Project and task management decision
BuildLedger
A focused replacement that automates invoice capture, extraction, client invoice generation and Xero sync is realistic for a competent developer to build and run; reproducing the full product (scheduling, client portals, communications quotas, mobile apps and polished AI accuracy) is larger and operationally heavier.
Visit website↗$75/mo
$900/yr
Read off the official pricing page.
$100one-off120 h to build
$200/mo6 h/mo upkeep
On cash alone, building overtakes the subscription at 3 seats.
No open-source build does this yet
Nothing published replaces this one, so a replacement starts from an empty file. Here is what it would have to cover.
What a replacement has to do
- Ingest supplier invoices by email, OCR+extract invoice data, match and categorise to projects, generate client invoice with attached evidence PDF, and sync client invoices/contacts to Xero.
What it still won’t have
- Native iOS and Android apps (BuildLedger lists mobile apps as "Coming Soon")
- Included SMS/WhatsApp quotas and a dedicated phone number (listed in pricing bundles)
- Onboarding/setup & migration service (one-off paid service listed on pricing page)
- Priority support and the company-run hosted platform experience
- Any proprietary AI model/accuracy tuning and in-house automation optimisations claimed (e.g. 98% OCR accuracy)
What remains hard
- Product polish and ongoing maintenance
First-year cost
Keep paying
Paying is—cheaper in year one.
On cash alone, building overtakes the subscription at 3 seats.
Money you would actually spend
Time you would spend
—
What you would spend
What we assumed
The verdict above measures whether you could build it. This one is only about money.
Runnable build prompt
Build a minimal self-hosted replacement of BuildLedger focused on supplier invoice automation and Xero sync. Stack: Next.js + React frontend, Node.js (Express) API, PostgreSQL, Redis (jobs), Docker, hosted on a single VPS or cloud droplet; use AWS Textract (or Tesseract as fallback) for OCR and OpenAI or heuristic parser for line-item parsing. Core features in scope: (1) inbound email ingestion endpoint + instructions for forwarding, (2) OCR pipeline to extract vendor, ABN, dates, GST, amounts and line items, (3) Postgres schema for Projects, CostLines, ClientInvoices and EvidenceAttachments, (4) UI to review/extract/approve captured invoices, (5) generate client invoice PDF bundling supplier invoices as evidence, (6) Xero integration to import contacts and push client invoices, (7) background job processing, error handling, retries, logging and unit/integration tests for parsing and Xero sync. Out of scope: full scheduling/Gantt, mobile native apps, SMS/WhatsApp sending and multi-tenant/B2B billing/subscriptions. Include CI, Docker Compose, README with deploy steps, and automated tests for OCR parsing and Xero sync.
How we checked
How the score was reached
- Partly verdict base52
- 3 cited sources+3
- Price verified on pricing page+3
- 3/3 assessment runs agreed+4
- Evidence score62
The base comes from the verdict. Everything under it is a check that either happened or did not, and each one is a fact frozen in this record rather than a judgement made at render time - so the same evidence always produces the same number.
How scoring works →Cited sources · 3
Every page the run actually retrieved.
- official productBuildLedger home / product
- official pricingBuildLedger pricing
- official pricingBuildLedger features
Integrity checks
What held up, and what did not.
