Construction management + cost control · Belize
Estimate, track and bill every job — in BZD, with GST and SSB done right.
Obra is construction management software built in Belize for design-build firms and contractors that have outgrown Excel and can't justify Buildertrend or Acumatica. One cost code from the bid to the client's bill. Nothing retyped.
Built alongside a design-build studio in San Ignacio, Cayo · English and Spanish · Exports to Excel with live formulas
Bid build-up · example
Mahogany Ridge House
Residential · Santa Elena · Design development · Imperial · BZD
Bid total, incl. GST
BZ$ 1,492,701.21
Rounded half-up at every step. A line without a rate is flagged and left out of the total — never invented.
Why Obra exists
If you've priced Buildertrend or Acumatica for a Belize firm, you already know the gap.
Buildertrend
Built and priced for US builders
Billed in US dollars, per month, with US tax and payroll assumptions baked in. No CSI cost-code depth, no GST line, no idea what SSB is.
Acumatica
An ERP, not an estimating tool
Consumption-based licensing, an implementation partner, and months of configuration before the first bid comes out — for a firm that needs its accountant's export, not a general ledger.
Excel
Runs the company today — and retypes everything
The bid sheet, the receipt log and the client invoice never talk to each other. Obra keeps Excel as a first-class export, with live formulas, and does the flowing for you.
Estimating
A complete, defensible bid in minutes — every judgment call surfaced, every missing number flagged.
The grid feels like the spreadsheet you price in today. Underneath it, every line carries a cost code, every rate is real or marked missing, and the build-up follows your method in the right order.
Direct costs · excerpt, 4 of 157 lines
1 line without a rate — not in the total
| Code | Type | Description | Qty | Unit | Rate, BZD | Amount, BZD |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 03 30 00 | M | Ready-mix concrete, 3,000 psi | 142 | yd³ | 385.0000 | 54,670.00 |
| 04 22 00 | M | Concrete block, 6-inch | 9,840 | ft² | 3.8500 | 37,884.00 |
| 04 22 00 | L | Blockwork crew — 9,840 ft² crew · 37 days × 269.31 | 9,840 | ft² | 1.0127 | 9,964.47 |
| 07 41 13 | S | Metal roofing, zinc-alum, supplied and fixed | 1 | LS | 48,500.0000 | 48,500.00 |
| 09 29 00 | L | Plaster, interior walls | 12,300 | yd² | RATE MISSING | — |
M material · L labor · S subcontract · E equipment · O other. The crew line is 37 crew-days × BZ$269.31 loaded cost per day, SSB included — the rate column only shows the derived figure.
The grid you already know
Keyboard-first, Excel-like. Code, cost type, description, quantity, unit, rate — imperial units, CSI MasterFormat codes, division subtotals and a sticky total. Five hundred lines without a stutter.
Your build-up, in your order
Direct costs → preliminaries priced line by line, never a flat percentage → overhead → contingency inside the drawing-stage band → profit as markup on cost → GST as its own final line. The contingency is yours to choose; the system asks, it never chooses.
Labor costed by crew
Pick a crew, type the quantity, get crew-days × loaded cost per day with SSB applied and capped. If the crew can't reconcile the quantity, the line is flagged — never forced. Change a day rate later and every open bid tells you.
Sent, revised, won, lost
Mark a bid sent and it locks; client feedback becomes v2 with a line-by-line diff. Won converts straight into the project budget. Lost keeps the full build-up and the price you lost to — the next bid learns from it.
Reviewed before it goes out
Attach the plan set and Obra reads it against your lines: counts, scope drawn but not priced, assumptions that won't hold. Every finding is a suggestion you accept, verify or dismiss.
Excel, with the formulas still alive
Export the whole bid. Change the overhead cell in Excel and the bid total recalculates. The client package you send today, produced in one click.
One entry, everywhere
A receipt is coded once. Then it shows up everywhere it should.
The cost code is the spine — CSI MasterFormat plus a cost-type suffix on every line, estimate through billing. That is how the estimating side and the accounting side finally reconcile.
01
The receipt arrives
WhatsApp it to the office number, email it, drag it in, or snap it from the site. Every channel lands in one register.
02
AI reads it, a person codes it
Vendor, date, total and lines are extracted. The matching inbox suggests the code from that vendor's history. One click to accept — nothing counts as spent until you say so.
03
The budget updates itself
Budget, committed, spent and remaining by division — the won bid is the budget, no re-entry. Over budget turns umber the day it happens, not at the end.
04
The client bill writes itself
Cost-plus: costs at cost, your fee, GST on the fee only, plus a PDF with every backup receipt attached. One action, ready to send.
Modules
Turn on what you need. Pay for what you turn on.
Every module shares the same cost codes, the same audit trail and the same Excel export.
Estimating
An Excel-like grid with CSI codes, imperial units and your own build-up order: direct costs → preliminaries priced line by line → overhead → contingency within the drawing-stage band → profit as markup on cost → GST as its own line. Versions, sent / won / lost, and a won bid becomes the project budget.
Labor & crews
One day-rate library with the SSB employer share applied and capped automatically. Build crews, set productivity per man-day, and cost a task in crew-days — with a reconciliation check that flags, never forces.
Receipts & matching
Every receipt, invoice and subcontractor cert enters once — by WhatsApp, email, upload or the site app — is read by AI, confirmed by a person, and stored with its original image. Click any total and reach the documents behind it.
