Demo AtlasBuild Infrastructure: a project-contractor day

Demo AtlasBuild Infrastructure delivers a metro station, a solar farm, and two road packages across India, Saudi Arabia, and Kenya. It buys cement and steel, imports switchgear in EUR, hires specialist subcontractors, pays workers by certified time, bills customers by engineer-approved progress, holds retention, and reports project margin in local and group currencies. OSERP links the tender, contract, project, work breakdown, purchase, stock, labour, valuation, invoice, cash, and general ledger so a project manager can explain both the physical progress and the financial result.

1. Set up legal entities, projects, and responsibility

Create a company for each tax and statutory entity, then configure branches, project locations, warehouses, cost centres, currencies, tax registrations, fiscal periods, and numbering series. A project is not merely a customer name. It stores contract identity, site, programme dates, funding source, billing currency, retention rule, performance bond, payment terms, tax treatment, and responsible manager.

Project field	Demo value	Impact
Project code	AB-METRO-26-017	Stable key for every project document
Customer	Riyadh Transit Authority	Contract party and receivable owner
Contract value	SAR 84,000,000.00	Baseline revenue and limit
Billing currency	SAR	Customer invoice precision
Functional company	AtlasBuild Saudi LLC	Local ledger and tax books
Cost centre	CC-METRO-017	Profitability and accountability
Retention	5% capped at SAR 4.2m	Cash timing and contract liability
Start / finish	2026-01-01 / 2028-12-31	Forecast and earned-value period
Project manager	PM-204	Approval and operational ownership

The project header references the customer contract, but each work-breakdown row carries its own phase, activity, unit, quantity, rate, budget, tax, and cost code. Lock the approved baseline after the steering committee signs it. Revisions become versioned change orders rather than silent edits.

2. Translate a tender into a controlled work breakdown

The tender estimate separates direct materials, direct labour, equipment, subcontract, site overhead, head-office overhead, contingency, and target margin. Import the estimate with an external reference and validate that each line has a project code, cost code, unit, quantity, unit rate, currency, and responsible cost owner.

For the metro station, the baseline includes excavation (18,000 m³), concrete (9,500 m³), reinforcement steel (1,200 tonnes), electrical installation (1 lot), and testing and commissioning (1 lot). A work-breakdown row can be METRO-02.04.03, meaning station two, structural phase, platform slab. Its budget is consumed by approved purchase receipts, stock issues, timesheets, equipment usage, and subcontractor certificates.

The budget screen must show original budget, approved changes, current budget, committed cost, actual cost, accrued cost, estimate-to-complete, estimate-at-completion, earned revenue, billed revenue, and forecast margin. A user may revise the forecast without changing the contractual budget; the audit distinguishes estimate judgement from an authorised change order.

3. Register bonds, advances, and contract controls

Contract controls store performance bond, advance-payment bond, insurance, expiry date, issuing bank, amount, currency, beneficiary, document, and alert threshold. A mobilisation advance is recorded as a receivable or contract asset according to policy and recovered through certified progress invoices. It is not revenue at receipt.

Example: AtlasBuild receives a SAR 8,400,000 mobilisation advance. The receipt records bank, value date, currency, reference, project, contract, and unapplied balance. Each progress certificate recovers 10% of the certified gross value until the advance is fully cleared. OSERP rejects a recovery greater than the remaining balance and alerts the project controller 30 days before a bond expires.

4. Procure materials with project and delivery dimensions

Material requests include project, WBS code, item, specification, quantity, required date, delivery location, warehouse, budget line, and preferred supplier. Purchase orders preserve supplier quotation, incoterm, currency, tax code, delivery schedule, inspection plan, and price validity. A split delivery creates separate receipts while retaining the original commitment.

Imported EUR switchgear records supplier currency, transaction rate, freight, insurance, customs, duty, port charges, and local cost. Landed cost is allocated to received serialised units and project cost code. The receipt cannot be posted until quantity, inspection, serial number, and ownership status are complete. Rejected items remain in a quarantine location and do not relieve the purchase commitment.

5. Issue stock and control site custody

The site warehouse tracks item, batch or serial, bin, project, WBS, quantity, UoM, valuation method, custodian, and condition. A material issue reduces stock and charges the exact project activity. A return reverses the issue with a reason and condition. A transfer between Saudi and Kenya entities uses intercompany documents, not a manual quantity adjustment.

For concrete, the issue records delivery ticket, pour location, pour date, batch certificate, quantity, wastage, and supervisor. A wastage percentage above the configured tolerance requires a non-conformance record and approval. A periodic site count compares book quantity, physically counted quantity, damaged quantity, and unexplained variance; the variance journal references the count sheet and witness.

6. Capture labour, equipment, and subcontractor cost

Workers submit timesheets by date, employee, project, WBS, activity, shift, hours, overtime, travel, and approver. The payroll engine applies the worker’s company, pay policy, cost centre, and currency. A supervisor may reject a timesheet but cannot edit approved hours without reopening it with reason.

