Words used in QSME
Every word this platform uses, in plain English, with what it means here — some of them mean something slightly different elsewhere in the trade, and this page is the one that settles it.
Written for New Zealand: GST at 15%, dollars, NZS 4202 / ANZSMM measurement, payment claims under the Construction Contracts Act 2002.
The estimate and the money
| Word | What it means in QSME |
|---|
| SOQ | Schedule of Quantities — the project priced line by line, before anyone quotes. Your estimate. It is what tenders are cut from. Full guide. |
| BOQ | Bill of Quantities. In QSME this is the actuals — what the work really cost, reported from the Money ledger. You build the SOQ; the BOQ is produced for you. |
| Tender pocket | A parcel of work you would put out as one tender — usually a trade or a package. "Pocket" and "section" are the same thing. |
| Job | A piece of work inside a pocket: Footings, First fix, Site establishment. |
| Material line / labour line | What a job is made of. A material has a quantity, a unit and a rate; labour has hours and an hourly rate. |
| Unit rate | The price of one of something, excluding GST. |
| Unpriced line | A line held at quantity 0, rate 0 — a placeholder for something not yet priced. Normal, and it survives export and import. |
| Draft / Active | A pocket you are still pricing, or one you consider settled. A working state, not a permission. |
| Estimate vs actual | Per SOQ job: what you allowed (the estimate), what is committed (contracts covering it), and what has been paid. |
| Variance | Allowed minus actual. Negative means over. |
| Provisional sum / PC sum | An allowance for work not yet specified, carried as a line with a figure you expect to revisit. |
| Preliminaries & General (P&G) | The cost of running the site rather than building anything: fencing, scaffold, portaloo, supervision, temporary services. |
| Contingency | Money set aside for what you have not thought of yet. |
| Margin | What the builder makes on the job, on top of cost. |
Getting the work
| Word | What it means in QSME |
|---|
| Tender | A parcel of work put to the market for pricing, cut from an SOQ pocket. Bidders price your lines, which is what makes quotes comparable. |
| Draft tender | Made but not published. Private to you — including anything an AI assistant drafted. |
| Bid / proposal / quote | What a contractor sends back. A bid is priced against your tender's lines; a quote may arrive any old way, and QSME can read one in for you to check. |
| Received bid | A quote that came to you outside QSME — by email or PDF — recorded against the tender so it can be compared with the rest. |
| Award | Choosing the winning bid. Always a person's decision, never an AI's. |
| Scope | What the work includes — and, just as importantly, what it excludes. |
| Exclusions | What a price does not cover. The most expensive line in any quote is usually the one that is not there. |
Doing the work
| Word | What it means in QSME |
|---|
| Schedule | The programme: what happens when, who is on it, and what has to finish first. |
| Task | One item on the schedule. (The SOQ calls its equivalent a job — a task is the scheduled version of one.) |
| Days | How many working days a job takes on site. Set in the SOQ, it seeds the schedule. |
| Weather sensitive | Rain stops this one. Marked on the job, carried to the schedule. |
| Rain day | A day lost to weather, recorded so the programme moves honestly. |
| Milestone | A point in the job that triggers a payment — a deposit, a stage, completion. |
| Practical completion | The work is finished enough to be used. Usually when half the retention is released. |
| Defects period | The months after completion in which the builder fixes what turns up. The rest of the retention is released at the end of it. |
| CCC | Code Compliance Certificate — the council's sign-off that the work was built to the consent. |
| Producer statement | A designer's or engineer's statement that part of the work meets the design. |
Being paid
| Word | What it means in QSME |
|---|
| Payment claim | The contractor's claim for work done in a period, under the Construction Contracts Act 2002. |
| Payment schedule | The response to a claim: what the payer agrees to pay and why, by the date the contract sets. |
| Progress payment | A payment for work done so far, rather than at the end. |
| Retention | A percentage held back from each claim — commonly 5–10%, held on trust — released at practical completion and at the end of the defects period. |
| Variation | A change to the agreed work, and its price. Keep them written down; a variations register is one of the sheet layouts. |
| Money entry | A payment recorded on a project's Money page. A sheet line can point at one. |
| Committed | Money promised by a contract, whether or not it has been paid yet. |
| GST | 15% in New Zealand. Prices here are normally kept exclusive of GST with GST shown separately. The GST inside a GST-inclusive figure is 3/23 of it. |
| Ex GST / incl GST | Before GST is added / with GST already in it. Mixing the two is the most common costing mistake there is — $300 apart on a $2,000 job. |
| GST basis | Which of those a recorded price is. It belongs to the work, not the person: stated on the tender, frozen onto the bid, copied to the contract. A price is shown both ways for comparison; the stored figure never changes. "Not stated" is its own answer. |
| Word | What it means in QSME |
|---|
| Project | Everything about one build: its SOQ, tenders, contracts, schedule, documents, money and sheets. |
| Unit | On a multi-unit project, one townhouse, lot or stage. A pocket can apply to all units or to some. |
| Sheet | Your own spreadsheet inside a project — payments, wages, expenses, anything. Full guide. |
| Tab | One worksheet inside a Sheet. |
| Link (in a sheet) | A cell pointing at a real record in the project — a payment, a contract, an SOQ job. Always "link to something"; it is not a web address. |
| Paid mark | A coloured status on a sheet line. It can follow the real payments instead of being typed. |
| Style | The local conventions a sheet follows: New Zealand (default), Australia or United Kingdom. Sets the tax, currency, units and wording for new columns — never changes figures already there. |
| Pocket limit | How many tender pockets a plan allows per project. Free plans get 2. |
| Reading the plans | QSME splitting a consent pack into its real sections so it can answer questions with the page they came from, fill the SOQ, and point bidders at the right sheets. Sometimes called the plan index. Guide. |
| MCP | How an AI assistant connects to QSME on your behalf. Guide. |
| Suggestion | Something QSME proposes and you accept or ignore. It never applies itself. |
Who is who
| Word | What it means in QSME |
|---|
| Project owner | Whoever the project belongs to — a homeowner, a developer, a main contractor running their own job. |
| Manager | Someone the owner has given the run of a project. Can edit; sees the money. |
| Investor | Someone who may see a project's money but not change the work. |
| Service provider | A tradie, contractor or supplier who bids for and does work. |
| Main contractor | The contractor who holds the head contract and sub-contracts the trades. |
| Subcontractor (subbie) | A trade contracted by the main contractor rather than the owner. |
| QS | Quantity surveyor — measures and prices the work. |
Something missing, or a word used differently where you are? hello@qsme.co.nz.