Likelihood to Recommend In this case, CF is the best of the 'OK so far' category in my mind. NONE of the software available today gets close to a truly effective, user friendly GUI and functionality set. I have used 7 different systems over the years, with the top 4 big names having the largest hours operating. Most have less functionality, others are severely overpriced and under featured. Still others are so complicated you need an entire IT department to implement them. Contractor Foreman does much of what it does the absolute best for the money, meaning this is probably the best value for construction management software I'm aware of. I believe I can say with confidence, that if CF does it, it strives to do it well, and continues to strive to get it better. Picking a feature or two that excels is rather pointless in a company with that outlook. THAT is a company I can get behind...
Read full review 1) Great for managing your work and personal activities. 2) One of the best implementations of the Getting Things Done method. 3) Not really suited for collaborative work management; OmniFocus is managed on a per-user basis so you can't share/assign tasks.
Read full review Pros Estimates Project management Lead management - tracking where they are in the funnel and having web lead automatically pull into the system. Read full review Ease of viewing your projects at a high-level. Ease of viewing what tasks need to be done at the present moment and the sorting of those tasks by availability, due date, start date, needed resources, and project. The visual interface is really nice to work with, the UX/UI is intelligent and intuitive. It's the most extensible software I've used. There is a community of people that publish compatible scripts for Omnifocus at no charge. The code is robust and I've almost never had a bug or a glitch that resulted in issues. The software syncs in the cloud between MacOS and iOS seamlessly and faster than other To-Do software. The sync aspect is available free of charge. The development team at Omnifocus is on top of bugs and they have been adding releases regularly to increase functionality and performance. While OmniFocus adheres to the GTD (Getting things done) principles, it can be used in almost any manner and you aren't stuck with just that methodology. Read full review Cons Some of the modules like checklists and forms are confusing and hard to use some of the training videos or versions of an old outdated version of the software Would like to see a more efficent way of creating a submittal log generated from a specification book Read full review I would really like to see graphic presentations of how I allocate my time, what categories of tasks don't get accomplished, etc. I would like to see OmniFocus include Gantt chart functionality, such as allowing me to see how long it took me to accomplish a task from start to finish. Allowing me to actually input time spent, and seeing it on a Gantt chart, would be icing on the cake. Read full review Likelihood to Renew Eliminated the need for our team to log into multiple systems to do their jobs which aligns to our Lean approach
Read full review Over the past 4 years of use I still haven't found any product that comes close in terms of capability
Read full review Support Rating I rarely give anyone a 9 or 10 rating for service. The main reason for this rating is Contractor Foreman's dedication to improvement. To be completely frank, CF has fallen down on their tech help with me several times, but I am an exceptionally difficult user to service as I tend to use a product up to it's limits and want more. CF has actually addressed these wants several times (after waits that seemed interminable, but were actually pretty damn fast in the reality of software development)
Read full review OmniFocus has excellent user forums. They're active as well as mature, since the product has been around for years. I've never needed to actually contact customer support because OmniFocus is popular enough that I've always been able to find an answer in the forums, or in an article, or in a YouTube video.
Read full review Alternatives Considered I've used
Buildertrend and Conconstruct near daily for a little over 10 years. They were both pretty solid. But the price kept going up without much value being added to the software. As they grew, they didn't upgrade with the growth, so the sites became slower. Contractor Forman has all the functionality of the others, and several other tools that they don't. There are several tools our company doesn't even use yet that look great. It's not perfect, and the learning curve due to its increased capability is a bit of a challenge. But overall, it is superior in every way that mattered to us, and more affordable.
Read full review OmniFocus is built for the user with a lot going on - consequently, it does a great job at organizing lots of things in a manageable workload. It's perfect for taking a project and breaking it down into small tasks for yourself or teams. Once you get past the learning curve, it's quick at adding new tasks. Overall, it's an excellent product.
Read full review Return on Investment We don't have to double enter our job information anymore (estimates, bills, labor hours) to show employees what they need to see. Specific access within Contractor Foreman does that for us. It's taken us longer to learn how Contractor Foreman works within itself than we thought it would, so implementation is taking a little longer than ideal. However, we have been learning a lot along the way about the easiest ways to use the workflow that Contractor Foreman has. Read full review OmniFocus keeps our tasks moving forward. Using a free script you can search all your current projects for projects that have no next step assigned to it to ensure nothing falls through the cracks. When we serve our clients, the attention to detail we are able to give them comes from accurate tracking of what we need to deliver. We complete projects 25% faster than before and we can see where the bottlenecks are immediate. We have also been forced to document tasks in a more concrete manner which allows for better execution. Read full review ScreenShots Contractor Foreman Screenshots