eSUB Construction Software vs. Microsoft Dynamics GP vs. Viewpoint ProContractor

If you are doing any sort of new construction, eSUB is a budget friendly option for managing the process. It's helpful for keeping track of submittals, RFI's and for foreman doing Daily Work Reports. It is not suited really well for plan management and scheduling. The modules for these are not well thought through. Also if you specialize in service work or projects that have short durations (i.e. 1-2 weeks or less), eSUB isn't the best option for you. It would take too long to set up a job vs the time it takes to do the job.

Incentivized

Microsoft Dynamics GP is well-suited for our environment, as we pay a diverse group of employees, including on-the-road drivers, shop employees (some in other locations), and office employees. It easily tracks time off, taxes, pay, etc. The reporting allows us to verify with our drivers how they are paid each week, whether it be through mileage or stop-offs.

Incentivized

It is appropriate for the size and scale of my company - 150 projects a year that has a lot going on a multiple lines with each project. However there are many features and things that go unused with the software, because of how tinkery it can be. For example - our company needs a positive pay file, however we had to employ an outside service provide to create the file within the system. Same with a Backlog - the system kind of has a report but then again it has to be manipulated in order for it be of use. It gets the job done and has the reports needed to submit for certified payroll to the state, which was why we purchased Viewpoint ProContractor, however its ease of use is one of its biggest downfalls.

Incentivized

• It is built with subcontractors in mind. There are many PM software available but this one aims at the commercial subcontractor.
• It does a great job covering the basics of typical commercial work. There are areas that allow you to customize such as adding reservations of rights to documents.
• It can integrate with Microsoft quite a bit, we use this in our work every day and being able to export or sync data/calendars has been helpful.

Incentivized

• Great Plains started as back office/accounting, and that is still it's strong suit.
• SQL and the GP programming language, Dexterity, provide a robust, scalable, and stable platform with well documented maintenance and repair procedures. Relatively easy to manage, tune, and support.
• Microsoft support for GP verges on "particularly well". Doesn't quite get there but good enough once you know what you're doing
• Strong partner network, including the GP User Group (GPUG)

Incentivized

• Procontractor is great with direct imports from CAD files.
• It is great with balancing sites or specific areas on site.
• Procontractor has multiple views and reports that help you to view the dirt movement on the site (grid, profile, 3D).

Incentivized

• I have no suggestions at the moment and if I ever do have a question, concern or suggestion, a quick email to eSUB gets a quick response.

Incentivized

• With respect to the allocations, once the expense is entered into the allocation account, you lose the ability to run any detail on just the total of the expense. It would be nice if you could run a trial balance on the allocation accounts the same way you can with regular accounts.
• I've always thought security set up could be a bit simpler. It actually has gotten better through the years. Specifically, with eight separate entities, it would be nice to have a "master" setup where you could call up one group entity, assign the users rights, and then be finished. Currently, whenever I have a new user, I have to call up each individual entity and select all of the features I want the user to have. That means I have to do eight steps for each user.

Incentivized

• The program is siloed, so connecting to other software or databases is not going to happen.
• When hosted, the program can run slow.
• The program is not going to perform complex accounting tasks with subledgers.
• The program does not do much in terms of HR other than payroll.

Incentivized

Due the economic challenges that Puerto Rico is having, the company has had to merge some companies in order to be more efficient. It has been easy in GP to process those merges, even thought we had to spend days to accomplish that the process was smooth and accurate. In addition we were able to streamline the purchasing and sales process and the organization is confident to keep renewing GP for the future versions.

Incentivized

Though it is a basic accounting package, I believe some users do not find the old style menus and navigation options intuitive. There is also a great lack of training resources in the market, so users have to learn the product without guidance a lot, resulting in inefficient workflows and misuse or misunderstanding of many features.

Incentivized

I give Viewpoint ProContractor a 10 out of 10. This system is user friendly to help keep me organized on a daily basis. I can find everything I need daily with this system. I am able to look up our subcontactors, vendors and clients I need to find quickly. I am able to see bills that I need to pay as well as invoices that I need to send out.

It has been helpful whenever I've called. They have been able to walk me through solutions and even direct me to the right answer. There was only 1hr difference between time zones so this was manageable. If we experienced bugs, their IT department was helpful at remedying and they were always rolling out updates.

Incentivized

The rating is directed to the thrid party serive provider that we use. I do not now how good the Microsoft direct support is.

Incentivized

When something isn't working, you can contact support who will gladly remote into your system and try and work out a solution. Though several of the issues we encountered, they were not able to fix and had to submit for further review. While some were eventually rectified in updates, it takes time for these to be addressed and implemented.

Incentivized

Basically the challenge with this implementation was the Business Portal, too many errors and even the aplication is up and running the users are still having issues. We will start planning the migraton to GP 2015 soon.

Incentivized

eSUB is not even close when it comes to the offerings that the others have. eSUB is a happy medium for the functionality it provides and is at an affordable price point that it doesn't break the bank. Other solutions are a lot more integrated into the company processes and procedures, which means more upfront investment to get the platform to go live. eSUB's simplicity makes it easier to roll out because it doesn't integrate with as many aspects of the business.

Incentivized

I come from a strong background of using SAP. SAP doesn't have the flexibility of GP, an example would be SAP doesn't allow core mods, if they catch you, you lose support. Microsoft doesn't really care about mods, but they will be quick to have the vendor you used support your issue if it is caused by those mods. With SAP your company adapts to the software, where with GP you adapt the software to you.

Incentivized

Procore beats Viewpoint hands down but can integrate well with Viewpoint Vista accounting software. I think that if the Viewpoint software was more flexible if they were more interested in patches, updates, and hearing customer feedback in the way the Procore does, that they would actually have the opportunity to corner the market.

Incentivized

The functionality that GP and related ISV solutions offer and the ease of integration of GP to other systems makes it an extremely scalable solution

Incentivized

• eSUB saves time as you don't have to type, print and send documents.
• I like to call it "set it up once, use it a million times" as once you set up a customer, vendor etc... you can use them across multiple platforms.
• It saves money as you don't need a pool of resources to manage a project due to its ease of use.

Incentivized

• Microsoft Dynamics GP allows my clients to move from a paper or spreadsheet based company to an integrated, electronic, streamlined business. I love being able to help clients gain efficiencies through the use of Microsoft Dynamics GP.
• Microsoft Dynamics GP allows for better customer service because everything is at our fingertips. If someone calls questioning an invoice, we can easily look it up. If someone calls stating they paid an invoice with a certain check number, we can quickly run a query to find that particular check number to see where it was applied.
• Having everything on a single platform provides ease of use for upgrades, backups and end user training. There is only one software to learn!

Incentivized

• Overall it allowed us to go electronic for certified payroll allowing us to be more accurate in reporting which was a giant win for the company
• It's viewable pay estimates with dates and records of payment are crucial to a company like ours that relies on a general contractor and the state for payment of EADA quantites
• Negatively training is not the easiest for the company and therefore onboarding new employees with no experience with the software is time consuming and difficult.

Incentivized