What you get
- Job costing per project, not one company ledger
- Retention and variations held as rules, not notes
- Site records and labour in the same system as the money
Comparison · Pakistan
A Hisaab alternative built only for construction
General accounting software with a construction module handles the ledger. Smart Construction handles what happens before the ledger: certification, retention, subcontractor netting, and labour on site.
Overview
Hisaab alternative for construction businesses in Pakistan
Accounting platforms like Hisaab are well established in Pakistan for good reasons. They handle the ledger, they understand local tax practice, they are familiar to accountants, and they serve many industries competently. A construction company running one on its books is not doing anything wrong.
The gap is not quality, it is altitude. Accounting software answers what the company earned and spent. It rarely answers the four questions that decide whether a contractor makes money: which project actually lost money, how much retention clients are holding right now, what a subcontractor is genuinely owed once advances and back-charges net off, and what labour cost on one site last week.
Those questions are not accounting questions. They are construction operations questions, and they get answered before anything reaches the ledger. Which is why almost every contractor running general accounting software also runs a parallel set of spreadsheets: a retention register, a subcontractor running account, a labour register, and a project cost sheet. The accounts are correct and the operating picture lives somewhere else.
Smart Construction is built for that layer. Certification with retention and deductions applied by rule, subcontractor ledgers that net, procurement governed before the spend, and labour attendance that becomes both payroll and project cost. It is not a replacement for statutory accounting, and it does not pretend to be.
Core capabilities
- Project P&L with cost allocated per site
- PKR certification with retention released against events
- Subcontractor ledgers with advances and back-charges
- Daily-wage attendance feeding payroll and cost
How it works
Capability by capability
Everything below is included on Starter, Growth, and Enterprise. Plans differ only on active project and user limits.
Where general accounting is the better choice
If you are a trading or manufacturing business with occasional construction work, or your priority is statutory compliance, tax filing, and a clean set of books rather than project control, a general accounting package is the right tool. A construction ERP would be a heavier answer than the question deserves.
- Statutory accounts and tax filing
- Multi-industry, familiar to accountants
Job costing per project
Every cost lands against the project that incurred it, so profitability exists per site rather than only per company. A chart of accounts can be extended with project dimensions, but the day-to-day capture that makes those dimensions accurate is the part general software leaves to you.
- Project P&L, not just company P&L
- Cost captured at the point it occurs
Retention as a rule, not a note
Retention gets released twice, or never gets released, or becomes unstateable across years of certificates. Holding it as a rule on the bill means every certificate deducts automatically and release is recorded against the event that triggered it.
- Automatic deduction per certificate
- Release recorded against its trigger
Subcontractor running accounts
Advances, deposits, retention, back-charges, and purchase returns all post to one balance per party. This is the reconciliation most contractors keep in a workbook maintained by one person, which is exactly the record that fails under dispute.
- One running balance per subcontractor
- Advances netted against certified work
Governance before the spend
Requisitions route for approval before a purchase order is issued, so control happens before commitment rather than after an invoice arrives in the accounts.
- Approval before commitment
- Vendor advances tracked against the ledger
Labour that reaches the cost sheet
Daily-wage attendance captured per project on site becomes PKR payroll and project cost in the same system. The alternative, retyping a register into a payroll sheet each month, is where both errors and lost attribution come from.
- Attendance to payroll without re-entry
- People cost allocated to the right job
Before and after
What changes in practice
The same work, run the way most contractors run it today and the way it runs on the platform.
- Spreadsheets and WhatsApp threads: Company P&L only
- On Smart Construction: Profitability per project
- Spreadsheets and WhatsApp threads: Retention tracked in a workbook
- On Smart Construction: Retention held and released by rule
- Spreadsheets and WhatsApp threads: Subcontractor balances reconstructed in disputes
- On Smart Construction: Running balance maintained continuously
- Spreadsheets and WhatsApp threads: Purchases controlled at invoice stage
- On Smart Construction: Approval before the purchase order issues
- Spreadsheets and WhatsApp threads: Labour register retyped into payroll
- On Smart Construction: One attendance record driving both
Use cases
Situations this is built for
Recognisable scenarios from construction businesses operating in Pakistan.
Books are clean, projects are opaque
- The situation
- A contractor closes the year with accurate accounts and still cannot say which of five projects made money, because cost was never captured against a site.
