Three Brisbane site offices, one NetSuite tenant, and nobody can say if the Cross River Rail subcontract made money
A custom ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) for a Brisbane construction, civil, or resources-services firm runs $90,000 to $220,000 over 6 to 10 months. The reason NetSuite, SAP, and Dynamics fight you isn't the GL, it's that they cost a business by the SKU and the warehouse, and you cost yours by the job, the site, and the progress claim. With the 2032 build-out pulling every trade across South East Queensland, an ERP built in Brisbane closes the book on a job, not a month, and tells you which contract is profitable while you can still do something about it.
You moved off MYOB and a wall of spreadsheets because the civil arm started winning real contracts and the resources-services side needed proper purchasing. Now NetSuite runs your GL, but the project manager on the Woolloongabba site still tracks committed cost in his own sheet, the quantity surveyor reconciles progress claims by hand, and retention held against each head contract lives nowhere the finance team can see it. The system balances. It just can't tell you the truth about a job until two months after you could have changed the outcome.
SAP and Dynamics share the blind spot. They assume cost attaches to a part number flowing through a warehouse. Your cost attaches to a job that runs eighteen months, gets variations every fortnight, carries 5% retention you'll chase for a year after practical completion, and pulls labour and plant across four active sites at once. When the model can't hold work-in-progress, committed-but-not-invoiced cost, and a Queensland progress-claim schedule, your PMs rebuild it in Excel and the real margin lives in their heads until they take leave over Christmas.
What breaks first in Brisbane
- Job profitability is invisible until the monthly close, so a loss-making Cross River Rail or Brisbane Metro subcontract runs for weeks before anyone notices
- Committed cost (POs raised, not yet invoiced) lives in PM spreadsheets, so the ERP shows you have budget you've already spent
- Retention held against each head contract isn't tracked anywhere finance can see, so cash you're owed quietly disappears off the radar
- Progress claims and variations are reconciled by hand against the QS's workbook, so a missed variation is a margin you simply gave away
The fix: erp built for Brisbane, not rented
You go custom when the unit of profit is the job, not the month, and no off-the-shelf GL will model that natively. A build for a Brisbane contractor makes the project the spine: committed cost the moment a PO is raised, work-in-progress that updates as the QS measures, retention tracked per head contract with a release date, and a live margin per job that a project manager and the finance team are looking at the same number for. That single shared figure, available before close instead of after, is the whole reason to build. It connects to the same job ledger your project management software, accounting software, and field service management software all read from.
What erp costs in Brisbane
| Project scope | Typical cost | Timeline |
|---|---|---|
| Job-costing ERP for a single-trade builder | $90k to $140k | 6 to 8 months |
| Multi-entity ERP (civil + resources services + plant hire) | $150k to $220k | 8 to 10 months |
| Job-costing layer over existing NetSuite or MYOB | $50k to $90k | 3 to 5 months |
The capability list that earns its budget
What we build under ERP in Brisbane
The engagements Brisbane teams bring us most often: ERP migration, cloud ERP, manufacturing ERP, distribution ERP, custom ERP modules and ERP API integration.
Exactly what you get
A job ledger that is the centre of the business, not a report bolted onto one. Every PO raises committed cost against a job the moment it's approved, so the budget a PM sees is real. The QS's measurements feed work-in-progress, so margin updates as the job moves rather than at close. Retention is held per head contract with a release date, progress claims and variations live in a register tied to the contract, and a cash-flow forecast runs off the claim schedule so you see the gap between spending on the Woolloongabba slab and getting paid for it. Plant and labour allocate across sites, so the crew that did two days at Northshore and three at the Gabba shows up costed on both. It interlocks with your accounting software, project management software, and inventory management software through that one shared job ledger.
How to choose a developer in Brisbane
Pick a team that has built for construction, not one that will learn job costing on your money. Ask them to walk a live job from PO to progress claim to retention release on a system they already shipped, and watch whether committed cost and WIP are real or hand-waved. They should talk fluently about the Building Industry Fairness Act, retention trusts, and how a variation flows to margin without anyone re-keying it. Straight-talking Brisbane operators can smell a developer who's never been on a site, so favour the one who asks about your claim schedule before they quote, and who can name a local build that survived a payment dispute. Cheap and generic costs you the entire reason you're building.
- !They demo a generic GL and call the project a 'cost centre' (ask instead: show me committed cost and WIP on a live job)
- !They've never heard of retention trust accounts under the Building Industry Fairness Act (ask: how do you track held and released retention?)
- !They quote a fixed price before seeing how your QS measures progress (ask: what do you need from our claim process before you can price?)
- !They want to model plant hire as inventory (ask: how does a crane's cost land on the three jobs it worked this week?)
- !No reference of a build that survived a head contractor's payment dispute (ask: who can I call who's used this through a real claim fight?)
Teams investing in erp in Brisbane usually scope it next to internal tools, shopify, inventory management, since these systems share data and budgets.
Rohan advises mid-market and enterprise teams on ERP, CRM and custom software, and has led delivery on dozens of business-software builds.
Writes for Digital Heroes, shipping business software for 2,000+ brands across 55+ countries since 2017.
Frequently asked questions
How is a construction ERP different from just adding job costing to MYOB or Xero?
A job-costing add-on tags transactions after they happen; a real construction ERP makes the job the spine of the business. It captures committed cost at the PO, runs work-in-progress as the QS measures, tracks retention per head contract, and gives every project manager and the finance team the same live margin number before close. In Brisbane, where one firm runs several Olympics-pipeline and civil jobs at once, that difference is the difference between catching a loss-making contract in week two versus month two.
Can a custom ERP handle Queensland retention trust requirements?
Yes, and it's a core reason to build. The Building Industry Fairness Act requires retention held in trust for many Queensland contracts, and off-the-shelf ERPs treat retention as an afterthought. A custom build tracks held and released retention per head contract, reconciles it to the trust account, and surfaces release dates so the cash you're owed stops disappearing off the radar a year after practical completion.
What does it cost to build a job-costed ERP for a Brisbane builder?
Expect $90,000 to $220,000 over 6 to 10 months. A single-trade builder with a clean job-costing model lands at the lower end. A multi-entity firm consolidating civil work, resources services, and plant hire, with progress claims and retention trust, lands at the top. Layering job costing over an existing NetSuite or MYOB instead of replacing it runs $50,000 to $90,000.