in their order
Every vehicle on the same expiry grid as everything else
Vehicles and fleet holds the test, tax, service and inspection dates with the daily check against the vehicle, and reminders and expiry watches them overnight alongside the forklift examinations and the operator tickets, on one page rather than twelve.
A merchant that only supplies is in a simpler position than one that also installs, and plenty of merchants have quietly become both.
Supplying materials alone is not a supply of construction services
Add installation and the domestic reverse charge can apply to the whole supply
Payments for materials are excluded from a Construction Industry Scheme deduction
A bathroom showroom that fits bathrooms is two tax positions in one company
The treatment held per job rather than per customer
Financial management carries VAT including the reverse charge, statements and aged debt, and subcontractor management holds the scheme treatment where a fitting arm uses subcontract labour. The CIS guide sets out the materials exclusion in full.
Counted in the deployment Unibuild was built on, July 2026: one expiry page carrying 376 assets, 141 subcontractor certificates, 84 accreditations, 80 health assessments, 55 instruments and 9 vehicles.
Heavy side
Timber
Light side
Racking and yard
Lifting equipment
Delivery fleet
Hire and tools
Records and declarations
The week
An ordinary week in a merchant, and the record it leaves.
Six entries from the day book. Nothing here asks a yard man to remember a bin until Friday.
Monday, the count
A rolling count on one aisle rather than a shutdown in December. The counter works from a tablet in the aisle, against the bin rather than against a printed sheet, and the variance is recorded where it happened with a note saying why.
Counted in the aisle
Tuesday, the counter
A quotation for a whole bathroom goes out at the customer's account price with an expiry date on it. When it comes back eleven days later it converts into an order rather than being typed in again from the top.
Priced once, honoured once
The short delivery
Forty of a hundred lengths arrive and two are damaged. The goods received note records what actually came in against the order, the damage is photographed, and the credit is chased from a record rather than from somebody's recollection of a Tuesday.
Received as it really was
Wednesday, the yard
A forklift thorough examination falls due this month and one driver's refresher is amber. Both came off the same expiry page as the vehicle tests and the racking inspection, three weeks before either of them mattered.
Seen three weeks early
Thursday, the delivery
The flatbed goes out with its walkaround check recorded against the vehicle before it leaves the gate. The defect the driver found on the tail lift is logged against that lorry rather than mentioned to somebody in passing.
Checked against the vehicle
Friday, the position
Margin by branch and by product group, the aged debt, and the stock committed against special orders that have not been collected. All of it built from the week's records rather than from a month end that arrives three weeks late.
Known while it still matters
The requirements
Eight things a merchant system has to do.
Written as requirements rather than as features, so they can be read against whatever you are using now.
Stock by location, not by product alone
A merchant's stock question is always where as well as how much, because the same line sits in a rack, a yard, a container and another branch. Assets and inventory holds bin locations and movements, which is what turns a variance into something you can go and look at.
Counting that happens in the aisle
A count that requires a printed sheet, a clipboard and a re keying session afterwards is a count that slips to next quarter. Records are made on the device in the aisle at the moment the shelf is in front of somebody, which is the only version of stock control that survives a busy month.
The order, the goods received note and the invoice as one chain
Purchase orders keeps them attached to each other, so a part delivery, a substitution or a price that moved between order and invoice is a visible difference rather than an accepted one. Most of a merchant's recoverable margin is in that gap.
Account pricing that holds after the counter conversation
Quotations carry their own revisions and their own expiry in quotations, and the price list behind them lives in advanced estimating. A quote honoured a month after a supplier increase is a loss that nobody records anywhere, because it looks like a sale.
Every dated thing on one page
Forklift examinations, racking inspections, vehicle tests and services, operator tickets, insurances and accreditations all expire, and they belong on one register rather than in twelve places. Reminders and expiry runs overnight across all of them and raises what is approaching.
The vehicle as an asset with a daily record
Vehicles and fleet holds the test, tax and service dates alongside the walkaround check and the defects raised from it, against the vehicle. A defect reported verbally is a defect that was never reported.
Margin visible weekly, not at the year end
Cost control sets committed and actual cost against the thing that incurred it, so branch and product group performance is a current number rather than a historical one. A merchant working on last quarter's margin is making this quarter's decisions blind.
A bespoke layer, because no two merchants are the same
Counter screens, delivery notes, stock adjustments and the reports a particular business runs on are written to fit rather than configured around. That work is included in the monthly fee, which is the whole reason this route makes sense for a merchant.
The yard and the rack
What a merchant holds
Written for the sector rather than for any one business. Most merchants will recognise nine or ten of these lines and ignore the rest.
