For Project Managers
The site already knows the truth. Foras makes it commercially usable.
Record labour, plant, materials and subcontract activity once, in the diary you keep anyway. Foras turns it into classified, dated cost the commercial team can reconcile and forecast from — while it is still early enough to act.
Site Diary — 28 Aug 2026
Northgate Logistics Park — Phase 2 · Demo data
- People
- Plant
- Progress
- Vars
- Allocate
- Subcontractor Activity
- Materials
- Notes
| Person | Role | Cost Item | Hours |
|---|---|---|---|
| A. HughesGeneral Operative | General Operative | 211 Labour | 9.5 h |
| J. ReidPlant Operator | Plant Operator | 211 Labour | 10 h |
| T. MorganNo role — needs attention | No role — needs attention | Unassigned | 8 h |
The gap you live with
Site and commercial run on different clocks
None of this is a discipline problem. It is what happens when the record of the work and the record of the cost live in different systems.
The commercial picture is always behind the site
You know what happened this week. The cost report that reflects it arrives weeks later, after Finance closes — too late to act on.
The diary is evidence nobody can use
Labour, plant and materials get written down, but not in a form that lands against a cost code without someone re-keying it.
Variations start with no record
Extra work gets done on a verbal instruction. By the time it is assessed commercially, the hours, plant and materials are reconstructed from memory.
You are asked to explain numbers you did not produce
The cost position and the forecast come from systems you do not see. Foras shows you the captured site activity underneath them.
What the site records
One diary entry, classified once
Hours, plant and materials are recorded against the day they happened and classified to a cost code at capture. Where the project uses WBS elements or Work Items, they are selected here too.
Cost Capture — Aug 2026
Northgate Logistics Park — Phase 2 · Demo data
Site Captured
£131,260
Labour
£42,860
Plant
£18,400
Unassigned
£6,250
| Cost Item | Captured | Status |
|---|---|---|
| 211Labour | £42,860 | |
| 310Plant | £18,400 | |
| 520Materials | £27,750 | |
| 707Subcontract | £36,000 | |
| —Unassigned | £6,250 | Needs classification |
Unassigned · source records
- 28 Aug 2026 · People · T. Morgan£2,480Open diary
- 27 Aug 2026 · Plant · 13t excavator£1,320Open diary
Actual Foras interface pattern. Entries are illustrative demo data from the Northgate Logistics Park demo project.
What changes
Same record, finally usable downstream
Dated as it happens
Diary events carry the date the work occurred, not the date someone typed them up. Cost lands in the right week and the right Finance period comparison.
Classified at capture
Each event is classified to a cost code as it is recorded — and to a WBS element or Work Item where your project uses them. Both are optional and configured per project.
Nothing is lost when coding is unclear
Cost that cannot yet be classified is held as Unassigned and surfaced for review. It stays in cost to date and visible — it does not disappear or block the diary.
Commercially useful without extra work
The same record the site keeps for its own reasons becomes the captured cost the Commercial Manager reconciles and forecasts from. No second spreadsheet.
Finance remains authoritative for posted actuals. Your diary does not replace Finance — it gives the commercial team the captured position to compare against it.
Where your records go next
Bring a week from your current project. We’ll show you what it looks like as commercial information.
Use your own diary entries — labour, plant, materials, a variation that started on a verbal. We’ll show how they land as classified cost the commercial team can use.