ProContractor

Don't waste your money or time. This software is too cumbersome for users. The accounting records and reports are unreliable.

Pros

There is nothing to like about this software. The whole implementation process was a clumsily mess.

Cons

Everything you need to do with the software takes twice as long to accomplish compared with the older Maxwell software package. Reports are terrible and talk about killing trees, this software wastes more paper than I've ever seen. The implementation support is awful. My predecessor botched the first attempt at installation with purchased help from Viewpoint. When she could not get it working correctly she was fired. The company I was working for (yes, I'm gone too) was assigned another implementation specialist. She took off a third of the way through trying to implement a company again. Her suggestion was to split a rental company into 14 different companies. When she returned from a trip Viewpoint terminated her employment for some unknown reason. They said another implementation specialist would be contacting us but no one did. The owner of my company hired her on a consulting basis. As for year-end approached, she came to our office and manipulated the books to the point where any accountant would no longer be able to rely on the information in the accounting records. When I became convinced the software was a waste of time and money, the implementation consultant claimed I was not competent in accounting. When I confronted her about accounts not being reconciled and incorrect information being sent for tax preparation she told me I was in trouble. She, without any sort of accounting degree knows better than a CPA. Go figure.. I guess the only ones who can work with Viewpoint products are former Viewpoint employees. I come to the conclusion that the software was written by programmers without knowledge of Generally Accepted Accounting Principles. To the best of my knowledge the company is now a year into implementing ProContractor software, has turned over the accountant twice, has spent thousands of dollars, and the implementation has not been completed. This whole process has dragged the company down financially. No one who works with the software likes it.

We are a specialty subcontractor with seven entities doing approximately $50M/revenue, have been growing double digits since ProContractor installation and have been ProContractor users for approximately 3.5 years.

Pros

ProContractor is a great all in one integrated system, housing all needs of our business, from estimating and project management through HR (not enrollment) and accounting. All modules are communicating mostly seamlessly and it handles our many intercompany transactions without issue. In addition, for someone who was new to the construction industry as an accounting professional when I started using ProContractor, I found it incredibly user friendly and easy to navigate!

Cons

As someone who is not extremely IT savvy, my biggest complaint is the out of the box reporting capabilities. Because of the module design, often you can't combine multiple attributes of two different modules into one report, instead you download the information and work with it in Excel. In addition, project management reporting is lacking, especially from a budget to actual perspective, despite all of the necessary information being there (this is from an accounting perspective, but I don't often hear that from our project managers).

Also, the journal entry process is extremely cumbersome - I don't understand why they can't just design an Excel upload template.

Finally, from a customer service perspective, I typically find them to be very responsive; however, for tougher questions or training needs, it is difficult to get them to dedicate time to you or follow-up unless you are persistent (i.e. they always want to try to knock it all out in a one hour phone call). Having said that though, some of our issues are self driven in that we skimped on a few attributes of original adoption/integration in order to save a few dollars.