Job & Project Costing options for your Business
There are numerous Job / Project Management systems that an organisation could choose to implement, here's a brief summary. Some have their own Accounting / Financials modules, while others partner and interface with numerous applications from big and rich to small and lean.
Buildlogic
Offer clients a job costing capability and interface with the likes of MYOB AccountRight and Xero for accounting and payroll and this includes a novel capability not offered by others listed here where from the one instance of Buildlogic, different legal entities can talk to different accounting systems.
Cheops
One of the longest standing job costing and back office accounting capabilities that focuses specifically on the requirements of companies involved in construction and a system that is very widely used. Originally an Australian entity, now owned by a Canadian company, JDM Technologies which owns a number of like companies around the world and provides access to tools that are developed within the group.
Cheops were one of the earliest adopters of moving their user interface to be delivered as web pages.
COINS
A UK based business that offers its software in many countries around the world, including Australia. COINS seek to offer a cradle to grave range of capabilities from project feasibilities through to completion and eventually field service. That includes back office accounting, sometimes with legacy technologies.
Cost
Cost is a cost management system developed by Aconex, which is now owned by Oracle. I saw it in its early beta versions and haven't reviewed it since. At that time where were some positioning questions as to whether or not it would only operate with Aconex or Oracle owned financial systems, or whether or not they would also market it as a standalone and partner with a variety of other systems. Need to meet with them again and see where the product is currently at.
CMiC
A Canadian business that has made a couple of attempts to enter the Australian market.
Ecosys
They offer a very different way to manage the financial delivery of jobs and projects. Unlike most of the others listed here, Ecosys doesn't tend to initiate financial transactions and rely on say an accounting system to do that instead. Ecosys will then get those transactions from that source system and use their technology to add value around managing the project from a financial and risk perspective.
JD Edwards
Owned by Oracle, JD Edwards is what's called a Tier 1 solution, an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system that seeks to deliver a very wide range of diverse business solutions to what are usually large businesses.
One of their capabilities is project costing and like all of their modules, a base capability gets value added by spend on professional services to configure and customise the solution to each client's unique needs.
IPM Global
The deliver job costing and operational project management capabilities on top of some standard Microsoft technologies and this gives them amongst the best integrations to a range of standard Microsoft tools that many business would already be using; Outlook, Excel and Word.
They don't provide core accounting or payroll and interface with others to provide those capabilities.
IFS
A bit like JD Edwards, a global ERP company offering a Tier 1 ERP solution.
They are probably a bit more focussed on certain market segments than JDE and projects / engineering / constructions is amongst those. They'll never have the sorts of client numbers as some listed on this page, as these systems are aimed at typically used by large clients, with complex needs, often multi-nationally.
Very good underlying technology.
Jobpac from Viewpoint
Jobpac, along with Cheops is amongst the longest standing Australian developed software systems that aim specifically at the construction market and companies that work in it.
Again like Cheops, acquired many years ago, with Jobpac now owned by Canadian company Viewpoint.
Viewpoint also sells operational management software FieldView and Teams and at the time of writing in 2020, were starting to develop some interfaces between all three systems, with the objective of providing a whole of business capability.
Jonas Premiere
A US headquartered software company who have applications for construction job costing and financials. One of those software systems Jonas Premiere is marketed in Australia. After a slow start, they added some forecasting, subcontracting and other capabilities that meet Australian client needs and have grown their client base since that investment. Their last major technology refresh was in 2017 when they converted their application to HTML5.
Levesys
Their client base that uses their job costing, accounting and payroll services probably tends more towards subcontractors, rather than head contractors.
Like Cheops, also owned by JDM Technologies and uses new technologies developed within the JDM group of companies.
Muli
A local Australian software system with a niche client base.
Seem not to have been able to move off their traditional technology to a more modern web based architecture.
MYOB Advanced and MYOB Advanced for Construction
Marketed in Australia and New Zealand under these names, but know internationally as Accumatica. A modern solution, with a Dimension approach to how transactions are coded and reported on.
Competes with Sage Intaact and the Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central for very sound accounting capabilities.
MYOB Advanced has a Job Costing ledger that's based on budget and actuals, so is limited in terms of the depth of functionality required by project based companies such as construction, subcontractors and property developers.
In late 2019, they released a new "for Construction" module into the Australian market and is better in all respects than the core Job Costing ledger of base Advantege version. Forecasting, cashflow and subcontract compliance requirements are all areas that could be improved.
