Sub contractors are the backbone of every Indian construction site, and they are also the single biggest source of operational friction for builders. Trackovo is built to make the sub contractor relationship simpler, more transparent, and less dependent on memory, WhatsApp, and paper registers.
Why sub contractor relationships break down
The classic Indian sub contractor dispute starts the same way every time: the contractor says he brought 22 workers, the site engineer’s register shows 19, and the petty cash advance from Tuesday morning is either missing entirely or double-counted. By the end of the month, both sides are convinced the other is cheating, and the owner has to step in to manually reconcile four weeks of fuzzy entries. The real problem is not dishonesty — it is that contractors and PMs run separate books with no shared ground truth. Trackovo fixes this by putting the contractor ledger, daily payments, advances, and attendance into a single app that both sides see in real time, with every entry time-stamped and role-tagged.
What sub contractors do inside Trackovo
A contractor logging into the app gets a Contractor role interface: a labour list for their crew, an Attendance tab for punching the team in each morning through GPS or the No-GPS fallback, a Daily Planning view with labour count and chowkidar count chips, and a personal ledger showing advances received, bulk payments, and the running balance. They can raise material requests on behalf of their crew, see approval status on the Approvals tab, and track deliveries through photo proof. Sub contractors with multi-site jobs see a site selector at the top and can switch between projects without logging out. The interface is deliberately stripped down to the screens they actually need.
What the site team and owner see
From the PM and Admin side, every sub contractor has a Contractor Detail screen showing their crew, historic attendance, pending payments, settled records, and GST billing entries if applicable. Daily planning is visible side-by-side with the contractor’s own entries, so any mismatch surfaces immediately instead of at month-end. The Labour Accounts module supports bulk payment operations so paying ten workers of one contractor takes a single approval rather than ten individual entries. Role permissions ensure that contractors only see their own data, while the PM and owner see all contractors side by side. Category-wise expense breakdowns group sub contractor spend so you always know where the biggest labour cost centres are.
Works when the contractor’s phone is offline
Most sub contractors work from low-cost Android phones with patchy data plans, and many sites operate in areas where signal drops for hours at a time. Trackovo’s offline-first architecture means a contractor can punch attendance, record daily payments, and raise material requests with zero connectivity. The entries queue in a local Drift database and sync automatically when the phone reconnects. No data is lost, and the contractor does not have to remember to retry anything manually.
Onboarding a new sub contractor
Bringing a new sub contractor onto a Trackovo site takes about ten minutes. The PM creates a contractor account with phone number, scope of work, and rate, and the contractor receives a login on their phone. On day one, the contractor adds their labour list, punches the morning attendance, and raises any material requests they need. By day two, their personal ledger shows real entries, and by day three most contractors are comfortable enough to run the daily workflow without supervision. This is faster than the old paper onboarding because the contractor does not need to learn a new language or buy new equipment — they use the phone they already carry in their pocket every day on the site.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does the contractor need to buy anything separately?
No. The contractor uses the same Trackovo app from the Play Store and logs in with credentials you create for them. There is no extra licensing cost per contractor — your Trackovo subscription covers every contractor account you add, with no per-user hidden fees.
Can a contractor work with multiple builders who both use Trackovo?
Yes. The same contractor account can be associated with multiple builder workspaces, and the contractor sees each project separately with no data bleed between them. Each builder controls the contractor’s access to their own sites independently.
What if a contractor refuses to use the app?
This happens on maybe one in ten rollouts. The usual solution is that the site engineer or supervisor enters attendance and payments on the contractor’s behalf for the first week, and the contractor takes over once they see the monthly reconciliation go through without the usual disputes.
What if a contractor disputes an entry in their ledger?
Every entry has a timestamp and a role tag showing who created it. If the contractor disputes an amount, the PM can open the specific entry, check the original source (attendance record, material request, payment note), and either confirm or correct it with a new time-stamped entry. Original entries are never silently edited, so the audit trail always stays clean.
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