In short
Choose construction management software by testing it against one ordinary week of your own: whether a site manager can record attendance on a phone in their own language, whether balances are computed from entries rather than typed, whether each person sees only their part, and whether your data comes out in PDF and Excel.
The owner watches the demo. The site manager, the accountant and the supervisor do the entering. Software is bought by the first person and kept or abandoned by the others, which is why so many systems end up as a dashboard nobody updates and a notebook that never went away.
The checklist below is built from that gap. None of it is about features you will see on a slide. All of it is about whether the records will actually be kept.
Start with the person at the site
If recording something takes longer than writing it in the diary, the diary wins. Test entry with the person who will do it, on the phone they already carry:
- Can a day’s attendance for a gang of twenty be marked in under a minute?
- Does it work on an ordinary Android phone, not only on a laptop in the office?
- Can the site manager use it in the language they think in, Gujarati or English?
- Does a delivery or a payment take one screen, or five?
Ask whether totals are computed or typed
Some systems are a spreadsheet with a login: somebody still types the supplier balance, the site total and the net position, and they are wrong in the same ways the spreadsheet was. The test is simple. Record a purchase, a wage payment and a booking receipt, then look at the supplier’s balance, the site’s spend and the overall position. If they moved without anyone touching them, the arithmetic is the software’s job. If they did not, it is still yours.
Check it fits the business you run
A builder who sells what they build needs enquiries, bookings, installment schedules tied to milestones, and each buyer’s loan and NOC status. A contractor building on someone else’s land needs labour, sub-contractor work orders and the bills raised to the site owner. Software that makes a contractor wade through unit sales, or makes a builder keep buyers in a separate sheet, ends up half used.
Decide who sees what before you start
A site engineer does not need the company’s cash position. An accountant does not need slab checklists. A sub-contractor should see their own work orders and payments and nothing else. Look for permissions per module (view, add, edit, delete), a way to hide amounts from a particular person, and an activity log that records who changed what and when. Without those, the owner ends up as the only person allowed to enter anything, which is the notebook again.
Treat Gujarati as a requirement
If your team works in Gujarati, an English-only system turns one person into the typist for everybody else, and the records arrive late and second-hand. Check that every screen works in Gujarati, that party names typed in Gujarati print correctly on receipts, and that switching language does not change the figures.
What the demo shows
- A dashboard full of sample data
- The owner’s view on a big screen
- A list of features
- English screens
What to ask for instead
- Two of your own sites, set up before the call
- The site manager’s view, on a phone
- One ordinary day, entered end to end
- The same screens in Gujarati
Make sure you can leave
Your records should be yours. Ask how reports export (PDF for sharing, Excel for your CA), whether the price is per business or per entry, and what happens to the data if you stop. A system you cannot leave is a system you will hesitate to put everything into.
Sitegride was built around these tests: phone entry at the site in English or Gujarati, balances computed from entries, modules that follow whether you are a builder or a contractor, role-based access with hidden amounts and a read-only login for sub-contractors, and reports in PDF and Excel. Whatever you choose, run the ten-minute test first.
Questions this answers
The best one is the one your site staff will keep using. Judge it on phone entry at the site in your team’s language, totals computed from entries rather than typed, modules that match whether you are a builder or a contractor, role-based access, and export to PDF and Excel. Sitegride is built around those tests for builders and contractors in Gujarat.
Yes. Sitegride runs fully in Gujarati as well as English: every screen and report, with Gujarati names printed correctly on receipts, and the language can be switched at any time without changing the figures.
Ask for two of your own sites to be set up, then enter one ordinary day: a material delivery, a day’s attendance and a payment received. Check that supplier balances, site spend and the overall position update on their own, and look at the screen your site manager would use on a phone.
Sitegride puts sites, sales, purchases, labour and money in one place, in English and Gujarati.