Start here — what QSME does and where everything is
QSME is a New Zealand construction platform. You price a build, put it to the market, pick who does it, run the job, and pay for it — with one record everybody works from.
This page is the tour: what you get depending on which side you are on, where each screen lives, and where to read more. It is written for New Zealand — dollars, GST at 15%, day-first dates.
Which side are you on?
At sign-up you pick one of two, and it decides what your sidebar looks like:
| You said | You get |
|---|---|
| I hire | Projects, the SOQ, Sheets, tenders, contracts, money, documents. |
| I provide services | Opportunities, My Bids, Awarded Work, your products, your profile and ratings. |
Main contractors get both, and switch between Hiring for a project and Looking for projects in the sidebar. Everyone else has the side they chose. Your entity type — client, consultant, main contractor, service provider — decides that, and what you can do inside a project is decided separately by the access someone gives you.
Signing up as a provider walks through your work type, your area, your trades, your experience and your business. The business step looks your company up by NZBN, and "it's just me" is a valid answer.
If you are hiring
1. Look the site up
Site Research takes an address and gives you boundaries, zoning, services and history before you commit to anything. It is also the first thing on a project's own page.
2. Make the project
Projects → Create. Four steps: what kind of build, residential or commercial, the address (with a live site snapshot), and confirm. A project holds everything else — its schedule of quantities, tenders, contracts, money, documents, schedule and units.
3. Price it
SOQ — the Schedule of Quantities. Pockets (a trade, a package) hold jobs, and jobs hold material and labour lines. Fill it by typing, from a saved template, by importing a spreadsheet, by drafting it with AI, or by extracting it from a document.
Full detail: SOQ — the complete guide.
If your consent pack is uploaded, QSME can read the plans: they then answer questions with the page the answer came from, and can fill the SOQ from what is drawn. See Documents and plans.
4. Get it priced
Two ways to get work done, and they are different tools:
| When | |
|---|---|
| Tenders | You want it priced properly and compared line by line. Cut from an SOQ pocket. |
| Contracts | The work is already agreed — record it, with its payment stages. |
Full detail: Tenders and bids.
5. Run it
- Agreements — write a subcontract, an NDA or a variation (or bring in one you already have), send it to be signed from a link with no account needed, and keep the signed copy. A tender can send one to whoever wins it. Agreements.
- Schedule — which jobs are on, which are next, who is doing them. Pull jobs straight out of the SOQ and they arrive with their days and whether rain stops them. The schedule.
- Documents — drawings, contracts and project files, with share links for people who are not on QSME.
- Messages — your project teams, with photos, files and voice notes. Messages.
- Daily log — what happened on site.
- Sheets — your own spreadsheets, for whatever the platform does not have a screen for: payment runs, wages, expenses, variations. Sheets — the complete guide.
6. Pay for it
Money on the project shows the estimate against the actual, every milestone across every contract, and the whole trail. Pay straight from your bank, or settle any way you like and record it.
Full detail: How payments work.
If you are providing services
Find work
Opportunities is the one feed: every public tender, filtered to your trades and your area. Invitations land there too.
Price it
Open a tender and you get the scope — the lines, the units, the owner's estimated quantities and hours. You do not see their rates or budget. Quote one total price, or itemise into materials and labour with your own quantities and rates.
You can attach documents, mark up the drawings so the client sees what you priced, and propose your own payment schedule.
Invited bids are free. Public ones cost credits when you submit. Main contractors need the GC Pro plan to bid.
Full detail: Tenders and bids.
Do the work and get paid
Won work lives under Awarded Work: the contract, its milestones, site induction, progress, and the invoices QSME generates for you. My Bids keeps everything you have submitted.
Be findable
Your profile carries your trades, your area and your work. Verification is three separate things: your identity and business (scan your ID with your phone, usually decided within a business day), your bank account (a one-cent check), and each trade licence you claim. Ratings are two-way, from jobs you actually finished. Suppliers can list Products, which then become selectable inside an SOQ.
Everything in one list
| Screen | What it is for |
|---|---|
| Site Research | Look up any address — boundaries, zoning, services, history. |
| Projects | Your builds: costs, documents and hiring in one place. |
| SOQ | List and price the work. |
| Sheets | Your own spreadsheets — trackers, expenses, estimate against actual. |
| Tenders | Invite trades to bid. |
| Contracts | Work already agreed, with its payment stages. |
| Agreements | Anything people need to sign — written, sent, signed and kept. |
| Money | Milestones, payments, estimate against actual. |
| Documents | Drawings, contracts and project files. |
| Schedule | What is on, what is next, who is on it. |
| Messages | Your project teams. |
| Opportunities | Bookings and tenders open to your trade. |
| My Bids | What you have submitted, and where it got to. |
| Awarded Work | The jobs you won, and their contracts. |
| Contacts | People you have invited or worked with. |
| Ratings | Rate people you have finished jobs with. |
| Products / Marketplace | List what you sell; browse what others sell. |
| Connect | Let an AI assistant read and draft for you. |
Plans and credits
Starting is free, and the free plan is a real plan with limits rather than a trial: 2 tender pockets and 3 sheets per project, and a monthly allowance for bidding and AI. Paid plans lift the limits. Prices are quoted per business — ask us.
AI work — drafting an SOQ, reading a quote, reading drawings, asking a sheet for ideas — uses credits. Every screen that is about to spend one says so first.
Using QSME from an AI assistant
Connect Claude, ChatGPT, Claude Code, Codex or Cursor and they can read your projects and prepare work in them — read your SOQ, draft a tender from it, keep a sheet up to date, answer a question from your drawings.
An assistant drafts; a person decides. It cannot move money, publish a tender, accept a bid or issue a contract.
Full detail: QSME for AI assistants.
Where to go next
| Roles and layouts | Who can do what, and every trade on the platform. |
| SOQ | Pricing the job, end to end. |
| Sheets | Your own spreadsheets, linked to the real records. |
| Tenders and bids | Both sides of getting work priced. |
| How payments work | Contracts, milestones, GST, fees. |
| The schedule | The programme: dates, who is on what, progress. |
| Messages | Talking to the people on the job. |
| Agreements | Getting something signed, and keeping the signed copy. |
| Site documents | Every document a build produces, and who issues it. |
| Words used in QSME | The whole vocabulary in plain English. |
Stuck? hello@qsme.co.nz, or +64 27 338 8500.