For masonry subcontractors
Masonry contractor software for work that cannot wait for good weather.
A masonry job is early, exposed and on the critical path. You cannot lay in the rain, you cannot grout until an inspector signs the lift, and your scaffold is capital standing against an elevation some other trade is blocking. SubMark keeps the crew hours, the block and brick purchase orders and the supplier invoices against the job as they land, and keeps the paperwork that pays for the week you lost to weather.
14-day free trial, no card needed. Sign up from here and masonry is already selected when you pick your trade. See pricing →
- Weather days logged with crew and hours the same morning
- Block and brick POs and invoices against the job
- Mason and tender hours recorded separately
What actually goes wrong on a commercial masonry job.
You cannot lay in the rain, and nobody budgeted the tenting.
Below 40°F you need heated materials, blankets and enclosure. In wind you come off the scaffold. Cold-weather protection is real money, and whether you recover any of it depends entirely on there being a daily log from that morning with the weather, the crew who showed up, the hours they were paid for and photos of what was covered. Made that day it is a claim. Reconstructed at closeout it is a story.
Scaffold is capital, not material.
Frames, planks and mast climbers get erected, moved and cycled across elevations all year, and you pay rental while another trade blocks the wall. Costing them like mortar — consumed once, charged to one line — makes your first elevation look expensive and your last one look free. Keeping scaffold on its own purchase orders against the job, and on its own SOV line, is what keeps it visible as equipment cost instead of buried in the first wall you build.
Your lay-up is gated by other people’s sign-offs.
Reinforced masonry means a special inspector has to see the steel and the grout space before each lift goes in. If he is a day late your crew stands around with a lift on rent. Add the embeds, sleeves and anchors that come from the steel and MEP trades, and half your delays belong to somebody else. Raised as a dated change event with photos the morning it happens, that is recoverable. Remembered in a closeout meeting, it is not.
The mock-up panel holds up the whole order.
Blend, mortar color and tooling have to be approved on a panel before the brick ships, and the architect takes three weeks to come look at it. Your lead time, your blends and your truck schedule all hang off that date. Submittals with a material library, cover sheets and merged PDF export keep the package and the dates in one place, and a change event records the delay while it is still happening.
Before you mobilize
The 4 things masonry subs settle with the GC before mobilizing.
What is approved, where your scope stops, what has to be true before you start, and how you get at the work. Every one of them turns into a change order three weeks in if nobody writes the answer down — and the answer is worth nothing if it only lives in one PM’s inbox.
In the pack
Switch on Pre-Construction Review and these 4 questions are already the list, worded the way masonry subs ask them.
- Confirm the approved units, mortar and sample-panel requirements
- Confirm the structural attachment, reinforcement and grout details
- Confirm scaffolding, hoisting and the lay-down area
- Confirm weather protection and the cold- and hot-weather procedures
Tick them off job by job, with your own note on each. The note is your answer — the pack ships the question and leaves the answer to you.
Pre-Construction Review is an opt-in module — it is not one of the eight switched on at setup. Turn it on in Settings and the list is already there in masonry terms, with no upgrade and no setup call. Edit it once and it applies to every job; the tick and the note stay with the job it was asked on. See every module →
The masonry job, layout to tuckpoint.
Masons, tenders and a grout crew cost completely different money, and a single elevation runs through all of them. Here is how the work maps to what ships in SubMark.
- 01 Bid & estimate
Takeoff off the elevations, block and brick counts, reinforcing, scaffold and crane access, and a mock-up allowance.
Bid Board, Plans & Drawings, Takeoff, Estimating & Proposals
- 02 Submittals & mock-up
Block, brick, mortar, ties and flashing submittals, plus the mock-up panel that gates the whole order.
Submittals with a material library and merged PDF export
- 03 Layout
Control lines, coursing, openings and bond pattern set off somebody else’s base.
