Common questions.

Standard AU subcontractor model: 10% retained on each progress claim, capped at 5% of the adjusted contract value. When you approve a variation, it lifts the contract base and the cap rises with it. 50% releases at Practical Completion, the remaining 50% at end of the Defects Liability Period (12 months default, editable per project). The release schedule is generated automatically and shows on your project page.

Both. The sync is live for everyone from day one — Construct-it pulls your supplier bills, costs and approved leave from Xero each time you open the app (at most hourly) and whenever you hit Refresh, and lets you pick clients and suppliers straight from your Xero contacts, using Xero's official OAuth 2.0 API connection. Posting back — sending a progress claim to Xero as a customer invoice with the net-of-retention amount and the right tax codes — is running with our foundation customer today and will roll out to all plans once we complete Xero's app-review requirements. Every post gets a preview screen so you confirm before anything hits Xero.

Each project gets a jurisdiction (default QLD — BIF Act 2017). Claims carry a statutory notice template for that jurisdiction that you can adapt to your contract. NSW (BCISP), VIC (SoP Act) and WA (CCA) are on the post-launch roadmap. We're not a substitute for legal advice — check the notice wording against your contract and your own adviser before you issue a claim.

Dedicated claims tools do progress claims with retention beautifully — but only that. We do the claim PLUS the project overview, the variations register, and the document compliance tracker. So you don't need a second tool to see how the rest of the job is going. We're also significantly cheaper at the entry tier.

The large project-management platforms are built for tier-one head contractors with five-figure software budgets. We're built for subcontractors running 5–50 jobs — the people those platforms are too big for. Faster to set up, priced to suit a subcontractor's budget, no implementation team needed.

Yes. CSV importer is part of the onboarding flow. If your data is in a complex Excel system — macros, external links and all — our founder will personally help you migrate during onboarding.

Yes. The project overview, claim status and document tracker all work on a 375px-wide screen. Site supervisors check job status from their phone — that's a non-negotiable.

Sydney, Australia — your project data is stored in our database provider's Sydney region. Accounting records are kept for 7 years as required by Australian tax law. Connections use TLS (HTTPS), data is encrypted at rest by our database platform, and your Xero tokens are encrypted with a dedicated AES-256 key. We handle personal information in line with our Privacy Policy, which is written to the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) and the Australian Privacy Principles.

Yes. Cancel from your account settings via Stripe Customer Portal — no retention calls, no awkward forms. You can export your data yourself for 30 days after cancellation; your account and project data are then permanently deleted 60 days after cancellation, except accounting records we must keep for 7 years under Australian tax law. See our Privacy Policy for the detail.