How does construction cost management software give you cost control on a development?

Most developments keep four numbers in four different places: the budget line in a feasibility spreadsheet, what is committed under the head contract and its variations in a contract file, what is certified in a progress claim somewhere in an email thread, and what has actually been paid in the accounting system. None of those four places talks to the other three, so the moment a variation lands or a claim is certified, someone has to remember to update everything else — and margin leaks in exactly that gap.

Budget, committed, certified and paid on one screen closes that gap, measured against the Original Budget the project was actually funded on, not a number re-typed into a new sheet every month.

Each of the four numbers means something specific, and the gap between two of them is a different warning each time. Committed minus certified is your exposure — value you owe under contract that has not yet been claimed and assessed. Certified minus paid is the builder’s exposure — value already certified that has not yet reached their account.

An approved feasibility becomes the Original Budget: a frozen baseline, written once before delivery starts and not editable afterwards. That is deliberate — the number a project was funded on should not quietly move because someone edited a cell.

From that point, a Baseline vs Delivery view holds the current position against the frozen one, section by section, so drift shows up as a figure against a line item rather than something someone has to remember happened three months ago.

Drop the PDF in. The model pre-fills the register entry — supplier, amount, reference — and a person confirms it before anything is recorded. The register is versioned and flags likely duplicates, but the rule is plain: nothing counts until a human has checked it.

The honest boundary sits right next to that: there is no live link to your accounting system today. The register is the project’s own record, and it is exported, not synced.

Committed moves when a contract or a variation is executed — not when it is merely discussed or priced.

Certified moves when a progress claim is assessed and certified, not when it is first submitted.

Paid moves when the payment is actually recorded against that certificate.

The same locked position also feeds a lender cost-to-complete pack from the latest closed period, so a funder question gets answered from a snapshot rather than a fresh spreadsheet. For how a variation actually eats into margin once it lands, see Margin through variations and claims.

One section of a demonstration project’s external works package, partway through delivery.

Committed is already $120,000 over the frozen Original Budget for this section. Of that committed value, $280,000 has not yet been certified — that is the developer’s exposure — and of what has been certified, $80,000 has not yet been paid — that is the builder’s exposure. Same four numbers, two different warnings.