For Site Managers & Engineers
Record the day once. Let it do the work everywhere else.
Labour, plant, materials and subcontract activity go into the diary you keep anyway. Foras turns that record into dated, classified cost the commercial team can actually use — so you are not filling in the same day twice.
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 daily reality
Recording is easy. Recording it three times is not.
The site already knows what happened. The problem is how many places that knowledge has to be re-entered before anyone downstream can use it.
The same day is written down three times
Once in the diary, once in an allocation sheet, once in whatever the commercial team asks for. None of them quite matches the others.
Nobody sees what you recorded
The diary is kept diligently and then read by almost no one, because it is not in a form the commercial or Finance side can use.
Extra work starts before the paperwork does
A verbal instruction moves the job forward. The record of who was there, what plant ran and what was used gets written later, if at all.
You get asked about numbers weeks later
Questions arrive about a week you can barely remember, and answering them means reconstructing it from memory and photographs.
How Foras helps
A diary that counts for something
One record, kept as you already do
Labour, plant, materials and subcontract activity are recorded in the diary. The same entry becomes the captured cost the commercial team works from.
Dated to the day the work happened
Entries carry the occurrence date, not the date they were typed up, so cost lands in the right week and the right comparison against Finance.
Classified while you are there
Each entry is classified to a cost code at capture, and to a WBS element or Work Item where the project uses them. Both are optional and set per project.
Variation work captured with evidence
Work done under a variation can be recorded against it as it happens, with the hours, plant and materials attached rather than recalled later.
Nothing is lost if the coding is unclear
Cost that cannot yet be attributed stays in cost to date and is surfaced for review. It does not vanish, and it does not stop you recording the day.
What capture looks like
Hours, plant and materials against the day they happened
Classified to a cost code as they are recorded, with WBS elements or Work Items selected here where the project uses them.
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 in practice
Four steps, once a day
- 01
Record the day
People, plant, materials and subcontract activity go in against the day they happened, in the diary the site keeps anyway.
- 02
Classify at the point of entry
Pick the cost code — and WBS element or Work Item if the project uses them — while the detail is still fresh.
- 03
Attach the evidence
Where the work sits under a variation, the record carries the supporting detail from the start.
- 04
Stop re-keying
The commercial team reads the same record. There is no separate return to fill in for them.
What you get
Less admin, more weight behind your record
One entry, not three
The record you keep for the site is the record the business uses.
Your work is visible
Effort recorded on site shows up in the project cost position instead of stopping at the site office.
Better answers, faster
Questions about a past week are answered from the record, not from memory.
Stronger variation position
The cost of extra work is captured while it happens, which is when it is easiest to evidence.
Bring a week from your site. We’ll show what it becomes.
Use your own diary entries — labour, plant, materials, a variation that started on a verbal. We’ll show how they land as commercial information.