BOQ and tender management software for Saudi Arabia priced once, costed everywhere
IntellaQ Flow lets you build or import a bill of quantities, price it from a schedule of rates with wastage and margin, and manage the whole bid through to submission. The part that matters after you win: every BOQ line carries a cost code, so the priced bid becomes the project budget, the actuals land against the same codes, and your مستخلص is raised from the same quantities you tendered. One chain from opportunity to certified payment, with no re-keying between the estimating spreadsheet and the accounts.
Build the BOQ, price it, and manage the bid
Everything estimators do before award, in one place instead of a folder of spreadsheet versions.
Build or import the BOQ
Start from a blank structure or import the client or consultant BOQ from Excel. Sections, sub-sections, item codes, units and quantities come across intact, and provisional sums, prime cost items and dayworks stay flagged as what they are.
- Excel import with column mapping
- Multi-level sections and sub-sections
- Provisional sums, PC items, dayworks
- Bilingual item descriptions, Arabic and English
Schedule of rates you can reuse
Keep a versioned rate library for labour, material, plant and subcontract work. Rates are stamped onto a bid when you price it, so revisiting a two-year-old tender does not silently reprice it at today's numbers.
- Labour, material, plant, subcontract resources
- Rate versions with effective dates
- Region or client-specific rate sets
- Copy rates from a previous BOQ
Rate build-up, wastage and margin
Price each line from its components rather than guessing a lump rate. Add wastage and productivity factors, load overheads and preliminaries, then apply margin at line, section or whole-bid level and see the effect immediately.
- Component build-up per BOQ line
- Wastage and productivity factors
- Preliminaries and overhead loading
- Margin at line, section or bid level
Tender and bid register
Track every opportunity you are working on with its deadline, documents, addenda, clarifications, bid bond and submission status. Opportunities sourced from Etimad, Monafasat or private client invitations are logged the same way, so nothing is tracked in a WhatsApp group.
- Deadlines, addenda and clarifications log
- Bid bond and guarantee tracking
- Etimad and Monafasat opportunities recorded
- Win, loss and no-bid outcomes with reasons
Subcontractor and supplier quotes
Send scope out from the BOQ itself and compare returned quotes line by line before you commit a rate. The quote you priced against is attached to the line, so after award you know which subcontractor the number came from.
- Package scope straight from BOQ lines
- Side-by-side quote comparison
- Selected quote linked to the priced rate
- Carries into subcontract award after win
Review and approve before submission
Route the priced bid for internal review with cost, margin and risk allowance visible on one screen. Approvals are recorded, so the question of who signed off on the rate has an answer six months later.
- Cost, margin and risk summary
- Configurable approval routing
- Version history of priced revisions
- Export the pricing document for submission
What happens after you win
BOQ tools usually stop at takeoff and pricing, and general ERPs rarely understand a BOQ at all. This is where the two are joined.
Every BOQ line maps to a cost code
You set the cost code on the BOQ line while pricing, or map a whole section at once. That mapping is the bridge: the tendered rate becomes budget against a code, and every purchase order, timesheet, subcontract certificate and plant charge later posts against the same code.
- Line-level or section-level cost code mapping
- Your own cost code structure, not a fixed chart
- Mapping reused on the next similar tender
Priced bid becomes the project budget
On award, the winning bid converts into a live project with its budget baseline already in place. There is no separate exercise to rebuild the budget in the accounting system, and no drift between what was tendered and what is being tracked.
- Baseline budget from the accepted bid
- Original versus revised budget kept apart
- Budget versus committed versus actual with EAC
IPC and مستخلص from the same lines
Progress billing is measured against BOQ quantities, not typed into a fresh invoice. Percentage complete or measured quantity per line rolls up into the interim payment certificate, with retention and advance recovery applied on the certified amount.
- Measure by quantity or percentage per line
- Retention (ضمان أعمال) and advance recovery
- Certified versus applied variance visible
- Feeds the ZATCA Phase-2 tax invoice
Variations without losing the baseline
Variation orders add lines to the BOQ and to the budget as a separate layer. You keep the original contract value, the approved variations and the current forecast visible side by side, which is what disputes usually turn on.
