For the general contractor

Estimate to budget for general contractors

Once the job is yours, the estimate you won it on has to become the budget you run it against. In Fidrel that is one move: the approved estimate is the budget, line by line, and every subcontract, order and invoice after that lands on the same rows.

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The Fidrel budget on a laptop, tablet and phone, with original and current budget by line item

What goes wrong between the bid and the job

The budget is a second spreadsheet

Someone copies the estimate into a cost report and re-keys the structure. The two drift apart at the first buyout, and no one can say which row a subcontract belongs to.

Buyout savings and overruns look the same

A subcontract signed under the line is good news and one signed over it is bad news, but a single total hides both until the invoices arrive.

Approved changes overwrite the original

If a change order edits the budget in place, the number you won the job on is gone, and so is the picture of how far the job has moved.

Why the original budget never moves

The original budget is locked when the estimate is approved. Approved change orders, revisions and other approved adjustments are added on top and totaled separately, so the current budget is the original plus the changes and the bridge from original budget to estimate at completion shows which one moved it. A change order linked to a budget item carries its amount in as an expected change; it counts in the current budget only after it is approved under Project finances. That second approval is deliberate: the change order register and the budget are approved by their own permissions.

Project budgets

An approved baseline estimate that is locked, with original budget, approved change orders and current budget columns

Reading cost against production

Budget items can be linked to schedule activities, so consumption can be compared with progress. The alert Costs are ahead of production is one of the thresholds you set yourself, beside Forecast exceeds budget, High budget consumption, Commitments exceed budget and Invoice is not fully allocated. Amounts are shown without sales tax. If nobody enters a remaining forecast, the estimate at completion falls back to the highest of the current budget, the commitments and the invoiced amount, which is a safe floor rather than a prediction.

The Cost tracking page in Fidrel with cards for budget, costs and forecast, a bridge from original budget to estimate at completion and a cost curve

From the winning estimate to a working budget

Step 1
Approve the estimate as the baseline
Open the estimate you won the job on, built in Fidrel or imported from a spreadsheet, and choose Approve as baseline estimate. Every priced line becomes a budget item and the Original budget is locked.
Step 2
Record what you commit
Enter subcontracts and purchase orders as commitments. Active and closed contracts plus recorded orders count as Committed, each contract once, so you see on each row how much of the budget is already spoken for.
Step 3
Code the invoices to the lines
Upload vendor invoices, verify them, and map each invoice line to an estimate line under Budget mapping. Invoiced amounts not yet coded to an item show as Unallocated, and they are included in the project forecast until you code them.
Step 4
Set the forecast and read the variance
Someone with the forecast permission enters the Remaining forecast per line. Estimate at completion is then invoiced plus remaining, and Budget variance is that figure minus the current budget; a positive figure means over budget.

What this does not replace

Fidrel prepares no AIA G702 or G703 and no line-item schedule of values; pay applications with retainage are recorded per contract between two parties, submitted by the general contractor and approved or rejected by the owner’s side. It has no connection to accounting software, and recording a payment does not move money. The budget follows what you committed and were invoiced; it does not sign subcontracts or tell you what to bid. Finance is closed to anyone who has not been given finance permissions, so a project engineer sees the estimate only if it has been shared with them.

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