A self-build home under construction at night
For Australian owner-builders & self-builders

Build, without losing the plot.

Every payment claim, variation, inspection and document of your build in one place — with the dated paper trail to back you up when it matters.

Cancel any time · Set up in minutes · Ready before your slab is poured

01SLAB
02FRAME
03LOCK-UP
04FIXING
05HANDOVER
The problem

It's never the building that catches people out.

The trades turn up and the house goes up. What goes wrong is everything around it — the money, the approvals, and the record of what was agreed and when.

The variation nobody wrote down
A “yeah, no worries” at frame stage becomes an $18,000 line on the final invoice. With no dated record and no quote behind it, it's your word against theirs.
The progress claim that came early
Claims get issued for stages that aren't finished. If you can't see what your contract says each stage is worth and what's actually done, you pay it anyway.
The costs outside the contract
Site cost overruns, driveway, landscaping, flooring, stamp duty. The contract price isn't the build price, and the gap is where budgets quietly die.
The dispute with no paper trail
Eight months on you need to prove it rained that week, who was on site, and when the leak first showed. A camera roll and a memory won't hold up.

None of this needs a lawyer. It needs a record — kept as you go, not reconstructed afterwards.

The solution

Your whole build, on the record.

Nine things that together mean you always know where the money is, what's been agreed, and what you can prove. No tiers — every account gets all of it.

01
Contract stages & progress payments
Every stage in your contract, what it's worth, what's been claimed and what you've actually paid — so a claim never gets ahead of the work.
02
Budget & multiple loans
The costs your contract doesn't cover, tracked against a land loan and a construction loan separately, with your funds-to-complete position always visible.
03
Variations & change orders
Log every change the day it happens, with cost impact, approval status and the quote or photo behind it — before it turns up at settlement.
04
Site diary
Weather, trades on site, deliveries and issues, one entry per day. The single most useful thing you can have if a delay claim ever comes up.
05
Progress photos
A dated photo record organised by milestone. Evidence for bank drawdowns, warranty claims and anything ever disputed.
06
Approvals & compliance
A checklist built for your state — NSW Fair Trading, the VBA, the QBCC and the rest — covering the permits, insurance and certificates your build actually needs.
07
Inspections & defects
Stage inspection results, then a punch list at practical completion with severity and status, so nothing gets signed off while it's still wrong.
08
Defects liability & warranties
A countdown on your defects liability period, plus structural, statutory and appliance warranties tracked through to expiry.
09
AI assistant
Ask it anything about your build — “what have I paid the builder so far?” — and it answers with full context on your budget, documents and contacts.
Inside the app

Built for the owner, not the builder.

ourhouse build's build timeline, showing milestones from slab through to handover
Every milestone from slab to handover, with what's done and what's slipping.
ourhouse build's budget tracker, showing amount spent against budget by category
Spent, committed and left to go — by category, in real dollars.
ourhouse build's progress photos, organised by build stage
A dated photo record, filed against the stage it belongs to.
How it works

Set up in a few minutes. Sorted for the whole build.

01
Add your build
Your project details, contract price, budget and loans. Pick your state and your compliance checklist is waiting for you.
02
Log it as it happens
Photos, variations, invoices and diary entries from your phone, on site — while you still remember the detail.
03
Never get caught out
Check a claim against the contract before you pay it. Walk into handover with the defects list already written.
Why this exists

Somebody had to build the owner's side of it.

Every piece of construction software out there is built for the builder. It manages trades, schedules and margins, and it does that well — for them.

Nothing is built for the person whose savings are in the ground. The one who has to check a progress claim against a contract they signed nine months ago, remember which variation was approved verbally, and find the photo that proves the slab was poured in the rain.

That's what this is. Your timeline, your money, your evidence — kept in a form that holds up.

8
States & territories with their own compliance checklist
AUD
Built for Australian contracts, drawdowns and statutory warranties
2+
Loans per build — land and construction tracked separately
1
Plan. No tiers, no feature-gating, no upsells
Pricing

One plan. Everything included.

You're spending several hundred thousand dollars on this build. This will be the smallest line item in it — and one caught variation pays for the lot.

Monthly
$34/ month
Pay for as long as you're building
Start your build
BEST VALUE
Annual
$330/ year
Saves $78 against paying monthly
Start your build

Cancel any time from your account — no minimum term, no lock-in.

Questions

The things people actually ask.

Can't I just use a spreadsheet?

You can, and most people start there. A spreadsheet won't hold the photo of the crack, the quote behind the variation, or the date you first raised it — and those are the three things you need when there's an argument. It also won't tell you your funds-to-complete position without you rebuilding the formula every month.

My builder already has an app. Isn't that enough?

That's their record, kept for their purposes. Variations, progress claims and delay notices are exactly the points where your interests and theirs stop being the same. You want your own copy, with your own dates on it.

I'm not an owner-builder — I've got a fixed-price contract.

This is built for you too. Contract stages and progress payments are the core of it, and the budget section exists specifically for the costs a fixed-price contract doesn't cover — which is where most of the overrun happens.

Is it actually Australian?

Yes. Dollars, progress payment stages, bank drawdowns, defects liability periods, and a compliance checklist for whichever state or territory you're building in — all eight, with the right authority named for each.

What if my build takes two years?

Pay monthly for as long as you're building, or take the annual plan if you already know it'll be a long one. Cancel whenever you're done — there's no minimum term.

What happens to my files if I cancel?

Straight answer: when a subscription ends, the files you uploaded — documents, plans, progress photos and receipts — are deleted from our servers. Your written records stay. Download anything you want to keep before you cancel, especially your photo record and contracts.

Can my partner use it too?

Right now it's one login per build, so you'd share it. Proper multi-user access is on the list.

When should I start?

Before the slab goes down, if you can. Setting up takes minutes at the start of a build and hours if you try to reconstruct six months of it from memory and a camera roll.

Start your build on solid ground.

The best day to set this up is before the slab is poured. The second best is today.

Get started

Full access to everything · One plan · Cancel any time

Contact

Still not sure? Ask us.

Tell us where your build is up to and we'll tell you straight whether this helps. We reply to every message within 24 hours.

We reply to every message within 24 hours.

ourhouse build
Made for self-builders and owner-builders · © 2026 ourhouse build