- VO lines added against the same cost codes
- Original, approved and pending variations separated
- Effect on EAC recalculated
Bid accuracy you can learn from
Because tendered rates and actual costs share a cost code, you can compare them at the end of a project. That comparison is what makes the next schedule of rates better, rather than repeating the same optimistic productivity assumption.
- Tendered rate versus actual cost per code
- Per-trade and per-package variance
- Feed findings back into the rate library
Related: construction job costing by cost code · progress billing and IPC (مستخلص) · ERP for construction companies in Saudi Arabia
From opportunity to certified payment
Log the opportunity
Record the tender from Etimad, Monafasat or a direct client invitation, with its deadline, documents and bond requirement.
Build or import the BOQ
Import the client BOQ from Excel or build it, keeping sections, units, quantities and provisional items as issued.
Price it and map cost codes
Build up rates from the schedule of rates with wastage and margin, collect subcontractor quotes, and set the cost code on each line as you go.
Review, approve, submit
Check total cost, margin and risk allowance, get internal sign-off, and export the pricing document for submission.
Convert the win to a project
The accepted bid becomes the project budget baseline against your cost codes, with the subcontract packages ready to award.
Bill and cost against the same lines
Raise the IPC from measured BOQ quantities with retention and advance recovery, and watch actuals accumulate against the codes you tendered.
Questions contractors ask
How is this different from a takeoff or estimating tool?
Takeoff and estimating tools are strong at measuring quantities from drawings and producing a priced BOQ, and many contractors are rightly happy with them. What they generally do not do is carry that priced BOQ forward: once the bid is submitted, the numbers are exported and the project budget is rebuilt somewhere else. IntellaQ Flow covers the pricing side and then keeps the same lines and cost codes alive through job costing, subcontract certificates, variations and IPC billing. If you already own an estimating package you like, you can import its priced BOQ and use IntellaQ Flow for everything after that point.
Does it integrate with Etimad or Monafasat?
IntellaQ Flow does not submit on your behalf to Etimad or Monafasat, and you should be sceptical of any vendor claiming to. What it does is give you a register for those opportunities: deadline, documents, addenda, clarification log, bid bond, the priced BOQ, the approval trail and the outcome. You still prepare and upload the submission on the government portal, but your internal pricing, sign-off and follow-up live in one system instead of a shared drive.
Can it import the BOQ format our clients and consultants send?
In practice BOQs arrive as Excel in a hundred different layouts. Import uses column mapping, so you tell the system which columns are item code, description, unit, quantity and rate, and it preserves the section hierarchy. Awkward files, merged cells, mixed Arabic and English headers, multiple sheets per trade, are usually workable but worth checking on your actual files during the demo rather than taking on trust.
What exactly does mapping BOQ lines to cost codes give us?
Three things. Your tendered rates become the budget baseline against cost codes, so budget versus committed versus actual and EAC are meaningful from day one instead of after a month of setup. Progress billing is generated from the same BOQ lines, so the مستخلص and the cost report agree. And at the end of the job you can compare the rate you tendered with the cost you actually incurred, per code, which is the only reliable way to improve the next bid. See the detail on job costing by cost code and on progress billing and IPC.
Does it handle retention, advance payment and ZATCA on the billing side?
Yes. Interim payment certificates apply retention (ضمان أعمال) at your contract percentage, recover the advance payment on the agreed schedule, and show applied versus certified so you can see what the consultant cut. The resulting tax invoice goes through ZATCA Phase-2 clearance or reporting as required, in Arabic, with the amounts in SAR. Retention release at practical completion and end of defects liability is tracked rather than forgotten.
We bid as a subcontractor, not a main contractor. Does that work?
Yes, and the chain matters just as much. You price the package BOQ the main contractor sends, map lines to your own cost codes, and after award your monthly application is measured from the same lines. Retention held against you, back-charges and the gap between what you applied for and what was certified are all visible, which is usually where subcontractor margin quietly disappears.
How long before we can price a real tender in it?
Setting up the cost code structure and loading an initial schedule of rates is the bulk of the work, and most contractors already have both in spreadsheets we can import. Typical implementations are measured in weeks, not quarters, and it is normal to start by running one live tender in parallel with your existing process before switching over.
Price your next tender with the cost codes already attached
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