A Site Diary is your daily site record — progress, labour, plant, materials, dockets, instructions, HSE incidents, and photos, all captured against the day they happened. This article shows you how to add one in CivilPro Web (including mobile via your browser).
Overview
In addition to tracking site progress, Site Diaries are the primary way daycost data enters CivilPro. If you aren't tracking costs on your project, you can just ignore mentions of cost capture.
If costs are being tracked, once a diary is created and reviewed, the recorded costs flow into the Daycost Register, where they feed cost tracking, invoice reconciliation, and forecasting.
The full cost workflow is a two-stage process — and it's important to know which stage happens where:
| Stage | Who | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Create | Supervisor (on-site) | Web / mobile browser |
| Review | PM or Contract Administrator | CivilPro Desktop |
⚠️ Daycosts do not appear in cost reports until the Site Diary has been reviewed. If your cost data looks stale, check whether recent diaries are still sitting at unreviewed status. Only diaries marked Reviewed push their costs into the Daycost Register.
Before you start
Set these up first — otherwise the Costs and Cost Codes sections of the diary will have nothing to draw from:
- Suppliers + Resources — your labour, plant, and material library, with category and supplier populated where possible. Useful to have populated up front, but can be populated progressively.
- Cost Codes — required if you want to allocate cost codes during the diary entry
- Reviewer — identify the person (PM or CA) who will approve diaries in Desktop, and ensure they have sufficient permissions to do so (default Project Administrator Role or Sub Admin will be fine)
Step-by-step
1. Open the Site Diary register
From the left navigation, open the Field group and select Site Diary.
2. Create a new diary
Click New Diary. The diary editor opens.
The diary ID is assigned automatically, but you can edit it if your project has its own numbering convention.
3. Activity Summary
Complete the headline details for the day:
- Date — the day the activities occurred (not the day you're writing the diary, if they differ)
- Reviewer — the user who will review and approve the diary in Desktop. Strongly recommended even though optional
- Site Activity — a short narrative of what happened on site that day. This is the field your PM, client, or future-you will read first
4. Instructions
Log any instructions issued or received that day — from the client or authority, or to subcontractors, suppliers, or staff. These can later be referenced in Contract Notices or Variations that result.
Click Add Instruction, fill out the dialog, and save.
Instructions added here also appear in the Instructions Register automatically — you don't need to enter them twice.
5. Costs (optional)
This is where labour, plant, materials, and subcontractor costs are captured for the day. For each row:
- Supplier — pick from the Supplier list, or input manually and it'll be added to the Suppliers list
- Resource — pick from your Resources library (or input); the rate populates from the resource record
- Quantity — hours, units, or volume as appropriate
- Docket Number — the supplier's docket reference (this is what makes invoice reconciliation easier later)
Copy Costs From Previous - this allows you to copy across all entries (and totals) from a previous site diary, great for similar work day-after-day. To find relevant diary entry, use the Date and User dropdowns. Then select a few, or Copy All to pull them in.
💡 Tip — get docket numbers in at the time of entry. If you skip the docket number, invoice reconciliation later turns into detective work. Photos of dockets can be attached on the Photos page (step 7) for backup.
6. Cost Codes (optional)
If you haven't copied in a previous set of costs, you'll need to select Manage Cost Codes to add cost code columns into the register as below. Once added, distribute the quantities for each row to relevant cost code.
- When quantities are completely distributed to CC's, line goes green
- When quantities are yet to be distributed to CC's, line remains red
Once Site Diary is saved, then reviewed, these costs will appear in the Daycost Register.
If your cost codes haven't been set up yet, this is where you'll notice — back out, set them up in the Cost Codes register, then come back.
7. HSE (Health, Safety & Environment)
Record any incidents or near misses for the day. Click Add Incident and complete the fields. As with Instructions, anything entered here flows automatically into the Incidents Register in Desktop (if you require in Web, please get in touch with support to prioritise!).
8. Photos
Upload photos that support the day's record — site progress, dockets, incidents, anything that's worth a thousand words. Click Upload Photo and select from your device.
If you're on a phone, this is where you'd attach photos taken that day on-site from your gallery.
9. Save the diary
Save the diary when you're done. Its status will move from Created to Entered, ready for your reviewer to approve in Desktop.
What happens next
- The reviewer opens the diary in CivilPro Desktop and approves it (see Review Site Diary (D))
- On approval, the diary status changes to Reviewed
- The recorded costs are pushed into the Daycost Register, where they appear in cost tracking, reconcile against invoices, and feed your live forecast
If the costs aren't showing up in the Daycost Register or in cost reports, the most common cause is that the diary is not Reviewed.
Common questions
Q: Why aren't the costs from my diary showing up in the Daycost Register? A: The diary needs to be Reviewed in Desktop by the nominated reviewer. Until then it the costs don't sync.
Q: Can I create a Site Diary on my phone? A: Yes — the Site Diary is a core mobile workflow.
Q: A daycost ended up in the wrong report period — how do I fix it? A: Use Move Daycost in Desktop. Open the daycost record → Action on Selection → Move Daycost → pick the correct period. You don't need to delete and re-enter.
Q: Can I delete a resource I no longer use? A: Only if it's never been recorded in a Site Diary. Once it's been used, you can't delete it (the historical records depend on it) — mark it Inactive instead, which removes it from creation dropdowns while preserving past entries.
Q: Can I capture waste or re-used material in a diary? A: Costs in the diary are for resources used. For tracking waste volumes or re-used material against the schedule, the right tool is the Not Claimed Items flag in the Schedule of Quantities — not the Site Diary.
Edge cases & tips
- Diary ID is editable. Auto-assigned by default, but you can override it if your project uses a custom numbering scheme. Decide once at project setup; don't mix numbering conventions partway through.
- Instructions and Incidents auto-register. Anything you log in the Instructions or HSE sections appears in the Instructions Register and Incidents Register without needing to re-enter it. Don't double-up.
- Mobile-first capture, Desktop-first review. The Web/mobile interface is built for the supervisor entering data on-site at the end of the day. Desktop is built for the PM/CA reviewing and reconciling in the office. Use the right tool for the role.
- Resources need a category or supplier. When setting up the Resources library, populate either Category (e.g. Internal Labour, Drainage) or Supplier against each resource — this is what makes daycost filtering and invoice reconciliation usable later.
- Cross-project rollup is Desktop-only. If you need to aggregate daycosts across multiple projects, that's done via Cross Project Search in Desktop (or the API for live dashboards) — not from the Web Site Diary register.