Buildertrend

Overall, BuilderTrend seems like it could be a good solution for companies that build homes or do other large projects like that with subcontractors. It definitely is not designed for companies that do small jobs or many jobs with one client. Be ready with questions when meeting with your BT rep during your 90 day trail time. Have them show you how things are done so you understand how it works 100%. There were a few features that were promised to us, but then when we asked more specific questions, it turned out that those things were not as promised. However, probably a great tool for a general contractor needing to stay organized and wanting to stay transparent to clients!

Pros

- Time tracking with overtime automatically calculated.
- Job costing with custom jobs/types. Can generate reports so you can see effectiveness of employees.
- Different views for job schedule which can be nice - calendar, agenda, gantt.
- Can store unlimited photos, videos, and documents. All are organized in folders and can be shared with the client easily.
- Can assign multiple employees to jobs as well as subcontractors and their prices and information.
- It will show your current costs, so you can see how much the job is costing the client in real time.
- Most everything is customizable and template based.
- You are assigned a specific rep from BT that will answer all questions and do live training with you - Very helpful.
- There are a fair amount of videos available online from other users who are also using the software.
- Effective for companies that deal with large jobs with many moving parts and subcontractors.
- Client portal for each job that includes notes, pictures, videos, progress, invoices, etc. This all can be hidden from clients as well and customized to how much information you are wanting to share.

Cons

- Calendar feature doesn't allow you to drag and drop jobs or scheduled items and also allow clients to view it. You can either drag and drop or have it be viewable to clients. This is fairly simple to switch back and forth, but it adds extra steps.
- App is not user friendly for employees or technicians. There are too many buttons to press.
- This software only works well for companies that handle large jobs that are long term with many elements.
- To-do's are fairly simple and not well designed. Great that you can add photos, videos, docs to each checklist item. But there's only 1 checkbox per item, no title for the item, and no way to make the to-do list required for employees.
- If you don't press "save" after uploading photos/videos or writing notes, they will disappear and you can easily erase notes. No window that reminds you to save work before moving on.
- Extremely job-based. You must chose the job and then you can view schedule, clock in, add notes, complete checklist, etc. Not easy to view all jobs at same time.
- No line items for invoices.
- Client portal is set up to be job-based and not client-based. That means every job will have to have a different username for the client to log into.
- Overtime that is automatically calculated doesn't automatically calculate a higher rate on the client's budget.
- Learning curve is overall fairly steep. As a fast learner and pretty technically able, it took me a while to figure out how the software worked. Not super intuitive.
- Not a very updated or attractive look.

There are additional comments on the forum and with Derek (from a several months ago). The pain points we were trying to resolve were not resolved with BT. One pain point was dealing with project management. Sharing plans, having daily reports, seeing who is on the job, the calendar, having budgets in an easy, central place, etc. Those were addressed. We were also wanting a program to manage POs /contracts from PO to final payment -dealing with lien releases (all of them, progress, unconditional, final). Allowing for subs to progress bill and deal with change orders and retention. This was not better, in fact we are double entering data and having to extract to DocuSign to get what we need completed.

Pros

Project management. daily reports, calendar, to dos, bidding, having a budget, documents, mobile app, templates

Cons

all things financial - PO's, Lien Releases, integration with QB (need to have PO's and budget integrate), subs submitting an invoice (shouldn't be all or nothing), progress billing. Securing areas of use. Not getting a sub report (with custom columns so we can print a list for customers). Not having custom fields in the PO. not being able to remove former employees from the list (make inactive, like subs). reminders on the bell are always wrong or not relevant. Not able to have a change order directly associated with a PO so we can see the full value of the contract with changes. Managing retention. No PO approval process (internally route). Unable to get signatures on additional lien waivers. Time it takes to push from BT to QB - during billing there is a long delay. Constant circle of death. Unable to pull up vendor from a PO or add a new vendor from PO. With Bills and POs we should be able to select on that bill/po if we want it added to the budget / new expected. On the budget we should be able to select which columns are viewed.