What a UK builders merchant holds, and the tracking quirk in each line
A vehicle carries a test, a tax date, a service interval, a daily walkaround check and a defect history all at once
The premises
Canopies, gates, weighbridge, compressors, forecourt, security and fire equipment
Site equipment nobody thinks of as plant until an insurer or an inspector asks when it was last checked
Packaging and returns
Pallets, cages, gas bottles, drums, crates on deposit or exchange
Owned by somebody else and sitting on your yard, which makes them a liability that looks exactly like stock
The paperwork
Declarations of performance, safety data sheets, chain of custody records, examination reports, delivery notes
The only category with no physical existence and the one a product question is actually about, so it is the one worth systemising first
Regulations
The regimes a merchant works under
Very little of it is about selling. Almost all of it is about lifting things, moving things, and being able to say what a product is. This is the reference version, kept factual.
The regimes a UK builders merchant works under, and what each requires
Regime
What it requires
LOLER 1998, thorough examination
Forklifts, telehandlers and lorry mounted cranes are lifting equipment and must be thoroughly examined at intervals: generally every twelve months, or every six where the equipment is used to lift people, unless an examination scheme sets otherwise. Lifting accessories such as slings, chains and hooks are examined every six months and are examined separately from the machine they are used on, which is the line most often missed on a merchant's register.
PUWER 1998 and operator training
The equipment must be suitable, maintained and inspected, and used only by people who have received adequate training. There is no statutory licence for a forklift driver; the duty is on the employer to be able to show that the operator was trained for that truck and that attachment, with refresher training at appropriate intervals and the records kept. Authorisation to operate is also the employer's and is separate from the certificate of training.
Racking inspection
Storage racking is work equipment and it is damaged by the traffic around it rather than by what it holds. The established pattern is a routine visual check by a nominated person responsible for rack safety, with a documented expert inspection carried out at intervals not exceeding twelve months and a written report. A damaged upright is downrated or offloaded rather than noted, because the failure mode of racking is progressive collapse.
Workplace transport
Yards mix pedestrians, customers, forklifts and lorries, and the customer is the least predictable of the four. The controls are layout and segregation, visibility, traffic routes, reversing arrangements and rules that apply to visitors as well as staff. Most serious injuries in this sector come from vehicles rather than from products.
Goods vehicle operator licensing
Operating goods vehicles over 3.5 tonnes for business requires an operator licence, with a nominated transport manager on a standard licence, declared operating centres, maintenance arrangements at stated intervals and driver defect reporting. Drivers of those vehicles hold a Driver Certificate of Professional Competence with periodic training, and drivers' hours and tachograph rules apply according to the work being done.
Load securing
Loads must be secured so that nothing can move in normal driving, including an emergency stop. Enforcement is roadside, the consequences attach to the operator licence as well as to the driver, and a merchant's loads are unusually awkward: banded packs, long lengths, loose blocks and part loads that change shape at every drop.
Construction products and declarations
A distributor is not a bystander in the construction products regime. Products covered by a designated standard carry a declaration of performance and their marking, and a distributor must make sure those accompany the product, must store and transport them so that conformity is not affected, and must not supply a product they know does not conform. Selling under your own name or brand, or modifying a product, moves manufacturer duties onto you. Since the Building Safety Act the traceability of what was supplied to a building has become a live question rather than a theoretical one.
Timber and chain of custody
Timber and timber products placed on the market carry due diligence obligations on legality of harvest, and customers on public and larger private work increasingly require certified chain of custody, which is a documented record rather than a claim. Certification is held by the business and audited, and the paperwork has to follow the specific material through your yard.
COSHH and manual handling
Cement is a skin and eye hazard, cutting blocks and boards releases respirable dust, and the yard handles adhesives, solvents and gases. Safety data sheets have to be available for what you sell as well as for what you use. On handling, a merchant is one of the few businesses where both the employee and the customer lift heavy goods on your premises, and the assessment has to take account of both.
VAT and the Construction Industry Scheme
Supplying materials on their own is not a supply of construction services, so the domestic reverse charge does not apply and the merchant is not a subcontractor. Add installation and both of those can change for the whole supply, which catches showrooms that started fitting what they sell. Separately, payments for materials are excluded from a scheme deduction where a merchant does fall inside it. See the CIS guide.
Questions
Questions merchants ask
The ones that come up on the first call, answered plainly.
The fitIs this a merchant system?+
Not off the shelf, and that is the honest answer. It is construction management software with stock by location, purchase orders and goods received, cost control, a fleet register and an expiry engine already in it, and a merchant runs on a bespoke build on top of those. One has since 2017, described in its case study. If you want a product you can buy and switch on next week, this is not it.
BespokeWhat does bespoke actually mean here?+
Customer specific modules, fields, rules, screens and reports written for the way your business works, included in the monthly fee rather than quoted as a project. It is the reason a merchant can sensibly be on a contractor's platform: the parts that are genuinely the same, such as stock, buying, people, vehicles and money, are already there, and the parts that are yours get written. It is not a promise to build anything at all on request, and the scope is agreed before anybody starts.
The counterCan it serve a trade counter?+
In a bespoke build, yes: counter screens on tablets are exactly what was written for the merchant in the case study. Out of the box, no. There is no till, no cash drawer integration, no card terminal link and no barcode scanning at a point of sale in the standard platform, and anybody telling you otherwise before a scoping conversation is selling rather than describing.
