Note: This is a guest post.

For many years the UK construction industry has suffered with a lack of IT investment, only now does it appear to be catching up.

Construction software has been around for approximately 15 years now, however, with the exception of the larger companies the mindset of the UK construction industry has been not to make the investment. Software has long been available to manage the accounts, job costing, retentions, CIS etc etc, but the small to medium sized businesses have been slow to adopt the technology.

One example being Sage Line 50 with Sage Construction software, this solution has been on the market for around 15 years (although Construct was not a sage product back then). The solution with the addition of Sage Payroll would create a seamless integrated system capable of managing the entire build from the initial Estimating right through to final application and invoice, also reclaiming of retentions, sub-contractor insurance tracking and of course the much sought after Work In Progress reports.

So, why has the industry suddenly woken up to the benefits of construction software? Well, it all comes down to the change in CIS legislation, not only have the HMRC increased the tax rate for small builders from 18 to 20%, but also changed the whole submission process, by using software like Sage’s new Line 50 CIS software the entire process can be automated from verification of sub-contractors status to the monthly submissions. Now builders need not manage multiple spreadsheets to calculate CIS deductions as software can manage the whole process for them.

I guess now we just need to see how smooth the transition from the old scheme will be, undoubtedly much easier if you have the correct software for the job!