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Any experience with BuilderTrend?

  • 1.  Any experience with BuilderTrend?

    Posted 02-12-2020 07:29
    Good morning, all,
    A small remodeling contractor recently was telling me about his experience with a construction management product called BuilderTrend.  He loves the product, but it doesn't integrate nicely with QuickBooks so they are essentially running parallel systems.

    Does any have experience with BuilderTrend?  If so, are you able to integrate it with your accounting software, and if so, what software are you using?

    Any help that I can pass on to him would be greatly appreciated!
    Joselin Martin

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    Joselin Martin CCIFP, CPA, CGMA
    Owner/CEO
    True North CFO
    Baltimore MD
    (443) 416-1156
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  • 2.  RE: Any experience with BuilderTrend?

    Posted 02-13-2020 12:50
    Hi Joselin,

    I work for a residential remodeler and we use BuilderTrend extensively, for everything from estimating and contracts to daily logs in the field. We have used a few of the integration points with Xero (similar to Quickbooks).

    In my experience, it has not been easy to track actual expenses or produce job cost reports in Buildertrend. For someone running only a handful of jobs, or a home builder mostly using subcontractors, it might be easier. In our case, we have about 40 jobs in BuilderTrend at a given time, and we self-perform a good amount of our work. Due to the complexity, we have to pull estimates from Buildertrend and actuals from Xero into Excel to get some of the reports we need.

    Overall we like the software, but the integration is limited.

    I'd be glad to compare notes with your friend if he wants to contact me.

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    Daniel Forster
    Bookkeeper
    Lamont Bros LLC
    Oregon City OR
    www.lamontbros.com
    (503) 616-8249
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    Original Message


  • 3.  RE: Any experience with BuilderTrend?

    Posted 02-14-2020 18:40
    Thank you very much for taking the time to respond.
    Your experience very much matches the experience they are having.  They actually love it for the PMs (home remodeling business), but the lack of integration may be a major limitation as they grow.  From their website, Xero and QB are the only products they claim to integrate with, and neither seems to work as described.

    Again, thank you for your experience!
    Joselin


    ------------------------------
    Joselin Martin CCIFP, CPA, CGMA
    Owner/CEO
    True North CFO
    Baltimore MD
    (443) 416-1156
    ------------------------------

    Original Message


  • 4.  RE: Any experience with BuilderTrend?

    Posted 02-17-2020 08:24
    I was recently the CFO for a residential construction company that used BuilderTrend for all of its projects.  It was great for the PM's and I was able to make it work for me as well.  When a new project was created, our estimators were uploading the budgets into BuilderTrend from which PO's and subcontracts were issued directly to vendor/subs that were required to sign up with BuilderTrend.  Because BuilderTrend did not create all of the necessary reports for me to use, I would also enter the budget into Quickbooks manually.  I would have preferred not to have to do this, but it was worth it for the reports.

    Once the project was created in both BuilderTrend and Quickbooks, the projects were linked via a connector.  At this point, all invoices entered into Quickbooks were synced with BuilderTrend so that project bills and payments did not have to be entered separately into both systems.  Change orders created in BuilderTrend and approved by the owners directly in BuilderTrend would automatically create a new client invoice in Quickbooks.

    In the end, I found that using BuilderTrend and Quickbooks together was very valuable for me.  You can learn to live with the integration shortcomings.  Seeing the projects from the PM's perspective with commitments and daily logs in real time was something we could not live without.

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    Bryan Wates
    CFO
    Dargan Construction
    Myrtle Beach SC
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    Original Message