Daily Labor Logs with photos, Change Events for anything out of tolerance
- 04 Footing & base course
Dowels and base course set to line and grade on concrete you did not place.
Change Events for a footing that is out, Purchase Orders
- 05 CMU lay-up
Block up by section, with bond beams, lintels and embeds as they come.
Time Clock & Labor Logs feeding Job Costing
- 06 Reinforcement & grout
Vertical steel, grout lifts, and the special inspection that has to come before each one.
Daily Labor Logs as the dated record of every inspection
- 07 Brick veneer
Veneer up the elevation with ties, weeps and flashing, alongside the air barrier the waterproofer owns.
Crew Scheduling across jobs, Where Workers Are
- 08 Stone & cast stone
Sills, bands, caps and cast stone set, usually by a different crew than the one laying brick.
Purchase Orders, Invoices Inbox tying supplier cost to the job
- 09 Tuckpoint & clean
Pointing, washing down and sealing — a full pass over work that already looks finished.
Time Clock & Labor Logs, Job Costing by cost type
- 10 Punch & closeout
The walk, scaffold down, final billing and the retainage you have been waiting on.
Schedule of Values & Draw Log, Lien Waiver Tracking
Every module named above ships today; the eight below are on from day one, and the rest are a switch in Settings, not an upgrade. The full list is on the product page.
In the pack
These 8 phases load with the Masonry pack the moment you pick it at setup.
They are the phase list your foremen pick from on every daily log, so the hours come back tagged to the part of the job they were spent on.
- 01 Layout
- 02 Footing / Base
- 03 CMU Lay-Up
- 04 Reinforcement / Grout
- 05 Brick Veneer
- 06 Stone
- 07 Tuckpoint / Clean
- 08 Punch
Rename, reorder or delete any of them in Settings — the pack is a starting point, not a cage.
A masonry schedule of values that pays for the scaffold and the clean.
Masonry money is roughly a third material and two thirds labor and equipment, and two of the most expensive items — scaffold and the final clean — look like overhead if you let them. These are the kinds of lines a commercial masonry SOV usually needs:
In the pack
Open the SOV builder on a new job and these 4 lines are already in it.
- Material 35%
- Block / Lay-Up 35%
- Veneer 20%
- Clean / Punch 10%
What most commercial masonry subs add
- 01 Submittals & mock-up panel
- 02 Mobilization, scaffold & mast climbers cycles across elevations
- 03 Layout & base course
- 04 CMU — material stored-material line
- 05 CMU lay-up — labor
- 06 Reinforcement & grout
- 07 Lintels, bond beams & embeds
- 08 Brick — material stored-material line
- 09 Brick veneer — labor
- 10 Cast stone & stone — material
- 11 Stone setting — labor
- 12 Ties, weeps & through-wall flashing
- 13 Cold-weather protection
- 14 Tuckpoint, clean & seal
- 15 Punch & scaffold removal
Scaffold on its own line is what stops your first elevation from carrying the cost of equipment that will serve four more. And a tuckpoint-and-clean line is the difference between a paid pass over the whole building and a punch item the GC expects for free.
That longer list is an illustration, not a template — your SOV is negotiated with your GC. SubMark gives you the SOV to build, and tracks every draw, retainage amount and payment against it. It is your record of the job, not a replacement for the GC’s billing system — you submit the draw the way each GC requires and log it here.
Read next
Schedule of values for subcontractors: how to build one that bills clean
How to break out line items so scaffold, stored block and the final clean each carry their own money, and where retainage and change orders sit on a masonry SOV.
T&M tickets in commercial construction: getting signed, and getting paid
A crew standing by for a late special inspection is T&M work — what belongs on the ticket, how to get it signed the same day, and how a month of tags becomes one change order.
Inside SubMark
One calendar for every crew on every job.
Masons, tenders and a grout crew across four jobs, one weather window and a mast climber on rent. SubMark schedules every worker in one calendar and flags the conflict before the morning huddle.