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central
Formerly know as Dynamics NAV and before that Navision.
They provide a job costing ledger to track budgets and actuals but lack a lot of depth of capability in really important areas of functionality to project based companies. For example there's no Forecasting, Subcontracting or Cashflow modules providing point in time reporting.
Provides a sound multi-company / multi-currency capability, although when running across an international environment there may be some considerations as how to best configure this within the context of how Microsoft deliver the databases from regional and local environments. Some nuances on how Inter-Company can work depending on setup and can require third party tools.
Very modern technology, high levels of integration to other Microsoft applications, including PowerBI
Procore
While may of the system on this page have a heritage of managing the financials of projects, Procore comes from an operational management space where they have strong capabilities in functions like; drawing and document management, OH&S, risk, site access, standard documents and forms. That's their heritage and it comes with a certain common style or working.
Procore do also offer an option to manage the financials of projects and models itself on a North American management philosophy of how the construction jobs and projects are run, particularly in their month project reporting.
Pronto
An Australian product which could be described as a mini version of JD Edwards and IFS who seek to provide a whole of business Enterprise Resource Planning capability.
Pronto's ERP offers a wide range of modules that work with their core accounting modules and this includes a job costing capability. Other modules can include field service, manufacturing, CRM and more.
Sage Intaact
A new, modern technology platform that supports multi company and currency, competing directly with MYOB Advanced and Microsoft Dynamics 365 BC.
Built with many of the dimensional capabilities of SunSystems, the pioneer of that approach.
Not much of a job costing capability, but would partner with relevant systems that need it and in late 2019 were close to an integration with Procore for anyone using it's Financials to deliver projects. For Sage, it's the long term replacement of 300 CRE and one would expect to see more project, construction and property functionality added over time.
Sage 300 CRE formerly Timberline
Sage acquired Timberline and within it a large install base, particularly in North America, but it only achieved niche success in the Australian market.
It remains on old technology and won't be moved to be delivered over the web, or move to SaaS type models.
Sage are moving the functionality to other products and working on interfaces to other systems.
Saviom
A bit of a left field choice, as most of the systems here are focussed on projects in a generic way and many have a construction and property development orientation.
Saviom, an Australian company is focussed exclusively on projects in the professional services sector.
Scenario
An Australian project delivery system, with more of a focus on infrastructure, mining, engineering projects. Has it's own internal job / project costing and financials along with some operational delivery capabilities including document control.
They were an early adopter of technologies to manage documents and operational aspects of projects, not just the dollars through their job costing and general ledger capabilities.
Most of their clients are actually outside Australia.
SunSystems from Infor
A core financial and accounting system that's structurally and conceptually very different to just about every other system on this page.
They have a very simple ledger and chart of account structure that is augmented by a very good use of data dimensions to capture and report on their data, which comes to life via their BI tools.
While they've been slow to add as many new feature and function as others have through much of the 2010s, they have focussed on updating their underlying technologies.
Little by way of depth of functionality in areas that some competitors seeks to get into, instead they prefer to work with other "best of breed" suppliers.
TechnologyOne
A local and major supplier to all levels of government, where they provide a range of functionality that links to their core Finacial system.
Out of that local government comes an ability to run projects in a style and level of functionality that would be familiar to many development and construction companies.
Substantial investment have been made over close to a decade to move to a completely web based architercure and run in a Saas mode.
WeBuild
They're sweet spot is the operational management of projects, competing more directly Procore's strengths.
Workbench
A New Zealand product which offers job costing to project focussed businesses and has a more diverse range of clients than the absolute construction focus of many on this page. Don't offer core accounting software, but partner with a very wide range of systems which can be matched to the simplicity or complexity of each client's corporate structure.
Partner with a product called Upvise to deliver non-financial capabilities.
Viewpoint
This is Viewpoint's core and traditional solution and quite different to the Jobpac system that they also sell.
Viewpoint is ultimately owned by Trimble, which also owns other software systems that focus on the project / job management spaces.
Zavanti
Zavanti has more of a focus of a developer client base, including a CRM capability to manage the sales process of property Lots. Based in Sydney, they offer a feasibility, job costing and financials via several platforms.
Xero, MYOB AccountRight, QuickBooks
All single legal entity systems that focus on smaller organisations and lack the complexity to deal with multi-company structures.
They often partner with the systems above that don't provide their own accounting solutions.