Construction AND Accounting Software???

My client currently uses Quickbooks for his remodeling business, and he has had to create a number of excel spreadsheets just to get the information he needs from a project management standpoint because Quickbooks is just not efficient for job costing. It never seems to be in sync with the information he produces himself so we think it's time to look for an accounting software that is construction specific. He currently uses Co-Construct but would like something that includes the accounting side so everything is in one place. Do you have any construction clients that are satisfied with their accounting systems/software and how it integrates with industry practice? Any comments are much appreciated.

We looked at length for the same thing for a cell phone tower construction business operating in multiple states. We settled on Foundation which is based in Cleveland, OH. It takes a while to get your hands around it and it's around $10,000-$15,000 (depending on modules). It's not a "friendly" as QB and it is possible to have a balance sheet that doesn't balance. To make changes, you have to do journal entries and reversing entries. Whoever is handling the accounting end of it, needs to be fully knowledgeable in debits and credits. It does take longer than the 2-3 months recommended by Foundation to get your hands around it.
All that said, it does an excellent job of job costing, budgeting, variances, etc. Worth evaluating to see if it will work for you.

Several year ago I converted an electrical subcontractor from quickbooks to Timberline for the same reason. I loved the software.

I found it pretty easy to get up to speed on. It also needs someone knowledgeable in debits and credits.

Thank you for the input!!

Sorry I'm late to the party.

Sage Software now owns Timberline (Sage 300) and MasterBuilder (Sage 100). I think the first question is...How much volume are they doing?

Also, before you spend a lot of time and money, have you done everything you can to set-up QuickBooks to meet the need.

Can someone on site run more complicated accounting software? These softwares are much more difficult to navigate and really need a trained accountant to run them.

Why not set up each job as a customer, and bill all of the costs to that customer in Quickbooks?

QB is fine for a small contractor. However it does not handle Work in Process well. Also does not handle payroll in multiple states.

QB is fine for a small contractor. However it does not handle Work in Process well. Also does not handle payroll in multiple states.

Can you be a little more specific? According to Intuit, "Enhanced Payroll includes many state forms. For state forms not yet supported, we provide a State Tax Summary report with all the payroll data you need." Are you saying that there are no two states in the country where QB can handle payroll for employees working in both?

When you say QB does not handle Work in Process well, are you talking about the Premier Contractor Edition?

QB is fine for a small contractor. However it does not handle Work in Process well. Also does not handle payroll in multiple states.

Years ago, we had a client that had an employee in another state, and QB handled it. What it didn't handle was the creation of the state forms (we had the lower end package), but reports provided allowed us the manually create the forms.

QB can't handle when an employee works in more than one state.

I have a remodeling client who uses QB Pro for accounting and BuilderTrend for project management. BT integrates with QB (for an additional $10/month). As far as integration goes the sync has been fairly seamless. I won't say there have been 0 issues but compared to other integrated products I'm familiar with the sync runs pretty well. QB is still not a perfect solution for cost accounting. For example, this client uses QB payroll. On the timesheets the site managers record their time spent on each job. All are on salary so no matter how much time is allocated to a job their pay will stay the same (no OT etc.). What happened though is the PL by job increased the direct labor by the number of hours so the PL by job for the same period would not match the PL for the same time period.
The purpose of tracking actual hours per job was for management to look at each manager's efficiency and to look at how much time to allocate in the future to similar jobs.

We bailed on Foundation because of the time involved in getting the information correct. It tripled our bookkeeping hours! Now we're looking at QuickData. Used to be part of Intuit but was sold in Spring 2016