Knowing where your projects stand — budget, schedule, and progress — before it's too late to act on it.
Project tracking in construction means one thing: knowing whether you're on time and on budget right now, not after the job is closed out. The best tracking software gives you real-time budget vs. actual, schedule progress against baseline, and clear visibility into where problems are developing before they become losses.
Here's what works for different types of contractors.
| Software | Best For | Price | Tracking Strength |
|---|---|---|---|
| Buildertrend | Residential builders | $499/mo | Budget vs. actual + schedule in one view |
| JobTread | Small-mid GCs | $99/mo | Real-time job costing, strong reporting |
| Procore | Commercial GCs | Custom | Full financial + field tracking across projects |
| Houzz Pro | Design-build remodelers | $65/mo | Project timeline + client-facing progress |
| Autodesk Build | Commercial + BIM projects | Custom | RFI/submittal tracking + cost tracking |
Price: $499–$1,099/mo
Buildertrend's project tracking centers on three things: budget vs. actual, schedule against the Gantt baseline, and progress photos tied to tasks. The budget module pulls in your original estimate, tracks committed costs (approved change orders, POs) and actual costs (bills entered or synced from QuickBooks), and shows you in real time how far off budget each cost category is running.
The schedule tracking is equally strong — you can see whether tasks are completed on time, which ones are running late, and how delays are cascading to downstream tasks with automatic dependency updates. For residential builders managing 5–30 simultaneous projects, the cross-project dashboard view is particularly valuable for spotting which projects need attention.
Buildertrend — Real-time budget and schedule tracking built for residential construction. Request a demo to see the reporting dashboard.
Visit Buildertrend →Price: $99–$499/mo
JobTread's job costing and reporting have earned strong reviews from contractors who found Buildertrend's cost prohibitive. The platform tracks actual costs against budget categories in real time, shows you gross profit per job, and generates reports that give you the clarity to know which jobs are profitable and which are eating your margin. At $99–$199/mo for the entry plans, it's accessible for smaller GCs who previously tracked jobs in spreadsheets.
Price: Custom (financial management module)
Procore's financial tracking covers the full commercial project lifecycle: prime contract, subcontracts, change orders, billings, and cost projections. The "cost to complete" projections help project managers understand not just where they are, but where they're heading. Procore also tracks RFIs, submittals, and punch list items by project — giving you a complete picture of outstanding items that could affect closeout timing.
The executive dashboard shows portfolio-level data across all active projects, which is where Procore's tracking genuinely shines for multi-project commercial operations.
Price: $65–$399/mo
Houzz Pro's project tracking is lighter than Buildertrend or JobTread on pure financial depth, but it serves remodeling contractors well with timeline tracking, selection status (which items are approved, pending, or overdue), and client-facing progress updates. For remodelers where keeping the client informed and managing selections is the primary project management challenge, Houzz Pro's tracking hits the right notes.
Houzz Pro — Project timelines and progress tracking built for design-build remodelers.
Visit Houzz Pro →Most contractors who haven't invested in tracking software manage project status in spreadsheets. The problem isn't the spreadsheet concept — it's the update frequency. Spreadsheets get updated when someone has time, which means they're almost always stale. When your PM is managing eight active jobs, the spreadsheet for each job gets updated once a week if you're lucky, often less. Software that pulls cost data from your accounting integration and schedule updates from the field in real time is categorically different from a spreadsheet that's a week old.
Project management software covers the full lifecycle — estimating, scheduling, communication, documents, and financials. Project tracking specifically refers to the reporting and visibility features that answer "where does this job stand right now?" Most construction PM platforms include tracking as a core feature, but the quality and depth varies significantly.
For accurate budget vs. actual tracking, yes. If your project tracking software doesn't know what you've actually spent (bills paid, labor charged, materials received), the "actuals" column is only as good as what someone manually enters. QuickBooks integration is the most common solution — bills approved in QuickBooks sync automatically to your project tracking, reducing both the delay and the data entry error rate.