On from day one, in every trade’s setup.
Nothing is paywalled by tier. These eight are switched on in every one of the 29 trade packs, masonry included, from the moment you finish setup.
T&M Tags
Field tickets priced off your own rate lists and signed by the GC on the spot.
Change Events
The field logs a scope change with photos the day it happens, then it converts to a CO.
Draw Calendar
Every GC’s billing cutoff and submission method in one calendar, with reminders.
Submittals
Submittal packages with a material library, cover sheets and merged PDF export.
Daily Labor Logs
Weather, narrative, labor, materials and photos, with a submit-and-review workflow.
Timesheets
Weekly rollups with worker signatures and supervisor approval, plus a payroll summary export.
Where Workers Are
A live view of which workers are on which job today.
Safety
Toolbox talks, inspections, incidents, and certification and COI tracking with expiry dates.
Pick Masonry at setup and SubMark loads the masonry pack: the real phase list from layout and footing through CMU lay-up, reinforcement and grout, brick veneer, stone, and tuckpoint and clean; worker types for foremen, masons, tenders and laborers; a material list built around CMU block, brick, stone, mortar, grout, rebar, wall ties and flashing; and an inspection on the phase checklist. Anything the pack gets wrong, you change in Settings.
The worker types are already there too — Foreman, Mason, Tender and Laborer — on every worker record and on every daily labor log. The only thing left to enter is your own rates.
Questions
Masonry subcontractors ask us these.
Is this software for residential masonry, hardscape or repair work?
No, and that is deliberate. SubMark is for commercial project work — you bid a job, sign a contract with a GC, bill against a schedule of values and wait on retainage. If most of your work is homeowner jobs or small repairs, a simpler job-tracking tool fits you better. If it is construction contracts, this is built for you.
How do we document a week lost to weather, or cold-weather protection?
With a daily log made that morning. It carries the weather, the narrative, the crew who showed up, the hours they were paid for, materials and photos, and it goes through a submit-and-review workflow so it is a dated company record. If the cost is recoverable, that log plus a change event raised the same day is what the conversation runs on.
Can we cost one elevation or section on its own?
With Section Tracking switched on in Settings, yes — it is not on by default. With it on, layout, lay-up, grout, veneer and clean hours stay distinct and you get budget versus actual per phase while the wall is still going up. Left off, job costing shows labor, material and sub cost for the whole job, grouped by cost type.
Can we keep mason hours apart from tender hours?
Yes, and the masonry pack ships the worker types to do it — foreman, mason, tender, laborer. The time clock and daily labor logs record hours per worker, per job, per day at that worker’s rate, and job costing rolls them into the job’s labor cost. If you want them separated by phase as well, that is Section Tracking in Settings.
Does it track special inspections on grout lifts?
Not as a dedicated inspection log, and worth being straight about. Each inspection goes on that day’s daily log as the dated record of who was there and what passed, with photos, and the safety module handles your own inspections, certifications and COI expiry dates. What SubMark does not do is tie a draw to an inspection result or chase an inspector for you.
Can we bill block and brick stored on site?
You build the schedule of values, so yes — carry stored-material lines for CMU, brick and cast stone alongside the lay-up and setting labor, and bill them as the trucks land. SubMark tracks what you billed on each line, what the GC certified, what retainage is held against it and when the money arrived.
Does it connect to QuickBooks?
Yes. Connect QuickBooks Online once and bills and purchases pull into job costing (hourly, if you switch auto-pull on) so material and sub costs sit against the right job; draws go across as QuickBooks invoices and POs as purchase orders, one at a time with a click; and a coverage meter shows how much of the cost pulled from QuickBooks is coded to a job.
Do my field crews cost extra?
No. Field users are free and unlimited, and so are the subs you invite into a job. You pay one company subscription: $249 a month with your first 3 office users included, then $39 a month each. The whole breakdown is on the pricing page.
See it on a masonry job.
