Buildertrend Reviews

Buildertrend is great--I love using the Activity Calendar and Lead Report to keep track of my follow up with my customers. I can use activity notes to remember what I discussed with customers when we last spoke, and this helps me engage in better dialogue when I follow up with customers. Our installation team loves using the project management feature to keep track of our installs and provide an easy transition from sales to installation.

The user interface is kind of clunky, especially on the app. Sometimes it is difficult to find stuff and the filters can get annoying.

Buildertrend (BT) is PM software for construction, especially residential. I used this software for project tracking, cost, and communication with the customer. This software has many different features and levels to us it. You have PO's , Change Orders, Invoicing, Blueprints, Selections, etc. Having everything you need in one place makes it easy to have a high level overview of the project and see any detail needed. BT also sync's with Quickbooks making accounting a breeze!

Setting up BT can take quite sometime and training is needed for the software. If you are tech savvy, you can probably get away without training but will be missing alot of the features that BT offers that makes it worth it. Also, when syncing with quickbooks, you can get errors and everything must match 100%. It is best if you build everything in quickbooks and then import it into BT when setting up so that you know everything is correct and the accounts are linked.

Has nice TAKEOFF features. Has customer facing features

Not true estimating software, but was portrayed as such. No labor units. The free trial is not really free, because extensive training and setup is needed to even use the software. Need to have someone to set up the software, and learn it fast to be able to recoup the expense of the software. Continued taking money out of my account, even with no contact for months. It's better to purchase on-site software, and have someone train on site. That way you're not paying a fortune every month, for something you cant use.

Clients and Sub-Contractors love it, and it nails-it with respect to the execution of task scheduling and overall project management, the most essential functions.

It feels more complicated than it needs to be. Perhaps it's a reflection of their broad and deep capabilities, but I sense and suspect that we're missing out on easily-accessible value-creation potential merely because adoption & utilization is slower than it could/should be due to not focusing on the most high-impact essentials.

I like that it is easy to use. I also LOVE the iPhone app. Once everything has been loaded, I can send large files, communicate effectively, and raise the efficiency of my team and sub-contractors. I also Love the ability to template a project for easy set up of a new project!

When building significant line item estimates, the browser page has to refresh each time as you switch from the budget tab to the estimate tab. Even with a fast connection, it takes a bit of time to update. Not a big complaint since you can upload a spreadsheet from excel for the initial set up.

BuilderTrend worked OK for the most part but was a little slow. Always a lag time refreshing screens

Functionality could be improved. Navigation could have been improved. They spent all of their time adding more things that they could charge more for.

I love the all encompassing information housing Buildertrend provides for each of our jobs. All of our team members can access this info with ease. No more information hiding in private emails or documents hiding on company drives...all of which cause major problems when team members are on holiday or out sick.

There are a few quirks and drawbacks I have found on Buildertrend. The most common qiurk seems to be the inconsistency of the same functions across different sections in Buildertrend. For instance uploading a file is done one way in one section of Buildertrend and a different way in another. Same with deleting items. In one section things just delete, in other sections you have to verify deletion and then select done...two extra steps. In the Leads section I can send a document out to be signed whether or not a customer has a log in to Buildertrend, but in the Change Order section (once the lead is a job) I can no longer send documents to an external emails for approval. I have to use Docusign to get signatures. This is not very streamlined. Seems like they had different teams writing code for different sections and they never communicated to each other on how to keep functions consistent throughout the software.
The worst drawback is that there is essentially no function for schedulING. The scheduLES within each job are great, but when it comes time for a foreman to see what team members and subs are scheduled on what jobs and what ones are available to schedule, there is no function :(

Our company and employees really enjoy BuilderTREND due to its project tracking capabilities. In addition, it is able to integrate into the third-party product we use (Salesforce). This makes this product an obvious choice for our companies needs.

There are no real cons I can vouch for at this time. This product currently meets our needs!

I like how user friendly it is for me. I am 26 years old. I understand how to operate a computer. For a lot of my colleagues who are older, they have a harder time. I like how the site has been very easy and quick to get down. User functionality is a plus.

I don’t like how the software allows me as an admin more ability to see details of jobs in certain views and makes my trade partners click into each job to see names of jobs, and job description etc.

The included customer service team and support are unmatched. When you're running your business through this program, sometimes you need an immediate answer or need to learn a new feature on the fly and having instant access to those webinars and forums is invaluable.

I also love how detailed and thought through each feature is - it's what made the switch from our old process so easy because they literally thought of everything!

I could go on forever... the custom fields, different types of users and permissions, project templates, sync to Quickbooks... Buildertrend is doing it and doing it well.

Some of the features like selections, financials, and the gantt chart portion of the calendar are definitely more challenging when trying to switch from our current process over to Buildertrend. However, I'm not sure if there is a better way for any of those; I know those will have a learning curve because those are the more difficult parts of the project.

It's hard to come up with cons for the program because I feel a lot of my issues could be resolved by learning more about the feature. I guess I'll leave with a suggestion: maybe emailing or notifying users of the next month's available webinars or reminders to use the resources -- I forgot these existed for about a year, I was just watching the videos available. I would like to see more videos uploaded -- long and short on specific features.

Pictures, prices, all available in one spot.
I love the fact that I can view by location, or category. But it is impractical to use because there is so much dead space between items.
It is great being able to tally up costs as you pick items. unfortunately the costs show up in the wrong fields. See the cons section for more.
I really love the pictures and the details. the fact that I can see multiple images , in different rooms of the floor that I picked, for example.

Very intuitive.

Summary Price information is all wrong. My total price and remaining balance are the same! How can that be? As I pick additional items the dollar figure under selections made goes down. How can that be? I have no idea what my condo rebuild will cost me.
It takes 500 click for me to pick flooring for 1 condo. I should be able to say "I want Tile- Wood Plank- 6"x 24" Lumber Gray tiles throughout". It takes hours for me to record what should take 1 minute!
Each section is organized difrently. in the 1st section (enterance) my tile is 1st on the grid. Then on the second(Kitchen) it is last! This makes it so hard to search.
If I look at a category view, there are page, after page of blank space between items, making it impossible to use. I have to go through 10 pages to move between flooring selections in this view making it useless. The same hold true for the location view. I suspect this is a function of the data loader, but the company and project managers always say "that is the way BY works" When I complain to Road runner restoration they say they can do nothing about it. They state they cant modify the software!
The user has no capability to undo selections! So if we make a mistake we need to wait a month for the construction company to make changes.
Items .
If I logon to two units in the same webbrowser, one overwrites the other! Aaaah!

organization, everything in one place...even if you want your QB to link to it, which we don't...I kinda like the two separate. We don't really use the PO portion of the software but have tried it and it's nice to know that its there...wish there were more video's on the entire program from set up through project completion. Techniques and more demonstrations on product capabilities and link-able aspects of the program.

I use chief architect for our design software, have been for over 20 years. They have great video's of product usage, tips and techniques by chapter from set up to a completed set of quality professional plans.

I believe BT could do the same, this is a great product for managing a company like ours and the cloud just makes it that much easier to work remotely anywhere in the web is. The price point is perfect for us and allows us to operate at a competitive rate.

For what I use it for I don't really have a dislike but I don't use but maybe half of the program.
Wish there were more video's on the entire program from set up through project completion. Techniques and more demonstrations on product capabilities and link-able aspects of the program.