Equipment logs store asset, project, operator, meter start/end, hours, fuel, standby, maintenance, and rate. The cost engine allocates owned-equipment depreciation or hire cost to the project. Idle equipment is visible rather than hidden in direct cost.

Subcontractor contracts store scope, measurement method, rate, tax, retention, advance, currency, insurance, bond, and payment terms. A subcontractor claim references measured quantities, site instruction, inspection result, previous certified amount, current amount, retention, advance recovery, tax withholding, and payable balance. The project manager certifies physical work; commercial control validates arithmetic and contract limits; finance posts the payable. No single role can create, certify, and pay the same claim.

7. Record variations, claims, and non-conformance

Change orders include origin, instruction number, description, reason, affected WBS, quantity, rate, time impact, cost impact, revenue impact, customer approval, subcontractor impact, and status. Statuses are Draft → Submitted → Approved → Implemented with controlled Rejected and Withdrawn exits. An approved change updates the current budget and contract value as a new version while preserving the original baseline.

Claims store event date, notice deadline, contract clause, narrative, evidence, responsible owner, estimated cost, estimated recovery, currency, and probability. A delay claim can affect forecast but cannot increase revenue until the configured recognition policy and approval are satisfied. Non-conformance records link inspection, photo or document evidence, corrective action, responsible party, rework cost, and closure approval.

8. Measure work and issue progress certificates

The measurement sheet captures activity, unit, contract quantity, previous quantity, current quantity, cumulative quantity, rate, gross value, deductions, and engineer approval. The progress certificate stores certificate number, period, project, customer, tax, advance recovery, retention, prior billed amount, current certified amount, currency, and attachments.

Example: Platform-slab work is certified at SAR 3,000,000 this month. A 10% advance recovery is SAR 300,000 and 5% retention is SAR 150,000. The gross invoice is SAR 3,000,000; the net receivable is SAR 2,550,000 before tax. The certificate links to measured quantities and the customer sign-off. OSERP prevents billing above cumulative certified value and prevents a second invoice for the same certificate number.

Retention is a separate contract balance with release milestone, expected date, currency, and approval. When the defects-liability period ends, the release document references the original certificates and bank receipt. A retention release is not confused with a discount or bad debt.

9. Recognise WIP, revenue, and project margin

At close, the controller compares cost incurred, certified progress, billed revenue, and approved forecast. Depending on the configured accounting policy, OSERP posts work in progress, contract asset, contract liability, or revenue recognition entries. Each journal line keeps project, WBS, cost centre, currency, source document, and recognition rule.

For a cost-to-cost calculation, cost incurred of SAR 12,000,000 against an estimate-at-completion of SAR 48,000,000 indicates 25% progress. If the transaction-price baseline is SAR 84,000,000, earned revenue is SAR 21,000,000, subject to approved constraints. The result is reviewed against engineer-certified progress; a material difference opens a reconciliation task rather than an automatic override.

10. Manage receivables, suppliers, and multi-currency cash

Customer invoices retain certificate, project, tax, currency, due date, retention, advance recovery, and collection owner. Receipts store bank, value date, currency, fee, reference, and allocation. A payment in USD against a SAR invoice records the applied rate and realised FX; the original invoice amount remains unchanged.

Supplier invoices use purchase-order and receipt matching. Withholding tax, retention, advance recovery, and deductible tax are separate fields, each mapped to a configured account. A partial payment leaves a transparent balance and does not close the purchase order unless the remaining quantity and value are intentionally cancelled.

11. Close and learn from the project

The month-end checklist reconciles commitments to purchase orders, receipts to stock, stock issues to WBS, timesheets to payroll, equipment logs to depreciation or hire, subcontractor certificates to payables, customer certificates to receivables, advances and retention, claims, bonds, tax, FX revaluation, WIP, and intercompany balances. Project dashboards show schedule variance, cost variance, earned-value index, cash forecast, certified-not-billed value, billed-not-collected value, retention due, and margin by WBS.

KPI	Before OSERP discipline	After OSERP discipline	Improvement
Certified-to-billed lag	21 days	6 days	71% faster
Material-to-WBS traceability	83%	99.4%	+16.4 points
Subcontractor dispute cycle	28 days	9 days	68% faster
Forecast margin variance	11.2 points	3.1 points	72% lower
Unapproved site spend	8.6%	1.9%	78% lower
Month-end project close	14 days	5 days	64% faster

Practice challenge

Create AtlasBuild Saudi LLC, the metro project, a WBS budget, a performance bond, a mobilisation advance, an imported switchgear purchase in EUR, a site receipt and issue, worker timesheets, an equipment log, a subcontractor claim, a customer variation, a measured progress certificate, retention and advance recovery, a multi-currency receipt, WIP recognition, and month-end close. For each field, document its type, precision, source, length, permission, validation, accounting impact, tax treatment, API identifier, exception path, and audit event.

Related: Setup field guide, Procure-to-pay lab, Inventory field guide, AR Invoice field guide, AP Invoice field guide, GL mapping guide, Multi-currency lab, and API cookbook.