Does a builder in New Zealand need a licence for the whole job?

No. There is no general builder's licence here. Licensing attaches to the work, not to the business: a Licensed Building Practitioner is required only for restricted building work, which is the part of a home that holds it up and keeps the water out. Everything outside that boundary may be built by an unlicensed person. Carrying out restricted building work without a licence carries a fine of up to fifty thousand dollars.

Can Zirko issue a record of work or a producer statement?

No. A record of work is owed by the practitioner who carried out or supervised the restricted building work, and a producer statement is signed by the person who takes responsibility for it. Zirko produces neither and holds no register of licence classes. What it does is keep them with the job: the record, the consent papers, the photographs, the signed site report and the invoice in one folder tree instead of five inboxes.

How do I stop a payment claim from being late or short?

A payment claim has to carry six things and reach the payer for the clock to run, and the answer to it runs to twenty working days. In Zirko an invoice is issued from a server-side range with no gaps, its due date is on the document, and a reminder rule you wrote yourself fires on the status you named — with a log that records every message, its trigger, its recipient and its moment, so the same notice cannot go out twice.

Where does a retention sit on the paperwork?

In the totals card of the document editor: the calculations section carries switches for a discount, a retention and a site levy, so the money held back is a line on the document rather than a figure someone remembers. Since the 2023 amendments retention money is trust property automatically, the moment the contract allows it to be withheld — which is an accounting question Zirko does not answer for you.

Can an apprentice see prices on a phone?

No, and it is decided in the database rather than in the interface: line items on the phone come from a reading view carrying no amounts at all. The apprentice sees assigned jobs and released folders and nothing about margin. It is the same application as in the office, not a cut-down second one, with tap targets built larger than the usual forty-four pixels because there is a glove in between.

Job management software for builders: record of work

Job management software for builders: restricted building work carries its own licence classes, the record of work is owed by whoever did it, and a payment claim starts a clock.

Site 1/2/3

A job opened on its overview in New Zealand dollars: cards for the hours recorded against the estimate, the customer, the agreed period and the Auckland site with its on-site contact, tabs for documents, reports and files holding a draft quote, and the job chat on the right where a colleague asks for the producer statement before Friday.

Ask a New Zealand builder for his licence number and the honest answer is a question back: for which part of the job?

This country does not license the business. It licenses the work. A Licensed Building Practitioner is needed for restricted building work — the structure and the weathertightness — and for everything else on the same site, no licence is required at all. Seven LBP classes cover it: Site, Carpentry, Roofing, External Plastering, Bricklaying and Blocklaying, Foundations and Design, and Carpentry is the only one without areas of practice inside it. What falls inside the boundary is set by an Order in Council, and what restricted building work covers walks the line.

So the record that matters is not a certificate on the wall. It is a record per job, of who did which part.

The job is the folder, and the record of work goes in it

In Zirko a job holds its hours, its documents, its site reports, its files, its chat and its costing together. The file store is a folder tree you build yourself, to any depth, the same on every job, and for each folder you decide whether the crew sees it — the office always sees everything, and on the phone only what was released appears. One click turns a message in the job chat into a file in the job's store.

That is where the record of work, the producer statement, the consent documents and the photographs belong: attached to the job, not to whoever happened to receive them. Zirko issues none of them and holds no register of licence classes. It keeps them together and dated.

A project status is one you name yourself — consented, framing done, record of work issued, code compliance applied for — including its language and its document template, with no preset stages to squeeze into. A status change can then set off a rule: a mail to the client, a reminder to the office, files requested.

Above thirty thousand dollars, the contract itself is regulated

Residential work over that figure including GST means prescribed disclosure information and a checklist handed over before signing, and a written contract carrying sixteen specified matters — the $30,000 line lists them. Quote a kitchen at twenty-eight thousand, add a variation, and the job crosses into a different legal regime without anybody redrafting anything.

Zirko will not tell you which side of the line a job sits on. What it does is keep the quote, its variations and the signed contract on the same job, so the figure that crossed the line is still readable a year later.

The payment claim is a form, and the twenty days are real

A payment claim under the Construction Contracts Act has to be in writing, identify the contract, identify the work and the period, state a claimed amount and a due date, show how it was calculated, and say that it is made under the Act. Get one of the six wrong and silence means nothing — six things a payment claim must carry.

Zirko issues document numbers on the server from ranges with no gaps, and an issued invoice can no longer be changed: a correction is a credit note or a cancellation with its own number. Retentions are a switch in the totals card, so the money held back is a line rather than a memory — and retentions are trust money whether or not anybody opened an account for them.

What it does not do

There is no recurring maintenance generator and no dispatch board that optimises routes, no map of your vans, and no clock-in with location checking: Zirko does not verify where anybody is standing. Nothing in it is decided by a language model — the automation is eleven fixed rules you switch on one at a time, and a dry run goes through the same functions and sends nothing.

Plans are counted in office seats, with field licences for anyone who only works on site, and the mobile application comes with every office seat at no extra charge. Nothing is metered by jobs per month. Fourteen days free, the full range of functions, no payment details, and the trial ends by itself.

Frequently asked questions

Does a builder in New Zealand need a licence for the whole job?
No. There is no general builder's licence here. Licensing attaches to the work, not to the business: a Licensed Building Practitioner is required only for restricted building work, which is the part of a home that holds it up and keeps the water out. Everything outside that boundary may be built by an unlicensed person. Carrying out restricted building work without a licence carries a fine of up to fifty thousand dollars.
Can Zirko issue a record of work or a producer statement?
No. A record of work is owed by the practitioner who carried out or supervised the restricted building work, and a producer statement is signed by the person who takes responsibility for it. Zirko produces neither and holds no register of licence classes. What it does is keep them with the job: the record, the consent papers, the photographs, the signed site report and the invoice in one folder tree instead of five inboxes.
How do I stop a payment claim from being late or short?
A payment claim has to carry six things and reach the payer for the clock to run, and the answer to it runs to twenty working days. In Zirko an invoice is issued from a server-side range with no gaps, its due date is on the document, and a reminder rule you wrote yourself fires on the status you named — with a log that records every message, its trigger, its recipient and its moment, so the same notice cannot go out twice.
Where does a retention sit on the paperwork?
In the totals card of the document editor: the calculations section carries switches for a discount, a retention and a site levy, so the money held back is a line on the document rather than a figure someone remembers. Since the 2023 amendments retention money is trust property automatically, the moment the contract allows it to be withheld — which is an accounting question Zirko does not answer for you.
Can an apprentice see prices on a phone?
No, and it is decided in the database rather than in the interface: line items on the phone come from a reading view carrying no amounts at all. The apprentice sees assigned jobs and released folders and nothing about margin. It is the same application as in the office, not a cut-down second one, with tap targets built larger than the usual forty-four pixels because there is a glove in between.

Be there at launch

Zirko launches late 2026. Sign up and we'll let you know the moment it goes live — one email, nothing more.

Available from late 2026

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