- How Smart Construction handles it
- Capture cost at the project as it happens: certification, purchase orders, subcontractor payments, and labour, all carrying a project reference by construction.
- What changes
- Project-level profitability becomes a live number instead of a year-end reconstruction.
A retention figure nobody could state
- The situation
- Retention across three phases and four years exists only as a column in a workbook, and stating the total requires rebuilding it from PDFs.
- How Smart Construction handles it
- Hold retention as a rule against the contract, deducted automatically per certificate, with release recorded against the triggering event.
- What changes
- The amount clients are holding is a figure the business can state and chase at any moment.
Keeping the accountant and gaining control
- The situation
- A company does not want to disturb a working statutory accounting setup but needs operational control it does not currently have.
- How Smart Construction handles it
- Run project cost, certification, procurement, and labour here, and export what the accounts need on the existing cycle.
- What changes
- Operating control improves without a risky migration of the statutory books.
Benefits
What improves, and why it matters
Project-level truth
Profitability per site, not just a company total at year end.
Retention you can state
Held by rule, released against events, never reconstructed.
Balances that net
Advances and back-charges resolve into one figure per party.
Control before commitment
Approvals happen at requisition, not when the invoice lands.
Labour in the same system
Attendance becomes payroll and cost without a parallel sheet.
Keep your accountant
Designed to sit alongside statutory accounting rather than replace it.
Modules
Key modules included
Full construction ERP on every plan: projects, commercial, labour, and site in one subscription.
Job costing
Every cost lands against a project, not just a chart of accounts.
Certification
Retention, deductions, and variations applied by rule.
Subcontractors
Running balances that net advances against certified work.
Site
Diary, materials, and attendance feeding the same numbers.
Included
Everything covered on this page
One subscription. Nothing on this list is a paid add-on.
- Project P&L with cost allocated per site
- PKR certification with retention and deductions
- Retention release recorded against its trigger
- Subcontractor ledgers with advance netting
- Requisition to purchase order approvals
- Vendor advances and deposits tracked
- Daily-wage attendance feeding PKR payroll
- Site diary, materials, and equipment records
- Exports for statutory accounting
- Audit trail across every module
Terminology
The vocabulary on this page, explained
Plain definitions of the terms Pakistani contractors and consultants use day to day.
- Job costing
- Allocating cost to the project that incurred it, so each site has its own profit and loss rather than being pooled into a company total.
- Retention
- A percentage of each certified amount held back by the client until defined milestones. Frequently the largest number a contractor cannot state accurately.
- Deduction at source
- Tax withheld by the client from a certified payment. It must be recorded against the certificate to reconcile later.
- Back-charge
- A cost recovered from a subcontractor for work or material the main contractor supplied on their behalf. It must net against their balance.
- Statutory accounts
- The formal books filed for tax and regulatory purposes, as distinct from the operational cost picture a contractor runs a project on.
Questions
Frequently asked questions
We already use an accounting package. Why add construction software?
Accounting software answers what the company earned and spent. It rarely answers which project lost money, how much retention a client is holding, what a subcontractor is actually owed once advances net off, or what the labour cost on one site was last week. Those questions are the construction layer, and they usually live in spreadsheets alongside the accounts.
Does Smart Construction replace our accountant or accounting software?
Not the accountant, and not necessarily the accounting package. Many merchants keep statutory accounts where they are and use Smart Construction for project-level cost, certification, procurement, and labour, exporting what the accounts need. If your accounting needs are simple, the finance modules here may be enough on their own.
Where is a general accounting package the better choice?
If you are a trading or manufacturing business with a small amount of construction, or your priority is statutory compliance and tax filing rather than project control, a general package is the right tool and a construction ERP would be overkill.
Do we have to stop using our accounting software?
No. Many merchants keep statutory accounts where they are and use Smart Construction for project cost, certification, procurement, and labour, exporting what the accounts need. If your accounting needs are straightforward, the finance modules here may be sufficient on their own.
Is this just accounting software with construction labels?
No. The difference is where the work happens. Certification, retention rules, subcontractor netting, purchase approvals, and the labour register are operational records created before anything posts to a ledger. That layer is what this platform is.
Which should a small contractor start with?
If you have one or two projects and simple books, general accounting software may be all you need. The case for a construction platform usually appears at the third or fourth concurrent site, or the first serious subcontractor dispute.
Related construction software
See it on your projects
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Call +92 333 2466662 during Pakistan business hours, or book online.