buildcontrol Version 11.7.0: A New Look, Gantt Charts and Stronger Labour Records

Version 11.7.0 gives buildcontrol a new look. Thirteen modules have been redesigned — the store, purchasing and labour screens where site teams spend most of their day — and alongside the new interface the release adds a Gantt chart for planning, equipment utilisation tracking, HRMS shift and leave settings, and a good deal more besides.

Here is what changed, and what each change is for.

A new look, across thirteen modules

The largest single part of this release is not one feature — it is how much of the product now looks different. Thirteen modules have been redesigned, concentrated where site and store teams work most:

• Central Store
• Purchase Request
• Purchase Order
• Vendor management
• Labour management
• Material Received
• Material Request and Delivery Note
• Material Transfer, now with an assignee field
• Transaction module
• Location listing
• Equipment management, with enhancements
• HRMS Dashboard
• Home screen, now noticeably faster to load

Two are worth calling out on their own. Material Transfer now carries an assignee field, so a transfer has a name against it rather than being a movement nobody owns. And the home screen loads noticeably faster — the first thing everyone sees, several times a day.

The rest of this release is what arrived with the new interface.

Task and planning

A task list tells you what has to happen. It is less good at showing you when — or what runs into what.

The Task module now includes a Gantt chart, so work can be laid out against time instead of read as rows. When one activity has to finish before the next can start, or two crews would otherwise land on the same area in the same week, that is far easier to catch on a timeline than in a list.

Tasks also now carry a description field while the task is being created, so the reasoning behind it is captured while it is fresh rather than explained again over the phone a fortnight later.

Labour records that hold up

Labour management saw a lot of this release's functional work, and most of it came from what site and payroll teams actually have to produce.

• UAN, ESIC and Aadhar number fields have been added to labour creation, so statutory details sit with the worker instead of in a separate register.
• A labour ID field now runs across Attendance, Import and Reports, so the same person is identifiable wherever they appear.
• Multiple labour can be transferred in one click rather than moved one by one — minutes instead of an afternoon when a crew shifts site.
• Labour and vendor attendance now has search, with an improved card layout, so finding one person in a long list no longer means scrolling to the bottom of it.

Equipment you can move, and measure

Plant is easier to manage across a portfolio in this release, and easier to account for.

• Multiple equipment can be transferred between projects at once, instead of one machine at a time.
• Equipment usage can be filtered by project, so "what has this machine been doing on that site" has a direct answer.
• Efficiency and utilisation tracking shows how hard a machine is actually working, rather than only where it is.
• A new option for adding equipment, so getting a machine onto the system is quicker.

Reports and finance

The ledger report now shows settlement and usage detail against each party, which makes payment history far easier to trace. Instead of a closing balance that has to be reconstructed from paperwork, the history behind the figure sits with the figure — so when a contractor or supplier queries an amount, the answer is in the report.

Three more changes cut down the clicking:

• Payment transactions can be imported from Excel in one shot, rather than keyed in line by line.
• Multiple entries can be approved or rejected together, instead of one at a time.
• Current inventory now links back to the original entry, so you can go from a stock figure to the record behind it without hunting for it.

HRMS

Two settings that matter to anyone running payroll: HRMS shift setting, and leave carry forward with month-wise crediting of leave. Between them, leave balances behave the way your policy actually says they should, without being adjusted by hand each month.

Project listing

Project logos now show in the project listing. Past a handful of projects, a logo is quicker to pick out than a line of text.

Support

Support has been reworked end to end. Tickets can be raised and resolved in the app, there is a chat feature for talking to us directly, and multiple files can be uploaded in one go rather than one at a time — so a screenshot, a photo and a document all go across together. The chat and ticket interface has been redesigned alongside it.

Getting the update

Everything above is live in version 11.7.0.