How Coreloops Works

Projects

Projects are the central unit of Coreloops. Everything — costs, documents, timesheets, and reports — lives within a project. When you create a project you define the contract value, start date, and team members. All financial activity is tracked against the project throughout its lifecycle.

Cost Codes

Cost codes let you categorise and track spend against specific work types or trades (e.g. Groundworks, M&E, Preliminaries). They are applied across documents, timesheets, and the Bill of Quantities to give you a consistent breakdown of where money is going on each project.

Custom Tags

Custom tags are flexible labels you can apply to projects, documents, and contacts to organise and filter your data your way. Tags are user-defined, so you can create a tagging structure that reflects how your business operates — by region, contract type, client, or any other dimension.

Contacts

The Contacts directory is your central address book within Coreloops. It stores all the companies and individuals you work with — clients, suppliers, subcontractors, and consultants. Contact records can be linked to documents and projects, keeping everything connected.

Suppliers

Suppliers are the vendors and subcontractors you purchase goods and services from. In Coreloops, supplier records hold their contact details, payment terms, and a full history of documents raised against them. Supplier data can be synced with your accounting platform (e.g. Xero) to keep records consistent.

Clients

Clients are the organisations or individuals commissioning your projects. Client records in Coreloops link directly to the projects they are associated with, and to any payment applications or sales invoices raised on their behalf.

Bill of Quantities

The Bill of Quantities (BoQ) is your itemised breakdown of the work scope and associated costs for a project. In Coreloops, the BoQ is the foundation for tracking budget vs. actual spend. Line items are mapped to cost codes and can be used to generate payment applications and track variations.

Variations

Variations capture changes to the original project scope that affect cost or programme. In Coreloops, variations are logged against a project and can be approved or rejected. Approved variations update the contract value and feed into your cost reporting automatically.

Payment Applications

Payment applications (Pay Apps) are formal requests for payment submitted against a project. Coreloops supports only outbound pay apps (to clients) for now. Pay apps are linked to the cost report, so you can track what has been applied for and what has been certified at any point in time.

Documents

The Documents module manages all financial documents on a project — purchase orders, bills, invoices, and credit notes. Documents can be created manually, uploaded, or auto-forwarded via email. They can be synced to your accounting platform (e.g. Xero or QuickBooks) to eliminate double-entry.

Timesheets

Timesheets allow you to log and track labour time against projects and cost codes. Team members submit timesheets for approval, and approved time is reflected in your project cost reports. Timesheets give you a real-time view of labour spend across your portfolio.

Reports

Reports give you a consolidated view of project financial performance. The cost report breaks down budget, committed costs, and actual spend by cost code. You can also view payment application summaries, document registers, and labour cost reports — all exportable for sharing with clients or stakeholders.