Buildertrend

I implemented my first system for production home building in 1991, so I have a little experience in this area. After trying 2 other competitors on a trial basis, we selected our first choice, BuilderTrend to help us manage our projects. It is customizable and also follows standards which help you efficiently manage your business whether a new builder, remodeler or other home improvement type company. But, the best part has been adoption and the response of customers. We actually remodeled two projects for the same customer while they were out of the country. The communication features in BT facilitated what would not have been possible in the same time frame in the past plus processed payments. Using BuilderTrend has been a great marketing tool to set us apart from the competition.

Subcontractor use has been our biggest roadblock as it takes more training with some and reminders to get them to use the software.

Scheduling, Logging, Time clocks, to do's ETC are very easy to use and extremely handy/ useful for use as a construction company for various reasons such as keeping a constant flow of action happening on our building sites and in theory there should be no gaps of time on the building site where nobody is working or unable to work, we believe keeping a consistent flow of action on a building site is possible through buildertrend and with nobody having to go out to site to check whats happening on site 90% of the time

sub contractors don't generally enjoy singing into our computer system every time they want paid or to confirm theyre gonna take action on a job ETC,
this isnt to blame on buildertrend its just we struggle to get our sub contractors to cooperate using our online services,

They are fantastic at marketing their product and putting on a good demo. Strong feature set if you can overcome a lack of flow and common sense usability.

Packed with features yet ease of use is paid no mind. I was in the software field when everything transitioned to SAS from legacy hardware. The most important factors (high level) are security, down time, make it extremely user friendly, and feature functionality (not at the risk of losing ground on a user friendly interface). Today, if one can’t jump into a software for the first time ever and make it work with ease then it has little to no value (my humble opinion). This is exactly why many companies provide only 30 or 14 day trials or less. It either meets your needs or not but if you can’t figure it out because the execution is poor and the interface is clunky, it’s not a worthwhile investment. I think this company has focused too much on marketing with social media heads like “The Build Show” for popularity and too little on development. Make it stupid simple to where a VA in the Philippines can use it with ease and no background, only then would I have interest in trialing it. Also, the mobile app should be wiped clean and redone entirely - not usable. On to the next.