Our work · Case study

JACK App

JACK is a SaaS platform for the residential construction industry, built by Codium in partnership with Adelaide Green Homes. It brings estimating, scheduling, finance, site safety and client communication into one system for everyone from a sole trade contractor to a volume home builder. It started as one builder's answer to running a business on a dozen disconnected tools, and now runs in Australia, the United States and Canada.

SaaS platformMobile applicationAI integrationConstructionXero integration
Visit jackapp.io
JACK dashboard on a monitor in a builder's site office with a house frame outside
  • ClientAdelaide Green Homes / JACK App Australia
  • IndustryResidential construction
  • MarketsAustralia, the United States and Canada, from one platform and one mobile app.
  • IntegrationsXero, QuickBooks and Stripe, with AI document reading and a South Australian Government AI grant.
The brief

A builder's whole business, out of the spreadsheets and the ute

Builders and sub-contractors were running estimating, scheduling, invoicing and site safety across disconnected apps, paper and spreadsheets. Bills were typed in by hand, nobody could see the real cash position of a job, safety paperwork lived on clipboards and every party, from client to supplier, was on a different channel. Working with Adelaide Green Homes as product owner, Codium scoped, designed and built JACK as a single platform, then kept building: AI invoice reading, a construction-specific cashflow engine, document signing, a mobile app and the multi-region infrastructure that took it overseas. As JACK grew its own engineering team, Codium ran the transition: setting up the base CI/CD pipelines, Terraform and AWS accounts the team now owns, and training them on all of it.

01

Takeoffs and estimates

Digital takeoffs from the plans, costed from catalogues and assemblies, through cost options and bid packages to a proposal the client can sign.

02

AI invoice reading

Bills scanned or emailed in are read by OCR, pre-filled, matched to purchase orders and budget lines, and routed for approval and payment through Xero.

03

Construction cashflow

A cashflow engine that forecasts expected cash in bank from contracts, variations, bills, BAS, PAYG and super, with six months of history and prediction.

04

Scheduling

Day, week and Gantt views with drag-and-drop assignment, and dependency shifting that moves downstream tasks and notifies the trades.

05

Site safety

QR and PIN site sign-in, digital SWMS and JSAs with signed audit trails, inductions, incidents with photos and white card expiry alerts.

06

Portals and mobile

Tailored portals for builders, trades, suppliers and homeowners, plus a mobile app for timesheets, site logs, photos and tasks.

JACK digital takeoff over a house floor plan on an estimator's monitor
Takeoff

Quantities measured straight off the plans

Takeoffs used to mean a scale ruler, a highlighter and a spreadsheet. JACK renders the PDF plans in the browser and lets the estimator draw polygons, lengths and counts over them, with each measurement linked to a catalogue item so the quantity flows straight into the estimate. Change the plan and the takeoff moves with it.

  • Polygon, rectangle, length and count tools over rendered PDF plans
  • Scale set per page, with deductions for openings
  • Each measurement linked to a catalogue or assembly item
  • Quantities flow directly into the costings
Estimating

From catalogue to signed proposal without re-keying a number

An estimate in JACK is built from the business's own catalogue of materials, labour and assemblies, with builder cost, markup and tax computed line by line. Cost options give the client choices, bid packages go out to trades for pricing, and the finished estimate converts to a job and a proposal in one step. Templates mean the next similar job starts half done.

  • Customisable catalogues with assembly items
  • Builder cost, markup, tax and owner price per line
  • Cost options and RFQ bid packages to trades
  • Convert to job and proposal in one click
JACK estimate costings screen on a quoting desk
JACK bills awaiting approval with scanned invoices on an accounts desk
AI invoice reading

Supplier bills read by AI, matched to the job and sent to Xero

Typing in supplier bills was the job nobody wanted. Builders now drop PDFs in, photograph them on site or email them to JACK, and OCR models trained on construction invoices pre-fill the supplier, reference, due date, quantities and line prices. Each line is matched to a purchase order or budget category, the budget updates, and the approved bill flows to Xero. Anything the model is unsure of goes to a person.

