ERP for Construction & Real Estate

ERP in construction manages project costing, variations, time and site tracking and property accounting across the phases of a building project.

ERP for Construction & Real Estate: Requirements

Project costing: Costing per project based on the Swiss standard bill-of-quantities catalogue (NPK), with a full bill of quantities and ongoing comparison of budget against actual cost during execution.
Variation and change-order management: Recording, checking and negotiating variations and time-and-material extras under the rules of SIA Standard 118, fully traceable back to the original works contract. Variations missed or invoiced late cost margin directly.
Site time and progress tracking: Capturing labour hours, machine hours, materials and time-and-material work directly on site, ideally mobile and updated daily, as the basis for the site diary and billing.
Property accounting: For companies managing their own or third-party properties, a property-by-property ledger covering rent, service-charge settlement, renewal reserves and lease administration.
Subcontractor and supplier management: Traceable handling of awards, works contracts and payments to subcontractors, including contractually agreed retentions, warranty periods and construction lien (Bauhandwerkerpfandrecht) deadlines.
VAT on real estate services: Letting and selling real estate is generally exempt from VAT in Switzerland unless the landlord opts to tax it under Art. 22 of the VAT Act. A construction and real estate ERP needs to handle mixed use and the resulting property-level input-tax correction.

ERP for Construction & Real Estate: Common problems

Variations are invoiced late or not at all because they are collected at project close instead of continuously, and margin disappears unnoticed
Site hours and material reach the system days later, so the project status is already stale at every meeting
Costing and general ledger run in separate systems, so true project profitability only shows up after completion instead of continuously
Progress billing, advance invoices and the payment schedule cannot be compared automatically, so over- or under-billing surfaces too late
Standard software does not reflect SIA phase logic or the standard bill-of-quantities catalogue, so costing is built in separate tools and re-keyed by hand
Input-tax corrections on mixed-use or partly-opted properties are recalculated in spreadsheets, and errors only surface during a VAT audit

ERP for Construction & Real Estate: Matching systems

Abacus: Widely used by Swiss construction and real estate companies, with project management, mobile site time tracking and property accounting for lease administration in one system.
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central: A project and resource module with budget and post-costing per job. Construction specifics such as variation management and mobile field reporting typically need an industry add-on from a partner in the Microsoft ecosystem.
IFS Cloud: For larger construction and real estate companies with their own asset base: combines project execution with Enterprise Asset Management, useful when technical management of buildings and assets needs to run alongside project delivery in the same system.

Switzerland’s core construction industry (Bauhauptgewerbe) posted turnover of just under CHF 23.9 billion in 2025, according to the Swiss Contractors’ Association, up 2.1 percent year on year, and directly employs around 90,000 people. Adding the wider property sector, the Digital Atlas of Swiss Real Estate puts total construction and real estate employment at roughly 592,000 full-time positions, 14 percent of the national workforce, on a building stock valued at more than CHF 3,100 billion. This scale has produced its own software market: general-purpose ERP systems are typically extended with construction-specific modules or partner add-ons, because they do not natively reflect SIA phase logic, the standard bill-of-quantities catalogue or the variation-order rules used in works contracts. Most Swiss construction contracts are governed by SIA Standard 118, which regulates remuneration, variations, deadlines and defect liability well beyond what the Code of Obligations covers on its own. On the property side, the VAT treatment of real estate adds further complexity: letting property is generally exempt from VAT unless the landlord opts to tax it, which requires precise, property-level input-tax corrections in the accounting.

ERP for Construction & Real Estate: Frequently asked questions

What distinguishes a construction ERP from a general ERP?

A construction ERP treats the building project, not the order, as the central unit. Variation management under SIA Standard 118, costing based on the standard bill-of-quantities catalogue (NPK) and mobile site time capture are core functions that a general ERP does not bring along.

Does a construction company need its own property accounting?

Not necessarily for pure construction work carried out for third parties. Once a company manages its own or third-party properties, a property-by-property ledger with rent and service-charge settlement becomes necessary.

How does VAT affect ERP choice for real estate?

Letting and selling real estate is generally exempt from VAT under Swiss law but can be opted for taxation under Art. 22 of the VAT Act. For mixed-use properties, an ERP needs to calculate the input-tax correction at the property level, something standard accounting software without a real estate focus does not do.