Start the trial, confirm masonry on the first screen, and the pack loads your phases, checklists and worker types in your own words. Or take a 30-minute walkthrough with the person who built it, on your kind of jobs, instead of a canned demo script.
14-day free trial, no card needed. See the whole product →
$249/mo for your company, your first 3 office users included, $39/mo each after that. Field crews are free and unlimited. See what's included →
Other trades
Electrical
Gear you pay for months before you bill it, rough-in hours that disappear, and every tenant change landing on your scope.
HVAC / Mechanical
Equipment bought a year before it is billed, shop fab the GC will not pay for, and a closeout that holds your last 10% for six months.
Plumbing
First in the ground and last out of the building — with a quarter of the contract value stuck behind the finish trades.
Drywall & Framing
A third to half the contract spent on board before anything is hung, five finish passes nobody can measure, and three punch walks and a clean-up that are all on you.
Concrete
Pour days that cannot move, ready-mix invoices you reconcile weeks later, and forms that are capital cycling across placements.
Fire Sprinkler
Weeks of hydraulic engineering before you can bill a dollar, and every phase gated behind an inspection you do not schedule.
Glazing & Glass
Custom material you cannot order until you field measure, cannot return once you do, and cannot bill until a water test passes.
Roofing
A tear-off that owns the building until dry-in, rotten deck nobody bid, and a warranty package standing between you and retainage.
Low voltage
Drop counts that move with every furniture plan, cable sitting in a locked IDF for months, and a final 10% that waits on a test report.
Fire alarm
A quarter of the contract behind an acceptance test you do not schedule, retests you never bill, and device counts that move all year.
Painting
The last trade on the schedule, four return trips for other people’s damage, and prep bid against a wall nobody left you.
Flooring
A slab that fails its moisture test, prep bid against a flatness spec nobody hit, and a whole building’s material stored for months.
Structural & Misc Steel
Two thirds of the contract is detailing, mill material and shop work, earned before a single piece is erected, and the last five percent is a handrail holding your retainage.
Wood Framing
Fourteen buildings billed as one percentage, a lumber package that is 40% of the contract before a wall goes up, and blocking you owe six other trades that nobody drew.
Excavation & Sitework
The only schedule of values on this site that opens without a single line for product you buy: your contract is production, billed against quantities somebody else surveyed.
Waterproofing
Work that is buried within a week of going in, blamed for every drop of water for the next ten years, and finished with sealants months after everyone forgot you were on the job.
Doors, Frames & Hardware
Half the contract is product you buy months early, and the last three openings out of four hundred hold your punch, your final draw and your retainage.
Demolition
A scope nobody can see until you open the wall, extra work that leaves in the dumpster before anyone prices it, and retainage held for a year after you demobilized.
Insulation
A four-day window between rough-in inspection and board that nobody protects, half the contract sitting in material you staged weeks early, and firestopping everyone assumed was yours.
EIFS / Stucco / Plaster
A schedule set by cure time that nobody believes, a weather barrier you bury on day two and get blamed for in year three, and joints drawn by somebody else that crack on your wall.
Acoustical Ceilings (ACT)
Grid that cannot start until every trade above the ceiling is finished, tile that drops in the last three weeks of a two-year job, and a finished ceiling the whole building then uses as an access hatch.
Paving & Asphalt
Material with a clock on it and a crew on the clock whether you place or not, a subgrade somebody else owns, and six months of construction traffic on the binder course you have to warrant.
Tile & Stone
A finished floor installed on somebody else’s slab, to a flatness tolerance the concrete sub was never asked to hit, with waterproofing and movement joints that belong to nobody until the warranty call comes.
Millwork & Casework
Half your contract earned in your own shop before anything reaches the site, built to a drawing of walls somebody else framed, with the furnish-and-install line drawn in a meeting you were not in.
All trades
SubMark ships a setup pack for 29 commercial trades. See the full list.