Construction Office Assistance

rcginc

I'm new to the forum and in the middle of starting a new residential building company. I plan to use Quickbooks (not sure which flavor) to manage the accounting side. I'm looking for a package to handle the contracts, estimating, scheduling and the like. It appears as though Construction Office handles this.

1. Is there a step-by-step guide/example that walks you thru creation of a project from beginning to end? The user's guide discusses each specific area of the product but not as a whole. Looking for more of a "Construction Office for Dummies" type guide with better examples.

2. Is it me or is Construction Office supplying "a bunch of templates" to be used with Word, Excel, Project etc? That isn't a intended to be a negative statement. Seems like everytime I click on something, it launches something else.

3. Can you integrate other CRM applications into the product instead of using the Microsoft Outlook contact list? I'd like to manage my customer list in something other than Outlook. I'm fairly certain you can sync Outlook with Quickbooks which might be an option instead.

4. Is there a forum dedicated to discussing Construction Office?

5. Lastly, if you use Construction Office to run your business along with Quickbooks, what other software packages do you use? I'm trying to make sure I have all the gaps filled.

Thanks,
Brian

Grumpy

As far as quickbooks goes. I recommend pro. I downloaded a trial of contractor edition and used that to setup my accounts etc... when I switched over to the pro version all the accounts and some of the custom reports were still in place. Don't waste your money with contractor edition imo.

I have developed my own custom spreadsheets to do all my estimating. I haven't found a single packaged program capable of doing it exactly how I want.

I've never used construction office so I can not comment on the product.

PipeGuy

Ditto on all accounts.

hatchet

I would agree with Grumpy - I have the contractor edition only because I got it for the same price as pro on ebay. I think Cole has messed with Construction Office some - I've looked at the demo of construction office and about the only thing that I would even consider buying it for is the connection with quickbooks. The rest of it seems to be glorified excel spreadsheets. As Grumpy said - I've never found something that does all the things I want the way I want it so I stick with Excel too.

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Rich
WIT Construction Co.
Superior MT Contractor

Glasshousebltr

Any one every use Fingers 123, it's not compatable with anything but it gets me to ten.

Bob

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Bob

TimWieneke

"it gets me to ten."

Is that ten using both hands?

We have the Accounting edition. Never really go into the Contractor edition.

For estimates we use a combination of home tech and our own spreadsheets, though lately dad's been able to break apart and beat my best computer-based efforts by looking at prints and doing estimates in his head. He still has me prepare them though so I don't feel completely useless.

Tim

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As Steve the Foreman would say, "Forgive him Lord, for he doesn't know what he's doing."