De Raiz

De Raiz is a control tower for people building their own house in Portugal and hiring each trade directly – the plumber, the electrician, the builder – with no main contractor keeping the accounts for them. It answers four questions at any moment: • What will this cost in total, and am I within budget? • How much have I paid, and how much is still owed to each supplier? • Which phase am I in, and what is left before the next one? • Where is the contract, the invoice or the photo of that? BUDGET AND MONEY • A budget with a contingency margin, and a summary showing forecast, contracted, paid and still to pay. • Quotes from several suppliers side by side for each trade, before you award the work. • Payment plans in instalments that add up to the contracted amount, to the cent. • Amounts with or without VAT, as they appear on the invoice. The app lists the rates; which one applies to your build is a question for an accountant. • The plot purchase has its own total, kept outside the build's budget. The app does not calculate IMT or stamp duty – you enter the figure from the tax assessment. THE BUILD • Phases with their checklists, from a template for a detached house that you should check with your local council. • To do: what is still outstanding, worked out from what you have recorded. • A site diary, so decisions are written down. • Suppliers, materials, documents and photos, each attached to where it belongs. • A plain-language glossary of Portuguese building terms. NO SIGNAL ON SITE Everything is recorded on the phone first. It works in a shell with no reception, and catches up with everyone else when there is signal again. SHARE WITH THE PEOPLE BUILDING IT WITH YOU An account is optional. Without one, the build stays on your phone. With one, you can put it in the cloud and invite whoever is building the house with you: each person records the payments they make, and everyone sees the same figures. The servers are in the European Union. Sign in with Apple, Google or email. YOUR DATA No advertising, no usage analytics, no crash reporting. Export everything to CSV or PDF, and make a complete backup in a single file. The account can be deleted inside the app: under the circle in the top-left corner, Account → Delete account. The app is in Portuguese and English. Portuguese building terms – orçamento, empreitada, adjudicado – are kept in Portuguese, because they are the words on the contracts.