Welcome to Coreloops. This guide will walk you through the basics of getting set up so you can start tracking costs, managing suppliers, and gaining real-time visibility over your construction projects as quickly as possible.

Whether you’re a project manager, commercial lead, or part of the finance team, this article will help you understand the first steps and where to focus your time.

What is Coreloops?

Coreloops is an AI-powered financial management platform built specifically for construction teams. It brings together project costs, supplier documents, and approvals in one place—removing the need for spreadsheets, manual reconciliation, and duplicated data entry.

With Coreloops, you can:

• Track project costs in real time
• Automatically process invoices, quotes, and purchase orders
• Manage suppliers and subcontractors more efficiently
• Reduce admin time and improve cost accuracy

Step 1: Set up your company and team

Before creating projects, it’s important to make sure the right people have access.

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Add your team members

Invite colleagues such as project managers, commercial staff, and finance team members. You can control what each person can see and do by assigning the appropriate role.

Typical roles include:

• Admins – Full access to projects and settings
• Members – Access only to assigned projects
• Approvers – Ability to review and approve costs or timesheets

This ensures everyone is working from the same up-to-date information, without unnecessary access.

Step 2: Create your first project

Once your team is set up, you’re ready to create a project.

When setting up a project, you’ll typically:

• Add a clear project name and reference
• Assign a client
• Set start and end dates
• Add a short description to give context to the wider team

Each project becomes a central hub where costs, documents, and progress are tracked in one place.

Step 3: Set up cost codes and budgets

Cost codes are the foundation of accurate cost tracking in Coreloops.

Why cost codes matter

Cost codes allow you to categorise spending (for example: labour, materials, plant, subcontractors) so you can see exactly where money is being spent and how it compares to budget.

Best practice is to:

• Create cost groups for high-level reporting
• Add detailed cost codes underneath each group
• Set budgets against each cost code where possible

Once set up, these codes are reused across projects, keeping reporting consistent and easy to understand.

Step 4: Add your suppliers

Your supplier directory stores all key information in one place, including:

• Company details
• Contacts
• Spend history
• Documents and compliance information

You can add suppliers manually, import them in bulk, or sync them from your accounting system. Having a clean, central directory makes it much easier to track orders, invoices, and payments later on.

Step 5: Start sending documents to Coreloops

One of the quickest wins with Coreloops is automating document processing.

How it works

Simply forward invoices, quotes, and receipts into Coreloops via email or upload them directly. The platform’s AI will:

• Extract key financial information
• Suggest the correct project and cost code
• Prepare the document for review and approval

You just review, confirm, and move on—no more manual data entry.

Step 6: Review costs and track performance

As documents are approved, your project cost reports update automatically.

From your dashboards, you can:

• Compare budget vs actual costs
• Track committed and approved spend
• Identify potential overspend earlier
• Get a clear view of project margins

This real-time visibility helps teams make better decisions before issues impact profit or cash flow.

What to do next

Once you’re comfortable with the basics, you can start exploring more advanced features such as:

• Purchase orders and supplier approvals
• Digital timesheets and labour costing
• Payment applications and progress tracking
• Accounting integrations

Each of these builds on the same core setup you’ve already completed.

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