Build and manage your BOQ without spreadsheets

What is a bill of quantities (BOQ)?

A bill of quantities is the itemised backbone of a construction project: every work item — earthwork, PCC, RCC, shuttering, reinforcement, brickwork, plaster, flooring — listed with its unit, quantity, rate and amount. On Indian sites the BOQ is where everything meets. Tenders are quoted against it, work orders reference its item numbers, running-account (RA) bills are checked against its quantities, and every "extra item" argument starts by pointing at it. Government departments publish Schedule of Rates (SoR) books so that item descriptions, units and rates mean the same thing across projects — which is why most serious BOQs in India are built on SoR items rather than written from scratch.

Why spreadsheet BOQs break down

Most BOQs still live in a spreadsheet, and everyone who has run one knows how it goes. Three people edit three copies, and by the second RA bill nobody knows whether BOQ_final_v7_REVISED or the file on the accountant's pen drive is current. Someone inserts a row and a SUM range quietly stops covering it. Rates get typed by flipping through a printed SoR, so the same item carries two different rates on two sheets. Quantities arrive in cum on one tab and cft on another. None of this shows up until a bill is disputed — and then the hisab takes a week to reconstruct.

The problem is not the spreadsheet skills. It is that a BOQ is a living register — quantities revise, rates get negotiated, bills consume balances — and a spreadsheet has no idea any of that is happening.

BOQ preparation in SiteHisab: SoR items or your own upload

SiteHisab keeps the BOQ as a proper register inside your project. You can build it two ways:

Start from published Schedule-of-Rates items. The app carries thousands of published government SoR items, each with its description, unit and rate. Search for "brickwork in cement mortar" or "RCC M25", pick the item, set the quantity — the amount is worked out and the register stays consistent. No more retyping descriptions or hunting rates in a printed book.

Or upload the BOQ you already have. If your consultant or client has issued a BOQ, import it as a spreadsheet or CSV. The import is free and uses none of your AI Drawing Checks — your existing items, units, quantities and rates land in the register as they are, ready to track bills against.

From drawings to quantities to bills — one connected register

A BOQ is only as good as the quantities behind it, and this is where SiteHisab goes beyond a rate list. Upload your structural drawings and let AI Drawing Checks read them into quantities and member-wise bar bending schedules — beams, columns, slabs, footings, with cutting lengths and steel weights by the standard d²/162 rule. You review and correct every extracted quantity before it counts; the AI does the reading, the engineer stays in charge. A per-floor quantity wizard covers the rest of the takeoff. (Want the steel side on its own? See the BBS calculator.)

Downstream, the same register drives the money. RA bills you receive are entered and checked item by item, with GST and TDS worked out to the net payable and a forecast of what falls due when. Payments, cashflow and — for developer projects — flat bookings and collections sit alongside, so the BOQ, the bills and the bank all tell one story. That connection is the point: change a quantity once, and everything that depends on it sees it.

BOQ vs estimate: what's the difference?

The two words get mixed up on site, so here is the short version. An estimate answers "what will this cost?" before or during design — quantities taken off drawings, priced to a likely total. A BOQ is the working document the project is actually contracted, executed and billed against — the itemised register that RA bills consume line by line. In SiteHisab they are separate but linked: the estimate (built from drawings and the quantity wizard) feeds quantities into the BOQ register, and the register then carries the project through billing. For one-off checks before you commit to anything, the free construction calculators — concrete, steel, brickwork, plaster — answer single questions with no login at all.

Pricing and free trial

SiteHisab is one plan with everything included — every project, BOQ, BBS, RA bills, hisab, money and team invites. Pay ₹99/month, ₹999/year, or ₹4,999 one-time (launch price — ₹9,999 later) to own it forever, Windows app included. Yearly and one-time include 50 AI Drawing Checks; monthly includes 5 a month. New subscribers get a 14-day free trial: set up autopay through Razorpay with a ₹1–₹5 token that is auto-refunded, use everything for 14 days (the trial includes 15 AI Drawing Checks), and the first real charge comes only after the trial — cancel anytime before it and you pay nothing. Full details on the pricing section, and more about how the app is built on the about page. It runs in the browser on your phone or laptop, installs to the home screen, and keeps your data in your account on Google Firebase.