  • Upload, photograph or email bills straight in
  • Supplier, reference, dates and line items pre-filled
  • Lines matched to POs and job budget categories
  • Back charges and credits raised from a bill line, synced to Xero
Cashflow forecasting

The cash position of the business, forecast from the jobs themselves

Most builders find out about a cash crunch when it arrives. JACK's cashflow engine forecasts expected cash in bank from contract payment schedules, variations, bills due, wages, insurance and other expenses, and accounts for BAS and GST, PAYG withholding and superannuation. Six months of history sits beside six months of prediction, with weighted pipeline sales switchable in.

  • Expected cash in bank, month by month
  • Contracts, variations, bills, wages and insurance feed it
  • BAS, GST, PAYG and super liabilities included
  • Month-end calculations offloaded to read replicas
JACK cashflow forecast on a building company owner's monitor
JACK document signing screen on a laptop on a kitchen bench
Document signing

Proposals, contracts and variations signed from the kitchen bench

Chasing wet signatures held up starts and change orders. JACK generates the document from the job, sends it to the client, trade or supplier, and records the signature with the signer's IP, time and date. Payment can be taken on signing through Stripe, and the signed document sits on the job with its attachments.

  • Documents generated from estimates, jobs and change orders
  • Client, staff and supplier signing flows
  • IP, time and date audit trail on every signature
  • Optional payment on signing through Stripe
Site safety

Safety paperwork done on the phone, with an audit trail the regulator accepts

Sign-in sheets, SWMS and JSAs lived on clipboards and were rarely complete. JACK Safety lets workers sign in to a site by QR code or job PIN, with guest registration and a supervisor alert, and puts SWMS, JSAs and inductions on the phone for creation, assignment and sign-off with a full audit trail. Incidents are logged on the spot with photos and a risk matrix.

  • QR and PIN site sign-in with guest registration
  • Digital SWMS and JSAs with a full sign-off audit trail
  • Incident logging with photos and risk scoring
  • Inductions, toolbox talks and white card expiry alerts
JACK job safety analysis list on a site supervisor's monitor
JACK incident report on a tablet at a residential building site
Mobile app

The field app that does the day's admin from the site

The JACK mobile app, published for iOS and Android, is how trades and supervisors use the platform on site. GPS-verified timesheets with a running timer, daily site logs, photo uploads, task management, safety sign-offs and incident reports all happen on the phone, and country selection at login means the one app serves Australia, the United States and Canada.

  • GPS-verified timesheets with an active timer
  • Daily site logs, photos and tasks from the field
  • Safety sign-in, SWMS acknowledgement and incident reports
  • One app, three countries, with country selection at login
The mobile app

Available on iOS and Android

JACK's mobile app gives builders, supervisors and trades their projects from any job site, with timesheets, site logs, photos, tasks and safety in the one app for Australia, the United States and Canada.

Published to Download on the App Store Get it on Google Play
Technology stack

How it's built

JACK runs on a PHP and Laravel API with a Vue front end and a mobile app for iOS and Android. AWS RDS clusters with reader replicas carry the month-end cashflow calculations and Redis keeps navigation fast, with staging, beta and production environments provisioned by Terraform and deployed through Jenkins. Dedicated US infrastructure serves North America, and the platform integrates Xero, QuickBooks and Stripe. A South Australian Government grant is funding an AI defect video capture and analysis feature. The platform is now maintained and managed by JACK's in-house team, after a planned handover in which Codium set up the CI/CD, Terraform and AWS account foundations and trained the team to run them.

Single page application

Built in Vue.js as a single page application, for a fast experience without page reloads and the flexibility to evolve as the system grows.

API-focused backend

The backend is built in Laravel and MySQL with an API-first interface, so the web and mobile apps share the same endpoints.

Continuous integration

Automated testing and deployment let us test new builds and update production quickly, so we can release as often as required.

Managed hosting

Amazon's Elastic Container Service runs each service in its own container within a cluster that scales up and down as needed.

Managed hosting

Building a platform for your industry?

From AI document reading to construction cashflow modelling and a multi-region mobile app, we have shipped it in production. Tell us what you are building.

Get in touch More of our work
Back to our work Next case study: Arrow Logistics