A construction dashboard your directors will actually open
Live margins, manpower, and programme slip across every site, on one screen.
50% on kickoff, 50% on delivery · 30 days of free revisions · you own the code
Most directors find out a site is bleeding margin three weeks after it happened — when the QS finally reconciles the valuation against the cost ledger. By then the only lever left is a difficult phone call.
A dashboard worth opening tells you on a Monday morning, not a month-end Friday. That means pulling live data out of your accounting system and your QS workbook into one screen — and being honest about which numbers are real-time and which are last-known-good.
We don't try to replace your accountant or your QS. We connect to what they already produce and give the leadership team a single, trusted view.
Recent work
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Why we wrote this. We ship work like this ourselves — not as a reseller or a marketplace. The timelines, deliverables, and price bands below come from real engagements we've run end-to-end at Smartly Built Ventures Limited (trading as Vibed Ventures).
How we'd actually build this
- Pin down the five numbers that matterA two-hour workshop with the MD, FD and ops lead. Usually it's margin per site, cash position, manpower vs plan, programme slip, and WIP.
- Connect the source dataXero/Sage API for actuals, a Supabase-backed import for your QS workbook, scheduled CSV pulls for anything legacy. We never re-key data.
- Build the one-screen view firstPortfolio across the top, drill into a site, drill into a cost code. React + Recharts + role-based access so site managers see their site, directors see everything.
- Set the freshness contractEach tile shows when it last updated and where the number came from. No mystery figures, no 'is this current?' from the board.
Who this is for
- MDs tired of waiting until month-end to see margin
- Commercial managers reconciling QS valuations by hand
- Operations leads with too many WIP reports
What you get
- Live margin per site pulled from your accounting and QS data
- Manpower and plant utilisation by week
- Programme slip vs baseline, with RAG status
- Drill-down from portfolio to site to cost code
What this tends to look like in practice
- ScenarioA regional contractor ($20m turnover, 9 live sites) reconciling margin in Excel on the last working day of each month.Typical resultMargin visibility moves from monthly to weekly · ≈ 14 hours/week of FD + commercial team time freed up.
- ScenarioA fit-out specialist running 20+ jobs, half profitable, half not — and the team can't tell which is which until handover.Typical resultTwo loss-making jobs spotted at 40% completion instead of 90% · ≈ $35k of margin protected on the next cycle.
Ranges are typical of work we've shipped at Smartly Built Ventures Limited. Your number will differ — the /solve report calculates it from your team size and inputs.
"If a tile on the board's dashboard doesn't change a decision, kill it. Five honest numbers beat forty pretty ones every time."
"But what about…"
- Won't Power BI / Looker do this for free?If you have an analyst and clean data, yes. We get hired when neither is true. We build the model and the pipes — you can keep it or move to Power BI later, it's your data and your SQL.
- Our accountant says the numbers will be wrong until month-end.Often true at first. We separate 'committed cost' from 'incurred cost' from 'forecast' on the tile itself, so the board reads the right number for the right decision. The accountant signs off on the model up-front.
- We've tried a dashboard before and nobody opened it.Usually because it had 40 tiles. Ours has five. The rule is: if a tile doesn't change a decision, it doesn't ship.
Dig deeper
Frequently asked
What data sources do you connect to?
Xero, Sage, QuickBooks, Procore, Buildxact, plain SQL — most of the common ones, plus CSV uploads for anything legacy.
Is this a template?
No. Every build is bespoke to your workflow — nobody else gets the same tool. That's the whole point.
How does payment work?
50% on kickoff, 50% on delivery. Revisions are free for the first 30 days. We only invoice the second half if we hit the timeline.
Can you maintain it afterwards?
Optional monthly maintenance: bug fixes, small tweaks, dependency updates, and uptime monitoring. Drop it any month.
What we won't take on. Replacing your accounting or QS package, building plant-IoT dashboards, or any project where the source data is still on paper in a Portacabin. Fix the data source first.
References & standards
What happens next
- Step 1Tell us the problem60 seconds in the /solve box. You don't need a brief.
- Step 2Get a tailored reportROI, build plan and a rough price band — emailed to you.
- Step 3Book a 25-min callWe talk it through honestly. If it's not for us, we'll say so.
Related in solutions
- Construction software, built around how your site actually runsThe bespoke platform that replaces five spreadsheets, a WhatsApp group, and a filing cabinet.
- Estimating software shaped to your tradeStop rebuilding the same Excel quote forty times a week. We'll bake your pricing logic into a tool.
- Project management tools that fit your site, not Procore'sIf the off-the-shelf tools don't match how your team actually works, we'll build the one that does.
- Compliance software that won't get you a fineCSCS, RAMS, insurance, training records — all current, all in one place, all evidenced.