Autodesk BIM Collaborate Pro (formerly BIM360) is a construction software for project managers, site managers, and Building Information Modelling (BIM) managers. It is designed to connect the office and site components of construction, providing cloud-based access to plans and models.
$480
per user/per year
Sage 100 Contractor
Score 6.8 out of 10
N/A
Sage 100 Contractor is a construction accounting and project management software. It is intended to provide primary accounting and other management capabilities across a construction project lifecycle, including estimating, service management, and reporting.
Autodesk Bim 360 is well suited to the majority of construction projects in my opinion. On the construction side I could see how the straightforward nature of the platform would be well liked. The new update with the widgets is a great touch and allows for ease of site visits by showcasing good to know info like project location on a map and the local weather. You can also customize the "widgets" as you see fit to add more information if necessary to the home screen. From my experience as a LEED consultant, Bim 360 does not differ much from other platforms used for submittal review like Procore. It is easy enough to search for what you want but searches do take a while and you need to move the cursor over every time you search and do not find what you're looking for, which seems very unnecessary. Overall it is fine for reviewing documentation but isn't anything extraordinary.
Sage 100 does what it needs to do for construction project job costing, and we additionally use it to enter payroll. That process is a bit cumbersome, time consuming with the # of employees we have. If the employee timecard was a lot simpler it would speed up the weekly payroll data entry process. As far as on the financial side, no complaints. Our controller seems to be happy with the system. He originally recommended we use it to more of its capacity earlier this year
Sage integrates very well with our field time tracking software called Exaktime. We import the start/end time card data that includes job costs directly to the PR module which greatly reduces the time it takes to process payroll.
Sage 100 C payroll calculations and WC/GL overhead calculations are easy to use and understand. The WC/GL overhead calculations are posted to project costs in real-time allowing for accurate total cost reporting of the project.
Bim360 is extremely unintuitive and frequently confusing to end users.
There are multiple avenues of sharing and collaboration for models and information. The advantages/disadvantages of each and how to perform even the most basic of tasks requires extensive training and mentoring for even the most advanced of users.
There are many enormous limitations and constraints to BIM 360 that are not immediately obvious and even contrary to published marketing materials and even product naming.
Development cycles of the product are seemingly monthly, but incredibly minor. This makes the desperately-needed and glaringly obvious massive usability, capability, and performance improvements into deal-breakers and hair pulling events. Change cannot come fast enough.
There are no integrations into Microsoft's Azure AD SSO or other 3rd party SSOs available for SMBs. This makes the provided MFA a huge headache for all SMBs.
There are no integrations into the Microsoft 365 ecosystem for SharePoint/OneDrive or Outlook. This is desperately needed for most organizations using Bim360.
Making time and material billings easier by complying with my proposal requirements.
Reducing the cost of support, since I hardly use it.
I don't like the reviews since we do a lot of small projects along with some big ones. Billings or invoices from vendors that have the same amount always trigger a question. Therefore I don't do the reviews anymore. It's so much nothing.
The cost of Sage 100 Contractor software is relatively inexpensive compared to some higher-priced options like Foundation and Microsoft Dynamics GP. But more importantly, the cost of implementing new software is costly. Implementation costs include testing and training. There are also risks involved with switching software such as missing data after conversion. Plus, there are always some unknown downsides to switching that are not apparent until the switch is made such as perceived capabilities that really don't exist. For these reasons, we will likely stay with Sage 100 Contractor for a long time. If we grow (say double) in size, we would consider other options.
AutoDesk support is slow and if you are not an enterprise customer they will likely tell you to go to forums and post for help pushing the support on the high-level end-users (some of which are AutoDesk employees). I haven't actually had issues requiring support with docs altough there are some features I wish it had
If we ever have issues with Sage 100, the live chat is an awesome tool. However, most of our live chat inquiries are not because of the issues we have, but more for us to better understand how we are supposed to use the software. Sometimes we ask ourselves "what if we" and if we need guidance, the live chat will provide us with the answers or resources to figure out what we need. They always follow up to ensure the problems we encounter have been fixed. If our issue is an indicator of an upgrade that could be made, Sage 100 C offers a way to submit the idea for review and improvement of the software.
The saving in reduced field changes/mistakes quickly paid for the license plus some. The software allows for easy data collection, especially at project completion for field software by checklist creation. Furthermore, the internal punch-list tracking, tracking completion lists and punch lists created for us by others is optimal compared to the competition. We chose Bim360 over other options due to its ability to import out of other software programs directly into the system, adding reports in one location and then distributing it to subcontractors and internally from there to fix deficiencies. It does the tracking, importing, markups of pictures and document viewing well and fulfills our needs.
We are currently looking at Vista as a replacement Sage 100. The estimating features appear to be exactly what our department is looking for and the accounting staff is very pleased as well. We brought in Procore about a year ago and are very happy with it. The field staff is really warming up to it and the RFI and other communication is top notch.
Positively we use for all safety items, so its potential to save money is really something cannot be quantified. It has helped document trends, big items leading trends and odd ball cases which overall helps perfecting process to eliminate those trends and save time.
Negative impact is we need to pay for another program to handle budget, submittals and bidding so we are paying for two systems and paying for all employees to learn each system and possible make errors since there are differences in the systems.
