BillMate takes off quantities, builds naira rates you can defend, keeps your own rate library located and dated, and issues a paginated bill on your firm's letterhead. It works offline, holds your data on your device, and costs ₦39,999 once.
Nigeria is a localised edition, not a separate product. BillMate is a global bill of quantities suite — 14 currencies and measurement standards from RICS NRM2 to POMI — and this page covers what it does in Nigerian practice: the naira, BESMM4(R), and rates built from Nigerian constituents. Other markets are on the markets page.
No sign-up, no card, nothing to install unless you want to. The free tier is the complete tool on 2 live jobs.
If you prepare bills of quantities in Nigeria, your realistic options are a spreadsheet, an enterprise package licensed at a price aimed at a large consultancy, or something in between. BillMate is the in-between: a dedicated BOQ application that runs on the machine you already own, works when the network does not, prices in naira from your rates, and is bought once rather than rented.
One thing it deliberately is not: a BIM package. On-screen measurement is there on a paid licence, but it works from an image of the drawing — BillMate does not read PDF or CAD files directly and does not touch 3D models. And while BESMM4(R) ships as a work-section template, we do not describe any software as making a bill compliant — here is exactly what that distinction means.
Nobody sets out to prepare bills in a spreadsheet. It happens because the first job needed a table, and then every job after it inherited the table.
Someone inserted an item at the bottom of a section. The collection still sums to the row above it. Nothing warns you, the total is wrong by one item, and it goes out.
A number sits in a cell. Six weeks later the client queries it and there is nothing to reconstruct — the dimensions were on a pad that is now in a drawer.
It came from a previous job. Which job, which city, which year? The workbook does not know, so neither do you. In a market that has moved as much as Nigeria's, that is a real exposure.
Item descriptions split mid-sentence, rates orphaned from their items, and no collection page. It reads as a spreadsheet print because it is one.
This is not an argument that spreadsheets are bad — they are remarkable tools and we say so at length in the balanced comparison. It is an argument that bill production is the part they are worst at.
You measure on a dimension sheet — timesing for repeats, deductions for openings, squaring calculated — and cast the total into the bill. Six months later the working is still attached to the item, so a query is answered by opening it rather than by re-measuring.
| Times | Dimensions | Squaring | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| 32.40 0.60 1.20 |
23.33 | Excavate trench, external walls. Centre-line girth 32.40, trench width 0.60, depth 1.20. | |
| 2/ | 7.80 0.60 1.20 |
11.23 | Ditto, the two cross walls. Timesing 2/ because both walls are identical — measured once, multiplied. |
| 9.60 0.60 1.20 |
6.91 | Ditto, the rear return. | |
| 3.50 0.60 1.20 |
2.52 | Deduct — trench through the existing apron slab, which is measured separately. | |
| Cast into the bill | 38.95 | m³ | |
Cement by the bag with its waste allowance, sharp sand and granite by the cubic metre, gang labour by the hour at a stated output, mixer hire at a stated utilisation — then overheads and profit as percentages you set. When a client asks why a rate is what it is, you open it and walk down it.
| Constituent | Quantity | Unit | Cost | Amount |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Material Cement, 42.5N — 7.0 bags/m³ including 5% waste | 7.35 | bag | ₦9,800 | ₦72,030 |
| Material Sharp sand — 0.44 m³ including 8% waste | 0.48 | m³ | ₦22,000 | ₦10,560 |
| Material Granite 19 mm — 0.88 m³ including 8% waste | 0.95 | m³ | ₦48,000 | ₦45,600 |
| Material Water, curing and admixture allowance | 1.00 | item | ₦1,500 | ₦1,500 |
| Labour Mason gang — mix, place, vibrate and finish | 1.60 | hr | ₦4,500 | ₦7,200 |
| Labour Labourer — batching and handling | 4.80 | hr | ₦2,200 | ₦10,560 |
| Plant Concrete mixer, 0.4 m³ — hire, fuel and operator | 0.55 | hr | ₦6,500 | ₦3,575 |
| Plant Poker vibrator — hire and fuel | 0.35 | hr | ₦3,000 | ₦1,050 |
| Net cost | ₦152,075 | |||
| Overheads and establishment charges, 10% | ₦15,207.50 | |||
| Profit and risk, 15% on net cost plus overheads | ₦25,092.38 | |||
| Unit rate per m³ | ₦192,374.88 | |||
Illustrative constituent costs, Lagos, 25 August 2026. Re-price every line against your own suppliers.