StockHow does stock by location actually work?+
A product exists in as many locations as it is in, and each location holds its own quantity and its own movements. A location can be a rack, a bay, a yard, a container, a vehicle or another branch, so the question stops being how much do we have and becomes where is it, which is the question a yard man can actually act on. Counts are taken against the location on a device rather than transcribed later.
BuyingDoes it reconcile supplier invoices to what arrived?+
The order, the goods received note, the supplier invoice and the credit are one chain rather than four separate documents, so a difference in quantity or price is visible at the line rather than absorbed. That is where a merchant's recoverable margin usually is: not in one large error but in several hundred small ones nobody had time to look at.
AccountsWill it replace our accounts package?+
It holds the commercial side: quotations, orders, invoicing, VAT including the reverse charge, statements, aged debt and cost control. Most firms keep their accounts package for the ledgers and the filing and let this be the operational system in front of it. Which side of the line each thing sits on is a scoping conversation, and it is worth having early rather than late.
FleetDoes it cover the delivery lorries?+
Yes. Test, tax, service and inspection dates against the vehicle, the daily walkaround check recorded by the driver, and defects raised against the lorry they were found on. Those dates sit on the same expiry page as the forklift examinations, the racking inspection and the operator tickets, which is the point: one page rather than twelve, watched overnight.
The yardCan it hold forklift examinations and racking inspections?+
Yes, as a planned pattern held on the item itself in twelve month columns rather than as a recurring diary entry, which matters because trucks are replaced and racking runs are extended mid year and a calendar entry never finds out. The examination reports are kept as documents against the asset with every revision, so the last three years of a truck's history is one lookup.
BranchesWe have four branches. Does that work?+
Yes, and it is the case stock by location was built for. Each branch is a set of locations inside one account, transfers between them are movements rather than adjustments, and margin can be read by branch as well as by product group. Access is granted page by page and branch by branch, so a manager sees their own business and the directors see all of it.
CustomersCan our account customers see anything themselves?+
The client portal is read only with no write path, scoped to their own company. What it shows them is a scoping decision rather than a fixed feature: statements, delivery records and documents are the usual answers. There is no online ordering, no basket and no payment page, and adding an e commerce front end is not what this is.
FittingWe fit bathrooms as well as sell them. Does that complicate it?+
It complicates your tax position rather than the software. Supplying materials alone is not a supply of construction services, but adding installation can bring the domestic reverse charge into play for the whole supply and can put you inside the Construction Industry Scheme with subcontract labour underneath you. The platform was built for exactly that contracting side, so it is the half you are least likely to outgrow. See the CIS guide.
PricingHow is a merchant priced?+
The same way as everybody else: users are unlimited and never charged per seat, there is no charge per product line, per branch or per transaction, and there is no published rate card because the bespoke content differs. Pricing is worked out after the scoping conversation and fixed for three years, and the bespoke work is inside the monthly fee rather than beside it.
RolloutWhere would a merchant start?+
With buying and goods in, because it is self contained, it is where the recoverable money is, and it proves the approach before anything touches the counter. Stock locations and counting usually follow, then the yard and fleet registers, which need no bespoke work at all. The counter itself is the last thing to move, not the first.
ContractorsMost of your site is about contractors. Why a merchant page?+
Because a merchant is a stock, buying, people and vehicles business, and those are four of the things this platform does well, which is why one has been running on it for the better part of a decade. It is also honest to say that the rest of the site is about contractors, and that a merchant here is a bespoke build rather than the mainstream case. Both of those things are true at once.
Five things a merchant asks for that are not in the platform as it stands. Unibuild is bespoke, so each one is a scoping conversation rather than a dead end, and a merchant deployment is more bespoke than most. It is still better to know the starting point.
Point of saleNo till, cash drawer, card terminal or barcode scanning at a counter in the standard platform. Counter screens are bespoke work, as the case study describes.
Supplier price filesNo electronic data interchange, no automated supplier catalogue or price file import, and no rebate engine. Prices and product data are loaded rather than fed.
E commerceNo webshop, no online ordering, no basket and no payment page. The client portal is read only and always will be.
Weighbridge and telematicsNothing reads a weighbridge, a fuel pump or a vehicle tracker directly. Those figures are entered or imported rather than live.
Delivery routingNo route optimisation, no drop scheduling engine and no live tracking for a customer. Deliveries are recorded against the vehicle and the order, not planned by the system.
Other trades
Not quite your line of work?
The same platform, written for the trade that runs it. Each of these is a different set of modules switched on rather than a different product.
Return slip
Come and talk it through properly.
A merchant deployment starts with a scoping conversation rather than a demonstration, because half of what you need is bespoke and the sensible thing is to find out which half. Bring one branch, a month of purchase orders and your stock locations, and we will tell you plainly what is already there and what would have to be written.
