Excel stays the interface
Upload cost plans and ERP actuals from templates. Export the summary back to a formatted workbook. Nobody has to learn a new way to enter numbers.
CAPEX planning, allocation and reporting
Your capex plan lives in Excel. Now it reconciles.
CAPEXdesk is a system of record for capital expenditure. It holds what was planned, committed, allocated and approved — and reconciles it against what your ERP says was spent. It sits alongside SAP, Oracle and Unifier, read-only, and never writes back to them.
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CAPEX Summary
Approved budget£48.2m
Forecast£46.9m
Variance−£1.3m
| Project | Committed | Incurred | Paid |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tower A — substructure | 12,400,000 | 9,880,000 | 8,210,000 |
| Tower A — façade | 7,150,000 | 3,020,000 | 2,400,000 |
| Podium retail fit-out | 4,900,000 | 4,900,000 | 4,455,000 |
| Infrastructure & utilities | 6,300,000 | 2,140,000 | 1,980,000 |
| Professional fees | 2,050,000 | 1,760,000 | 1,760,000 |
Illustration of the CAPEX Summary. Figures are examples.
What it is
A capex system of record that keeps Excel in the loop.
Your ERP is the system of record for what was spent. It was never designed to hold a capital plan, a phasing, a commitment that has not been invoiced, or an approval chain. That work goes into spreadsheets — and stays there. CAPEXdesk is where it lives instead.
One-way beside your ERP Read-only
Integration runs in one direction. Nothing CAPEXdesk does can alter your system of record, so adopting it risks nothing you already rely on.
Committed, incurred and paid stay apart
Never merged into a single “spent”. One number that quietly means committed overstates your position by every purchase order not yet started.
The summary
Every project, one page, any level of detail.
Budget against forecast against actuals, across the whole portfolio or down to a single asset. Expand any level of the work breakdown in place.
- Approved budget, forecast and variance side by side
- Committed, incurred and paid as three separate columns
- Cash or accrual basis — chosen once, and it locks when actuals arrive
- Export the whole matrix to Excel as it appears on screen
How it works
Seven steps, each approved before the next.
The lifecycle every capital programme already runs on, made explicit — with a name and a date against every approval, and versions that supersede rather than get edited.
- Nothing moves to the next step without a recorded sign-off
- An approver cannot approve their own submission
- A superseded version is never overwritten, so history stays intact
- Every figure traces back to the document it arrived on
1 Structure — work breakdown
2 Approved budget — the baseline
3 Forecast — re-phase what is left
4 Commitments — POs and contracts
5 Cash — what has been paid
6 Reconcile — ERP actuals mapped back
7 Reallocation — with a reason recorded
Control
Close a month and mean it.
A period lock stops anything committing into a closed month — including an upload validated before the lock and confirmed after it. A stage gate freezes the plan of record so a later variance is measured against what was actually agreed.
- Locks apply portfolio-wide or per project
- Only an approver can close a period, and it is recorded against them
- Stage gates copy the plan, so the frozen version holds real figures
- No silent unlock — if it cannot be undone, the screen says so
January 2027 Closed
February 2027 Closed
March 2027 Open
April 2027 Open
May 2027 Open
Modules
Start with the core. Add the rest when you need it.
Modules you have not enabled are hidden, not greyed out — a core-only company sees a genuinely simple product rather than a screen full of locked doors.
Core
Everything needed to plan, approve and report.
- Work breakdown structure
- Budgets and versions
- Forecasting and re-phasing
- Summary and report packs
- Audit log
Commitments
Track what is contracted, separately from what is incurred.
- Purchase orders and contracts
- Committed against budget
- Uncommitted budget
Rates
A rate library with the maths to challenge an outlier.
- Medians and variance bands
- Deviation warnings
- Package reconciliation
Cash
What has actually left the account, and when.
- Payments against invoices
- Cash-basis reporting
- Cash to go
Reporting
The board pack, generated from the approved version.
Not rebuilt by hand each month, and not out of date by the meeting.
Report packs
Generated against a chosen version, as a formatted workbook your directors already know how to read.
Version compare
What moved between two versions, decomposed by cause, with the residual shown rather than quietly absorbed.
Audit log
Every change, who made it and when — filterable, exportable, and hash-chained so a record cannot be quietly altered.
Security
Built for the auditor, not just the accountant.
We are early, and we say so. These decisions were made on day one, because retrofitting them is how capex platforms end up untrustworthy.
Tamper-evident audit log
Hash-chained, and the database itself refuses updates and deletes on the log. A constraint, not a policy.
One database per client
Isolation is the database boundary, not a column in a shared table. Your data is not co-mingled with anyone else's.
Multi-factor enforced
Required on privileged access rather than offered as an option. Encrypted in transit and at rest, with short-lived sessions.
Regional hosting
UK and EU as standard. In-Kingdom hosting for Saudi Arabia and the wider GCC on request.
SOC 2 Type II In progress
Not certified yet, and we will not pretend otherwise. Ask and we will send the current security overview.
Your data stays yours
Export the whole company — every version, line and audit record — to a file at any time, without asking us.
FAQ
Questions we are actually asked.
Does it replace SAP or Oracle?
No. It sits alongside them and reads from them. Your ERP stays the system of record for what was spent.
Can it write back to our ERP?
No, by design. Integration is one-way, so adopting CAPEXdesk cannot affect the systems you already depend on.
Do we have to stop using Excel?
No. Cost plans and ERP actuals come in as workbooks, and the summary and report packs go back out as workbooks.
Where is our data held?
In its own database, not a shared table with a tenant column. UK and EU regions as standard; GCC and in-Kingdom on request.
Can a figure be changed after approval?
Not silently. Versions supersede rather than get edited, the audit log is hash-chained, and a locked period refuses new commitments.
How do we start?
Create a company, build the work breakdown, and upload a cost plan. Or book a call and we will walk through it on your numbers.
Start today, or have us walk you through it.
Create a company and load a cost plan yourself, or book a call and we will show you the product on your own numbers rather than a demo dataset.
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