Material is usually the second largest cost in a project after land, and it is the easiest to lose. Not through dramatic theft, but through the ordinary gaps: material received without a gate record, issued without a requisition, delivered to the wrong site, or ordered twice because nobody could see the existing stock. Five records, kept properly, make almost all of it visible.
The five records
| Record | Created by | Answers |
|---|---|---|
| Requisition | Site engineer | What is needed, how much, for which work |
| Quotation comparison | Procurement | Which supplier, at what rate, and why |
| Purchase order | Procurement, approved | What we committed to buy |
| Gate entry / GRN | Storekeeper | What physically arrived, in what quantity and condition |
| Issue slip | Storekeeper | What left the store, to whom, for which work |
Each record links to the next. The chain is what matters: a gate entry with no purchase order, or an issue with no requisition, is an exception the system should surface rather than a discovery someone makes months later.
Requisition against estimate, not against memory
The requisition is where control is either created or lost. A requisition raised against a bill of quantities carries context: this work item estimated 4,200 bags of cement, 2,900 have been consumed, and the current request is for 400 more at a stage where roughly 60 percent of the work is complete. That single view turns a routine approval into an informed one.
Without it, approvals are based on trust and site pressure, and the overrun is discovered at the end of the item, when nothing can be done.
Quotation comparison as a record, not an email
Three quotations, compared on a single sheet, with the chosen supplier and the reason recorded. This matters for two reasons beyond price. It creates a defensible audit trail — see AIT and VAT compliance for why supplier records matter for deductions. And it builds a rate history: after a year, you know what cement actually costs you across seasons and suppliers, which is the basis of a credible budget for the next project.
Gate entry: the record everyone skips
The most common single failure in site material control is material arriving and being used before anybody records it. The delivery challan goes to accounts, the material goes to work, and the store record never existed. Then the supplier's monthly statement is the only evidence of what arrived, and it cannot be checked.
A gate entry needs four fields and thirty seconds: what, how much, against which purchase order, and who received it. Photographs of the challan attached to the record remove most later disputes.
Issue and consumption
Material leaving the store should be issued against a work item, not against a person. "Issued to Rafiq" tells you nothing in three months. "Issued for 7th floor slab casting, 120 bags" reconciles against the estimate and against progress. That reconciliation is also what feeds honest cost reporting — see project-wise profitability.
Multi-site is where control breaks
A developer running three sites within a few kilometres will move material between them, and this is normal and sensible. What is not sensible is doing it without a transfer record. Two consequences follow immediately: the receiving site's costs are understated and the sending site's overstated, and stock counts at both sites disagree with the system permanently. A transfer is a two-sided record — issue at one site, receipt at the other — and it takes the same thirty seconds as a gate entry.
The monthly close
Once a month, for high-value items: physical count, compare with system stock, record the variance, and explain anything above the tolerance you have set. This is not an accusation exercise. It is how you find out that deliveries were short, that a transfer was never recorded, or that consumption is running ahead of progress. Sites where a count happens regularly have materially lower losses than sites where one happens after a suspicion.
What to do next
Take your largest site and pick one item — cement is usually the clearest. Reconcile purchase orders, gate entries, issues and the physical stock for last month. The size of the unexplained difference tells you exactly how much control you have, and whether the next project can be budgeted from your own rate history — see the requisition-to-consumption chain in one place.