BCL

Build Cash Ledger

Getting the work is the hard part. Losing track of it is the expensive part.

We find construction businesses new work, and we give them somewhere to run it. Advertising and outbound from people who have worked in the sector, with every enquiry landing in the same system that handles the jobs, the orders and the money.

LeadsCash flow
4

This month

Won £3,550 · Quoted £22,950

EnquiryFromStageValue
Roof repair, ExmouthGoogleWon£2,400
School block, ExeterOutboundQuoted£8,750
Extension, TopshamSocialWon£1,150
Solar farm, CullomptonOutboundQuoted£14,200
Chimney, DawlishGoogleNot taken

Illustrative figures. Every enquiry keeps where it came from, so when one turns into an invoice you know what the advertising actually earned.

Two halves of the same problem

Everybody in this sector is sold one half or the other. An agency that has never stood on a site runs you some ads. A software company sells you somewhere to type it all up. Neither can tell you whether the first paid for the second.

Half one

We go and find you the work

Most contractors have no website, no advertising and no outbound. The work arrives because somebody remembered them. A decent living and a hard ceiling.

  • Ads filmed on your own site, not stock footage of somebody else's
  • Search for the people already looking, social for the ones who need reminding you exist
  • Outbound to named companies holding the contracts you want

Half two

Then you run it in one place

An enquiry is worth nothing until it becomes a job, and a job is worth nothing until it is paid. The platform gets it from one to the other without anything falling down a gap.

  • Every enquiry in one list, with where it came from and what became of it
  • Cash flow, orders, retention and the Construction Act dates that carry a penalty
  • What each month cost against what it earned, per site and across the business

Why both from one place

Any agency can tell you what a lead cost

Almost none of them can tell you what it earned. They report on clicks because clicks are the last thing they can see: the enquiry becomes a quote somewhere else, a job somewhere else again, and an invoice in a system they will never be shown.

Ours do not leave. The enquiry arrives in the same place the quote is priced, the job is run and the invoice is raised, so the question stops being how the campaign performed and starts being what it put in the bank.

  1. 01

    The enquiry

    From an ad, a search, or somebody we went out and spoke to. It lands in your system, not a shared inbox, with where it came from attached.

  2. 02

    The quote

    Priced against your own cost codes. If it goes nowhere, that is recorded too, which is the half of the picture most people never keep.

  3. 03

    The job

    Orders, deliveries, invoices, the dates the Construction Act sets, and what the month actually cost against what it earned.

  4. 04

    The money

    Applied for, certified, chased, paid. Then the loop closes: that invoice still knows which enquiry it started as.

The marketing

What we actually do to get the phone ringing

One campaign at a time, run properly, rather than a monthly fee for activity nobody can point at. Our own creative and media people build it. Somebody who has worked in construction decides what it says.

We come and film you

Half a day on your own job. No script and no suit. What converts in this trade is somebody who plainly knows what they are doing, filmed doing it.

We buy the media

Search for the people already looking, social for the ones who need reminding you exist, and a Google profile that turns up for free before either. The budget is yours, in your own account.

We go after the bigger accounts

Advertising brings in the one-off work. The repeat work sits with named companies holding contracts in education, energy, housing and facilities. That is a target list and a series of conversations, not a campaign, and most agencies will not do it.

And it lands somewhere useful

Every enquiry arrives in your own system with its source on it, and an automatic reply goes out while you are still up a ladder. A lead answered in minutes is worth several answered in a day.

On what it costs. We are still shaping the offer, so there is no price list here and we would rather not invent one. You pay for the work we do, and you fund the advertising separately in your own account. Ask us and you will get a straight number for what you actually need.

The platform

Where the work lives once you have won it

Deliberately cheap, because it is not where we make our money. It is built for how this sector actually gets paid, which is the part general business software has never understood.

Leads and enquiries

Everything that comes in, in one list rather than three inboxes and a notepad in the van. Quoted, won or lost, with the source and the value attached.

Cash flow

Cost and revenue against months, in a grid that behaves like a spreadsheet. Spread a total across its months, then override a single month without breaking the rest.

Orders

Purchase orders that number themselves, against a supplier register you control. Approvals, variations, goods received, and invoices matched to what turned up.

Valuations and applications

A schedule that reconciles to the contract sum, variations kept separate, retention handled. Out comes an application on your letterhead with the dates already on it.

Certificates and payments

What the client certified against what you applied for, in pounds and per cent, with the under-certified elements marked.

CVR

The monthly reconciliation per cost code, per site and across the business. Cost to date from your own orders, real margin against forecast.

Retention

What you hold from subcontractors and what your clients hold from you, split into its release tranches and aged. Retention goes missing because it was forgotten.

Notices

Every application with the Construction Act dates that follow from it, what was served and when, and the sum that becomes payable if the deadlines pass in silence.

The bit that costs real money

Every application starts a clock

Miss the notices and the sum applied for becomes payable in full, whatever the work was worth. Not a penalty somebody chooses to apply. It is what the Act says happens.

  1. Day 0

    Application

    The subcontractor applies for payment

  2. +7 days

    Payment due

    The due date the contract sets

  3. +5 days

    Payment notice

    Say what you consider due, or the application stands

  4. 7 days before

    Pay-less notice

    The last chance to say a lower figure

  5. +17 days

    Final date

    It has to be paid

BCL stores the dates against each application when it is logged, so a contract term edited in March cannot quietly move a deadline that passed in February. What it will not do is write the notice for you. The dates are ours, the wording stays with your surveyor.

What you keep, and what stays yours

Worth saying plainly, because plenty of people here have been stung by an agency that owned the ad account, or a system they could not get their own figures back out of.

  • You fund the advertising directly, in your own account, so you can see every pound of it and stop it any month.
  • Your enquiries, clients, prices and figures are yours, and come back out as CSV whenever you like.
  • Every record carries the business it belongs to, and the database itself refuses to hand over anybody else's.
  • Two-step sign-in, read-only and receipt-only roles, supplier bank details for administrators only.
  • An application waits for a director before it reaches a client, and stops being editable once submitted.

Early, and not hiding it

The platform is built and working today. The marketing side is new, and we are being deliberate about how many businesses we take on while we prove what works. If that sounds like the wrong time to be looking at it, it is the opposite: this is the point where what you tell us changes what gets built.

Speak to whoever sent you this.

BCL · New work for construction businesses, and the system to run it