Material management: the overlooked key to project profitability

Materials are your biggest cost – and your biggest opportunity

For most subcontractors, materials make up around 35 to 40% of the total project budget. That’s not a soft cost or a back-office line item – it’s a major driver of profitability. But when purchasing is handled through spreadsheets and emails, control slips. Mistakes multiply and profit margins shrink.

In other words: what should be a tightly controlled part of the business is often anything but.

When the process breaks down, project performance follows

We’ve talked before about how traditional material purchasing methods can slow down projects and inflate costs. Here’s the uncomfortable truth: many subcontractors don’t have a clearly defined, structured way to manage construction materials. And even when a process does exist, it can be fragile – built on scattered systems, siloed data, or inconsistent workflows.

Without a centralized, digital material management system, here’s what typically happens:

• Uncontrolled costs: Blind purchasing without locked-in pricing inflates spend, especially without construction procurement software to keep everything aligned with the budget.‍
• Duplicate orders: Delivery assumptions lead to double-ups when field teams don’t know what’s arrived – or assume it has.‍
• Tied-up capital: Inventory gets reordered when it's already sitting in a warehouse, simply because no one has real-time visibility.

These aren’t minor admin issues. They’re operational liabilities that scale with every new project you take on. And they’re nearly impossible to prevent without a repeatable system in place.

SubBase helps you build that system. It’s more than just material management software – it’s your procurement engine, inventory tracker, and AP automation tool, all working together to bring control, clarity, and consistency to your project operations and budgets.

Visibility is everything

If you’ve ever wondered why change orders get messy or why materials budgets blow out without warning, the root cause often comes down to visibility – or the lack of it.

Most subcontractors struggle to track materials from request to reconciliation. That’s because visibility typically breaks down at multiple points:

• Field teams request items, but there’s no easy way to track where that request goes.
• Vendors ship materials, but deliveries aren’t always confirmed or logged.
• Invoices arrive, but people aren’t sure if the materials were received or used.

SubBase changes that. We connect every stakeholder in one place. Material requests, purchase orders, inventory use, deliveries, and invoices are all linked to your cost codes and budgets in real-time.

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Change isn’t easy, but neither is falling behind

We get it, many teams stick with the status quo because “it works”. But when you dig deeper, you’ll likely find inefficiencies, hidden costs, We get it, many teams stick with the status quo because “it works”. But when you dig deeper, you’ll likely find inefficiencies, hidden costs, and errors that are limiting your performance and chances are it’s costing you more than you think.

SubBase makes the transition simple. We work alongside subcontractors to embed a smarter, more connected way of working – without disrupting what already works well.

And when you’re ready, here’s what you get:

• Material ordering software with real-time cost code integration.
• Procurement tracking tools that bring accountability across every order.
• Automatic material invoice reconciliation tied to deliveries and POs.
• Inventory management software that ensures you're using what you’ve got before buying more.

Project performance starts with material control

Subcontractors who modernize their approach to procurement don’t just save time – they operate with more precision, fewer surprises, and tighter budgets. It’s a competitive edge hiding in plain sight.

Ready to take control of materials management, and your margins? Let’s talk about what SubBase can do for your next project.