What a bill of quantities is, how a quantity surveyor in Ghana expects it laid out, and how GhanaHousePlanner's BOQ now prices delivery to your site, follows your region's rates, and exports to Excel with live totals — by trade or by SMM7 work sections.
A cost estimate tells you roughly what your house will cost. A bill of quantities (BOQ) tells your quantity surveyor, contractor, or bank exactly how that figure was reached: every item, its unit, its quantity, its rate, and its amount, grouped into sections and carried to a grand total. It is the document you tender with, finance against, and check your contractor's requests against.
GhanaHousePlanner builds your BOQ from the same data as your cost estimate and your floor plan. This guide explains what is in it, the two ways it can be laid out, and how its rates now reflect where you are building.
Different readers expect different layouts, so you can pick either when you export.
By trade is our own layout and the default: Substructure, Superstructure, Roofing, Plumbing Installations, Electrical Installations, Finishes & Joinery, External Works, then Preliminaries & Provisional Sums. It reads naturally for an owner, a contractor, or a family member following the build.
SMM7 work sections is the arrangement Ghanaian quantity surveyors work to. The bill follows the Common Arrangement of Work Sections:
Every line gets a reference (E1, E2, F1…), and a collection page lists each section's total before the grand total, so a quantity surveyor can check and price it the way they are used to. One honest note: our quantities are the estimate's supply quantities, and labour is a single sum under A, so the bill is arranged by SMM7 rather than measured to its rules.
The PDF is ready to send: to a contractor for a tender, to a bank with a loan application, or to family abroad who are funding the build.
The Excel export is for working on. It is a real .xlsx file with two sheets, Bill and Collection, and the figures are live formulas: each amount is quantity × rate, each section total is a sum of its amounts, and the collection pulls each total from the bill. Change the rate for cement after a supplier's quote, or adjust a quantity after your quantity surveyor's measure, and every total updates.
A bag of cement doesn't cost the same in Tamale as in Tema. Manufactured goods such as cement, steel, and roofing sheets travel from the factories and ports in the south, so they cost more the farther north you build; sand and stone are dug locally and are often cheaper away from Accra. Every line of your BOQ carries your region's rate, so the lines add up to the regional estimate rather than to Accra prices.
Transport is one of the costs builders most often forget, and it isn't the same for every site. A plot in town with block factories and quarries nearby pays very little for delivery; a site 30 km out on a rough road pays much more for every trip of sand.
In the Cost Estimator, choose how far your site is from your suppliers:
Only the delivered part of a price goes up, and only for bulky materials. Sand and stone, sold by the delivered trip, rise the most; blocks and timber less; cement, steel, and roofing sheets a little; fittings, cables, and paint not at all. The estimate tells you how much delivery adds, and the BOQ's rates include it.
The estimate, the BOQ's total, and its trade subtotals are free. Every line and the PDF and Excel exports come with the Starter and Professional plans.
Use our advanced cost calculator to get accurate estimates for your building project in Ghana
A friend's architect drew it, a plan book sold it to you, or a designer sent a PDF and disappeared — either way, a plan on its own doesn't build a house. Here's the full path from an existing drawing to a finished, supervised build.
Got a finished floor plan from another designer, a plan book, or a friend's architect? Upload it to GhanaHousePlanner and get it rebuilt as a Ghana Building Code-compliant plan with a real cost estimate — no redrawing from scratch.
Updated 2026 prices: Build cost ₵2,500-₵6,000 per m² depending on finish level. Free cost calculator for all 16 regions. Budget accurately for your Ghana construction project.