Cost overview & budget
The always-current answer to "where is this project financially?" — budget vs committed vs spent vs remaining at project, division and line level. Change orders adjust the contract with an audit trail, never a silent overwrite.
Client billing
Cost-plus bills with the management fee and GST on the fee only, or lump-sum progress certificates by division. Each bill ships as a PDF with its full backup bundle. Billed, received and outstanding — always answered.
AI bid review
Before a bid goes out, Obra reads the plan set against your lines — counts, scope that is drawn but not priced, details that break a lump-sum assumption — and checks it against your own won bids. Every finding is a suggestion you accept, verify or dismiss.
On the roadmap: an offline-first site app for foremen, a client portal with magic-link sign-in, and quantity takeoff from drawings. Ask us where each one stands.
Belize-native
The rules of building here are built in — not configured in.
Foreign software asks you to work around your own country. Obra starts from it.
Currency
BZ$
Belize dollars, two decimals, rounded half-up at every step of the build-up.
GST
12.5%
Always a separate final line on the bid. On cost-plus bills it applies to your fee only, never to passed-through costs.
Social Security
6.5% capped
The employer share on the insurable cap of BZ$540 a week — BZ$5.85 a day on the six-paid-day week — applied to every loaded day rate automatically.
Units
ft² · yd² · yd³
Imperial, the way you price plaster, paint and formwork. Metric imports are converted and flagged on the way in.
Receipts by WhatsApp
Snap it, send it, it's filed
A dedicated office number turns photos into documents with the sender matched to the vendor. The way receipts already move here.
Two languages
English and Spanish, per person
The estimator works in English, the office in Spanish, in the same company. Numbers, codes and dates never change.
Built here, supported here
Same time zone, same job sites
Built with a design-build studio in Cayo on real bids and real receipts. Support is a WhatsApp away, in your working hours.
Obra vs Buildertrend vs Acumatica vs Excel
A Buildertrend alternative built for Belize. An Acumatica alternative you can run yourself.
| What matters on a Belize job | Obra | Buildertrend | Acumatica | Excel |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Currency and tax | BZD, GST 12.5% as its own line | US dollars, US sales tax | Configurable, by a partner | Whatever you type |
| SSB on labor rates | Applied and capped automatically | Not modelled | Payroll module, configured | A formula someone has to maintain |
| Cost codes | CSI MasterFormat + cost-type suffix on every line, bid to bill | Simple cost categories | Full chart of accounts | Per sheet, per person |
| Receipt intake | WhatsApp, email, upload, site photo — AI-read, human-confirmed | Upload, mobile app | Document module, configured | Shoebox |
| Estimate → budget → bill | One flow, nothing retyped | Separate features, manual steps | Possible after implementation | Copy and paste |
| Excel | Exports with live formulas | CSV exports | Reports, exports | Is Excel |
| Languages | English and Spanish, per user | English | Multi-language, licensed | Any |
| Pricing model | Per company, by module | Per month, in US dollars, by tier | Consumption-based licence + implementation | Free, plus everyone's evenings |
| Support | Belize, your hours, WhatsApp | US business hours | Through your partner | You |
Buildertrend and Acumatica are trademarks of their owners. Comparison reflects the public product descriptions at the time of writing; check their current plans for details.
Pricing
Priced per company and the modules you turn on. Not per seat.
Add the estimator, the office and the foreman without the bill moving. A second company you own is roughly half.
Estimating
BZ$ 1,200 / month
For the firm that bids and wants every bid defensible.
- Estimating with versions and win / loss
- Labor & crews with SSB
- AI bid review
- Excel export with live formulas
Plus a one-time implementation, scoped with you.
Talk to usEstimating + Cost control
BZ$ 2,000 / month
For the firm that bids, builds and bills — the full flow.
- Everything in Estimating
- Receipts & matching, WhatsApp intake
- Cost overview, budget, change orders
- Client billing with backup PDFs
- Accountant export
Plus a one-time implementation, scoped with you.
Book a demoEverything
Let's talk
Site app, client portal, takeoff from drawings and CYPECAD import as they ship — for firms that want to shape them.
- Everything in Cost control
- Early access to new modules
- Onboarding of your cost codes and day rates
- A second company at roughly half
Plus a one-time implementation, scoped with you.
Talk to usQuestions
The things contractors ask first.
Do we have to leave Excel?
No. Every estimate and budget exports to Excel with live formulas — change the overhead cell and the bid total recalculates. Obra beats Excel at its own game; it does not fight it.
Is Obra an accounting system?
No, and it never will be. It stops at the accountant's export: matched costs by code, the GST summary, the bill and payment registers. Your accountant closes the month from that alone.
Does the AI change our numbers?
Never. It reads receipts and reviews bids, then suggests. A person codes every cost and accepts every finding. Judgment calls — contingency, an ambiguous code — are asked, not decided.
Where is our data?
In your own isolated company space on managed cloud infrastructure with daily backups and point-in-time recovery. Original receipts are stored immutably and served by signed links. Every change is audited: who, what, before and after.
How long until our first bid comes out of it?
We load your cost codes and day rates with you, then price a bid you have already done so the two can be compared line by line. Most firms are bidding in Obra inside the first week.
We work in Spanish. Does it?
Yes. Each person picks English or Spanish; client documents go out in the client's language. Codes, numbers and dates are identical in both.
Book a demo
Bring a bid you've already priced. We'll show it to you in Obra.
Thirty minutes, on a call or in person anywhere in Belize. No setup on your side.
Or WhatsApp us at +501 603-6475 · [email protected]