The Best Apps for Builders and Carpenters

The four groups worth your phone storage

Before you install anything, work out which job you're solving. Almost everything useful to a builder or carpenter falls into one of these:

Reference apps

The reference group earns its place the first time it saves you a trip to the ute for a rolled-up drawing, or a phone call to an engineer for something you could have looked up.

• Plan viewers with markup — open the current drawing set on a phone or tablet, zoom, measure off it and mark it up. The critical feature is that it tells you when you're looking at a superseded revision, because building off an old sheet is the most expensive mistake on this page.
• Timber span and framing references — check what you're using is written to the current Australian residential framing standard, not a North American one. Span tables are not transferable between markets.
• Fixing and bracket data — manufacturers publish their own load and installation data, and it's the most reliable source for their own product.
• National Construction Code and standards material — the parts you check rather than memorise. Verify the edition you're referencing is the one currently adopted in your state.
• Product installation literature — cladding, waterproofing membranes, engineered flooring. Nearly every warranty claim turns on whether the install followed the manufacturer's instructions.
• First aid guidance — worth having on a site, and no substitute for someone holding a current certificate.

Calculator apps

The calculations you'd otherwise be doing on a stud with a pencil. The good ones handle the set-out geometry that's easy to get wrong when you're tired:

• Stairs — rise, going and the number of risers, worked back from the actual floor-to-floor. The most commonly botched set-out in carpentry and the most expensive to redo.
• Roof geometry — pitch, rafter length, hip and valley, and the bevels. A calculator that gives you the angles as well as the lengths saves the most time.
• Cut lists and sheet optimisation — how to get the required pieces out of the fewest lengths or sheets. This is a direct saving on every material order.
• Squaring and diagonals — checking a set-out is square before anything gets fixed.
• Concrete and fill volumes — footings, slabs, pad footings, with a realistic over-order allowance.
• Unit conversion — for renovation and heritage work where nothing is metric and nothing is standard.
• Level and angle — your phone as a clinometer for a quick check. Useful for finding out how far out of level something is, not for setting it.

Pick ones that show their working. An answer with no visible method is no help when you need to explain a set-out to an apprentice or justify a material order to a client.

The business layer

Reference and calculator apps make individual tasks quicker. A job management app changes how the whole job runs, because on a build the admin isn't a task at the end — it's a running record you either keep or don't.

What matters specifically for building and carpentry:

• Variations captured the moment they're agreed — with the scope, the price and a photo, on the job record, before anyone picks the tools back up. Everything else on this list is optional; this one isn't.
• Quoting from a saved library of your rates — decking per square metre, framing, door hangs, stair builds, the standard bathroom fit-out. You price the same components repeatedly.
• Progress claims against stages, so cash comes in as the work does rather than all at the end of a four-month job.
• Photos and notes on the job record — what's behind the wall, what the slab looked like before the pour, what the client chose. Six months later this is the only version of events that exists.
• Subcontractor coordination — who's booked for which stage, what they've been told, and what they've been paid.
• Hours against the job, not just against the week, or you'll never know which parts of a build made money.
• A defect and handover list that lives on the job rather than in a text thread.

The money layer

Accounting sits behind the business layer rather than replacing it. Building is the trade where the gap between money going out and money coming in is widest, so this layer matters more than it does elsewhere.

• Accounting — Xero, MYOB or QuickBooks for the books, BAS and your accountant.
• Online payments — a way for the client to pay a claim or a final invoice from their phone, which is the biggest single lever on how fast you get paid.
• Receipt and docket capture — photograph it at the supplier counter. A build accumulates hundreds of dockets across a dozen suppliers, and the ones you lose come straight off your margin.
• Costs allocated to the job as they're incurred, so you know where a build is sitting against the budget while you can still do something about it.

The important part is the connection between the layers. If your job app doesn't sync invoices to your accounting software, you're typing everything twice — and that's the admin the apps were meant to remove.

What you can skip

• Full CAD on a phone. Drawing is a desk job. On site you want to read and mark up a drawing, not create one.
• Span tables and code references written for another market, unless you're using them purely as arithmetic.
• Tool tracking apps, unless you genuinely have a large kit moving between crews. For one van it's an inventory job you'll stop doing in a fortnight.
• Standalone invoice apps if you're already running job management — you'll end up with two sources of truth and variations falling between them.
• Note-taking apps for job notes. Notes that aren't attached to a job are notes you won't find when the client disputes something.

Frequently asked questions