Import the schedule you already keep, capture rates back from every job you price, and each one carries its location, its pricing month and its source. Anything older than 12 months is flagged rather than quietly reused, and a controlled percentage uplift is recorded as provenance rather than overwriting history.
| Description | Unit | Rate | Location | Priced | Source | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Excavate trench n.e. 1.50 m deep, deposit spoil on site | m³ | ₦4,500 | Lagos — Lekki | 2026-05 | Priced tender | Current |
| 225 mm hollow sandcrete blockwork in walls, 1:6 mortar | m² | ₦8,200 | Lagos — Ikeja | 2026-06 | Priced tender | Current |
| Reinforced concrete grade 25 in ground beams | m³ | ₦182,400 | Lagos — Lekki | 2026-04 | Own build-up | Current |
| High-yield reinforcement, 12 mm, cut, bent and fixed | kg | ₦2,350 | Abuja — Gwarinpa | 2025-02 | Priced tender | Stale |
| Sawn formwork to sides of ground beams | m² | ₦6,800 | Port Harcourt | 2024-11 | Subcontract quote | Stale |
Your rates, not ours. BillMate ships with no Nigerian price data and does not claim to know what anything costs today. A rate in Lagos is not a rate in Kano; a rate for one specification is not a rate for another; and a rate moves with the date, the supplier, the access, the season and the conditions of the particular contract. What the software does is hold your rates with the city, the month and the source attached, put them first when it prices a bill, and tell you when one has gone stale. Every worked figure on this page is an illustration of the arithmetic, not a market quotation — re-price every line against your own suppliers before it reaches a client. You can start from the Nigerian BOQ template, then build the rates behind it with Nigerian rate analysis.
Paginated so descriptions do not split, letterheaded with your firm's name, collected at the end of each bill and carried forward to a summary — with a basis-of-estimate note recording where the rates came from and how many are still unverified.
| Item | Description | Unit | Qty | Rate | Amount |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1.01 | Excavate trench for strip foundation, not exceeding 1.50 m deep; wheel, deposit and level spoil on site | m³ | 38.95 | ₦4,500 | ₦175,275 |
| 1.02 | Plain concrete grade 15 in foundation blinding, 50 mm thick | m³ | 12.60 | ₦96,000 | ₦1,209,600 |
| 1.03 | Reinforced concrete grade 25 in ground beams; formwork and reinforcement measured separately | m³ | 34.00 | ₦185,000 | ₦6,290,000 |
| 1.04 | Blockwork in 225 mm hollow sandcrete blocks in foundation walls, in cement mortar (1:6) | m² | 300.00 | ₦8,200 | ₦2,460,000 |
| 1.05 | Damp-proof membrane, 1000 gauge polythene, laid on blinding with 300 mm laps | m² | 148.00 | ₦3,100 | ₦458,800 |
| 1.06 | Provisional sum for statutory water connection and meter, to be expended as directed | sum | 1 | ₦850,000 | ₦850,000 |
| Carried to collection | ₦11,443,675 | ||||
Everything except the AI assistant runs with no connection at all. Your projects, your dimensions and your rate library are stored on the device in front of you — there is no server to reach, no session to keep alive and nothing to sync before you can start. On a phone browser at a site meeting, that is the difference between working and waiting.
The cost of that. If the device is lost or wiped, the projects go with it — there is no cloud copy for us to restore. Back up; it is one file. How.
No subscription, no renewal date, no per-seat fee and no sales call. Selar handles naira payment, so no foreign card is needed.
2 active projects. Taking-off, rate build-ups, provisional and prime cost sums and the whole rate library. No sign-up, no card. You cannot export the bill.
Start 2 projects freeOne authorised user, up to 3 devices. Unlimited projects, client-ready PDF and CSV export, on-screen measurement, AI assistance, core updates to version 1.x.
Buy Pro — ₦39,999Up to 5 authorised users and 10 devices on one shared licence key. Everything in the Pro licence. Each person works on their own projects; there is no simultaneous collaborative editing.
Buy Team — ₦149,999On the price: Charged in naira at Selar checkout. This page shows the Africa price because you are reading the Africa page, and both buttons open the Africa product — nothing here is chosen from your IP address. Other regions, and the region selector, are on the pricing page. The amount you pay is the amount shown at checkout before you confirm. Selar is the merchant of record and applies the naira price at checkout, so no foreign card is needed.
Naira price as at . Line-by-line entitlements.
Better you read this now than discover it on a live job.
Yes. Selar is the merchant of record and applies a naira price at checkout, so no foreign card or dollar account is needed. The Pro licence in Nigeria is ₦39,999, paid once.
Yes — BillMate runs in a modern phone or tablet browser with no installation. There are also desktop installers for Windows, macOS and Linux. A licence covers 3 devices, which is the point: the laptop at the desk and the phone on site.
No, deliberately. We ship no rate data at all. A rate from another surveyor's job in another city is not evidence, and a national Nigerian rate is a fiction — Lekki, Ikeja and Ibadan do not price the same. What BillMate gives you is the machinery to build, import, locate, date and maintain your rates. Why we take that position.
Yes — as a work-section template. Start a project from NIQS BESMM4(R) (Nigeria) and its eighteen work sections are created for you, from Preliminaries through to Civil Engineering Works. The AI assistant is instructed in its conventions too.
What we will not say is "compliant". No software audits your measurement against a method of measurement, and none can make an incorrectly measured bill correct. Exactly what is and is not implemented.
From a plan, yes — on-screen plan measurement is part of the Pro licence, and what you measure lands in the dimension sheet where it can be checked. From a BIM or IFC model, no: that is a different capability and BillMate does not have it. The comparison.
Nothing, because there is nothing to stop paying. It is a one-time licence with no renewal date. The copy you have keeps working, and if the price changes for new buyers it does not change for you.
2 projects free, no sign-up, and the whole rate library included.