Job management software for builders: three thresholds

A builder working across a state line runs one business against three rulebooks. What you may contract for without a licence, what a residential contract must contain, and who has to be told what you paid your subcontractors — all three change at the border, and none of them care that the job looks identical from the driveway.

The threshold decides whether you may sign at all

New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland each set their own value above which residential building work needs a licensed builder, and the numbers are not close. Getting it wrong is not a paperwork slip: the work may be unenforceable and the penalty falls on you. The three thresholds are in three thresholds, and the same punishment for getting it wrong.

Zirko holds no register of licences and checks nothing against one. What it does is keep the licence, the insurance, the contract and the signed variations on the job itself, in a folder tree you build yourself — the office sees everything, and on the phone only what was released appears.

The subcontractor ledger is a reporting obligation, not a habit

If most of what you earn is building and construction, what you paid contractors during the year is reportable, and the test that catches people is a share-of-income test rather than a job type — the 50 per cent test, the 28 August deadline, and what you don't report.

That report is only as good as the record underneath it. In Zirko a supplier invoice arrives at your firm's own inbox address and is read on your own device — the XML first if the file carries a structured format, then the PDF text, then text recognition. Not one byte goes to a service to be read. It then hangs on the job and on the supplier, and anything disputed stays recorded on the document.

A subcontractor who invoices without an ABN turns into your problem immediately, at a withholding rate that has nothing to do with what you agreed — now it is your problem. And from 1 July 2026 super is due on payday, which reaches further into the subcontractor question than most builders expect: the subcontractor who has been an employee for super all along.

What was actually left over, per cost type

Costing runs on five cost types — labour, material, equipment, subcontracting and other — each with a markup for the firm that an individual line may depart from. Zirko works in both directions: the sell price from cost and markup, and the markup back out of a price you set. Contribution margin appears per line and per document, and a discount that pushes it negative is shown as negative rather than clipped to zero.

Afterwards the same five types carry the post-costing. Eight amount-bearing document types form the target side; recorded supplier invoices and consumption form the actual side, with the variance and an overrun marker. Delivery notes, letters and correction documents stay out so nothing counts twice.

Who is on which site, and when

The planning board runs from one week to half a year, with leave, sickness and your operating country's public holidays already on it. Bars drag and extend at the edge, and whatever the browser shows while dragging, the server recalculates when it saves. A job dragged onto a team row produces one assignment per person, and anyone double-booked is told. On the phone the coming assignments show date, job and address, with buttons for the route and for starting the clock.

What it does not do

No payroll and no super payments — Zirko has no bank connection and pays nothing. No reports are lodged with the ATO; the record is here, the lodgement is yours. There is no bar chart inside a job and no critical path: dates belong on the board where the people are listed. No stock control, no tender portal, and no language model anywhere in the product.

Plans count office seats, with field licences for anyone who only works on site, and nothing is metered by jobs per month. Fourteen days free, no payment details, and the trial ends by itself.