Finance systems for contracting and field-based businesses
Most contractors find out what a job made after it’s finished.
We build the systems that tell them before they take it — and we’ve now put that system into software.
Read it instead
Most contractors find out what a job made, after it's finished. Wages are counted one way. The job is costed another. Then someone has to reconcile the two. Ordine. One entry: payslip and job cost, from the same line. The crew send a day sheet from their phone, at the end of the shift. One job, one team, thirty seconds. A manager approves it. One named decision, on the record. Nothing is paid that nobody approved. The same approved line becomes the payslip and the job cost. Nothing to reconcile. Pay and cost can never disagree. Ordine. Live and running alongside a real contractor's system. deuteronomyconsulting.com/ordine
Two ways to work with us
Software you run, or a finance function we rebuild and run.
Ordine
Job pricing, day sheets, subcontractor pay and CIS deductions, forecasting — in one system your team operates. Built for firms of ten to fifty people who buy labour from a self-employed supply chain and need to price work before they take it.
- Price a job on the crew that will actually do it
- One day sheet becomes the payslip and the job cost
- Your ledger stays yours — exports to Xero, QuickBooks, Sage or CSV
Finance systems engagements
We take your finance function apart and put it back together: records kept to trial balance, a system migration if you need one, approval routing, automation, and reporting that pulls itself. Then we keep it running.
- The 90-Day Review — we run your books and map what’s broken
- The Rebuild — fixed price, two to four weeks, modular
- Keeping it working — from tooling only to running the month
What we fix
Contracting businesses grow faster than their admin.
A firm that was fine on a spreadsheet at ten jobs a month is drowning at forty. Nobody notices until the money has already gone.
Invoices arrive anywhere
Different managers, different amounts for the same work. Nobody can hold fifty subcontractors’ billing history in their head — so duplicates aren’t caught, because no process exists that would catch them.
Nothing is costed at job level
Which means there’s no basis on which to turn work down. So every job gets taken, including the ones that lose money.
Month-end slips, then stops
By the time anyone knows how a quarter went, it’s the following quarter.
The same figure is typed in twice
Once into the system, once into a spreadsheet somebody built and nobody maintains. Payroll says one thing and the job cost says another, and nobody knows which to believe.
None of that is a people problem. It’s a systems problem — and systems problems are fixable.
The idea Ordine is built on
One entry. Payslip and job cost from the same line.
A gang submits one day sheet at the end of a shift. It is normalised, priced, put in front of a manager — and from that single approved line the crew is paid and the job is costed, in parallel.
There is no second data entry and no reconciliation step between pay and cost, because both are read from the same approved line. If a job looks wrong, you can see exactly which shift, which crew and which approver put the number there.
Proof
A utilities and civils contractor.
Fifteen staff, over fifty subcontractors, dozens of vehicles. No approval process on subcontractor invoices. No job costing of any kind. Month-end wasn’t happening. They took every job they were offered, because they had no basis on which to decline one.
Try it
Should you take this job?
A simplified version of Ordine’s pricing module. Put a job in and watch it decide — then look at the bottom right: the same job, at the same price, is worth taking with one crew and not with another. Nothing else in this bracket shows you that.
| Revenue | £0 |
|---|---|
| Labour — 0 crew-days | £0 |
| Materials | £0 |
| Permits & TM | £0 |
| Plant & overhead | £0 |
| Margin | £0 |
| Margin % | 0% |
Illustrative rates, not a quotation. The decision threshold here is 18% — in Ordine it is yours, and it can vary by client, job type or season. The real system prices from your rate card and your crews’ actual productivity.
This is the logic that let one contractor decline eleven jobs worth £11,600 in a few weeks. See the whole product.
Three ways in
The software, the rebuild, or we run it.
Ordine
Job pricing, day sheets, crew pay and CIS deductions, job cost — live since April 2025, now moving into an app your team logs into. Your rate card and crews loaded, first pay period run alongside your current process.
Set-up from £1,200. List price to follow. Don’t run crews? Ordine Seer — the 13-week cash flow and budget tool — on its own from £75 a month.
The Rebuild
Two to four weeks, fixed price, modular: system migration, invoicing rebuilt end to end, approval routing and audit trail, Ordine configured for your business, reporting that pulls itself.
We run it
Records kept to trial balance, reconciliation, your subcontractor payment run prepared and checked through Ordine each period, and a monthly review call. Capped at a handful of businesses at a time.
Starting smaller? Fixed-fee starter engagements from £750, and the 90-Day Review, are on What we do.
Smaller than that?
The numbers above are for firms with a subcontractor base and a real month-end. If you’re a handful of people with one thing that eats your week — invoice chasing, a costing spreadsheet nobody trusts, reconciliation that takes a day — we’ll fix just that one thing, for a fixed fee, in two or three weeks.
Starter engagements from £750. No retainer, no commitment beyond the job.
Who this is for
Contracting, utilities and field-based firms, ten to fifty staff.
With a subcontractor base and jobs that need pricing. Owner-managed, usually — the person who feels the problem is the person who can fix it. Civils, utilities and telecoms first, because that is where we come from; M&E and trades, fleet-heavy operators and project-based agencies on the same system with a different preset. See the industries.
If you have a finance manager who’s happy with your systems, you don’t need us.
We are not a firm of accountants.
We don’t prepare statutory accounts, we don’t act as your agent with HMRC, and we don’t advise on tax. When something falls outside what we do, we say so and introduce you to someone qualified.
What we do build is the bridge — finance and the technology that should be carrying it, joined up properly. Most of our clients already have an accountant. We work alongside them, and they tend to like it, because the records arriving on their desk are clean.
One conversation, thirty minutes, no charge.
Tell us what isn’t working. If we can help we’ll say how, and what it costs. If we can’t, we’ll say that instead.