Construction Budgeting Software Guide

7 Reasons You Need to Utilize Construction Budgeting Software

The days of creating budgets by hand within the construction industry are long gone, especially since construction budgeting software has rapidly improved since it was created.  Making changes to handwritten budgets usually involved illegible numbers and numerous mistakes.  When you utilize construction budgeting software, you will avoid both those issues, while also making the process faster and more streamlined.
Here are 7 reasons you need to utilize construction budgeting software:

1. Ability to Make Informed Financial Decisions from Anywhere

It used to be that all those budgets you created would be so big and bulky that you needed to leave them back in your office.  Of course, this would create problems when you were out in the field or elsewhere, and you needed an answer to a budget question!  When you utilize construction budgeting software, you will avoid this issue, because you can simply pull the budget up on one of your devices and answer the question at hand.  You can even create changes to this budget right away, alleviating the concerns of forgetting later on.

2. Track Every Expense in Real Time

One of the best things that you can do during a job is continuously track every expense.  This used to be time consuming, as you would need to write everything down and do the calculations on your own.  However, nowadays, you can simply plug those line items in, and the construction budgeting software will do the rest of the work for you.  Plus, since you can enter this information from wherever you are, you will have your expenses figured out in real time.  This is much better than only having the figures from a day or two before, because every dollar matters when it comes to constructing a building on time and on budget.

3. Add Detailed Notes for Every Expense

Back in the day, you may have received questions as to why the cost for certain line items of the budget were so high.  Well, you will still have those questions today, but you will also have the correct answer quickly.  Handwritten budgets never had room for the answers to any of those expense questions, but construction budgeting software will allow you to place detailed notes for every expense that you add.  This means that you will know the answer as to why a certain material cost more than was initially thought or even why an expense was less than what was quoted.

4. Share the Budget Status with Everyone Involved in the Project

There is never just one person involved in the entire budget process of a construction project, which is why a budget and the current expenses need to be continuously shared.  Old handwritten budgets were impossible to share quickly and were never effective at sharing the real time numbers, because by the time a person received them, the information was already a few days old.  Construction budgeting software will allow you to share the budget status with anyone at any time, and they will see the real time numbers even if you made additional changes after sending it.  This can save you and everyone else the headaches involved with not knowing what the true expenses are and where they lie within the budget.

5. Set Up the Budget Quickly

Writing up a budget used to take almost as long as the estimating process, because everything had to be transferred and written down line by line.  Construction budgeting software makes this process much easier, because you can simply import your estimate and your budget will automatically pop up, ready to use!  This is a feature that you will love the most, because you can focus more on the project itself instead of the budget.

6. Control Finances Throughout Any Project

Without a budget in place, it would be easy for you to lose control of the finances for your current project.  While this may not seem like a big deal in the beginning, it can wreak havoc later on when there is not enough money to pay for everything to complete the project.  Construction budgeting software will make it much easier for you to keep control of the finances throughout any project, and you will immediately see when you need to make changes to save money.

7. Evaluate the Performance of the Company

Evaluating the performance of a company can be quite difficult, unless you use a construction budgeting software that does much of the work for you.  This software will allow you to see how often the projects went over budget, determine where you can cut costs, and find errors quickly.

These are seven of the reasons why you need to start using construction budgeting software immediately, if you do not already.  While you may not be ready to embrace this new technology just yet, once you see how much better you can perform your job with it, you should be more than ready to at least give it a try.