Developments
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Some builders also develop: buy a block, knock the house down, build six townhouses, sell them. Development is the part of SmarteBuild for that half of the job — working out whether a site is worth buying, and then tracking what it really earns.
It answers one question before you commit: what can I afford to pay for this land and still make the margin I need?
A development is a job with more attached
Section titled “A development is a job with more attached”A development is an ordinary SmarteBuild project with a development record on top of it. The job keeps everything it already has — estimates, schedule, orders, documents, defects. Development adds the feasibility, the sales register and the land details.
Two things follow from that, and both matter:
- Your feasibility uses your own build cost. Not a rate per square metre out of a spreadsheet — the estimate you priced in SmarteBuild. When the estimate changes, the feasibility changes.
- You can start before you own anything. Begin a feasibility on a site you are only thinking about and SmarteBuild creates the job behind it. Nothing is wasted if you walk away.
Starting one
Section titled “Starting one”New development asks which of the two you are doing:
| What happens | |
|---|---|
| A new site | A new job is created for it, and the development hangs off that |
| A job you already have | That job becomes a development. Its first estimate is used as the build cost, at cost |
Nothing about the job changes for anyone else. People on the Builder plan who open it see exactly what they saw before.
The developments list
Section titled “The developments list”Every development on one page, one row each, with a total row across the bottom so you can see what the whole portfolio is doing.
| On the row | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| Stage | Feasibility, Land bought, Approvals, Building, Selling or Finished |
| Profit and margin | From the chosen scenario, with a badge against your target — green, amber or red |
| IRR | The yearly return the project earns |
| Peak loan | The most the bank is owed at any one month |
| Spent / budget | What has actually gone out against what the estimate allows |
| Lots sold | Sold of total |
Stage, profit and margin against target, the peak loan and how many lots have sold.
The total row is the one most developers look at first: money tied up across every development, and total forecast profit.
The three screens
Section titled “The three screens”| Screen | What it is for |
|---|---|
| Feasibility | Is this site worth buying, and at what price |
| Sales register | Every lot: price, buyer, deposit, settlement |
| Report for the bank | The one-page summary a lender asks for |
Who can see it
Section titled “Who can see it”Development is on the Developer plan. On any other plan the menu item opens a page saying Development is part of the Developer plan, with a button through to the plans.
Within the plan, four permissions control who sees what — a site supervisor usually has no business seeing the margin. See Module permissions.