Stop paying a tax on your construction volume.
Most construction software charges as a percentage of your annual construction volume. A strong year turns into a six-figure invoice from your software vendor. AOS doesn't do that. Here's an honest comparison to the four platforms most of our buyers are leaving — Procore, Sage 300 CRE, Foundation Software, and Viewpoint Vista — including where AOS isn't the right answer.
The line items on your software P&L.
A typical mid-market commercial GC runs four to six separate construction-software vendors. Add them up and the picture is usually $80k-$300k per year for a $30M-$80M company. Here's what AOS replaces — and what it doesn't.
| Vendor | What they cover | How they price | AOS replaces? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Procore | PM, drawings, RFIs, submittals, change orders, daily logs; Financials add-on for AP / pay apps | % of annual construction volume (we illustrate at a conservative 0.2% of ACV) | Yes — fully |
| Sage 300 CRE (formerly Timberline) | Construction accounting, GL, AP, AR, job cost, payroll | Per-user licensing + annual maintenance (quoted privately) | Yes — with Accounting & AP add-on |
| Foundation Software | Construction accounting, certified payroll, prevailing wage, job cost, AP | Per-user licensing + modules (quoted privately) | Yes — with Accounting & AP + Payroll add-ons |
| Viewpoint Vista / Spectrum | Full construction ERP — accounting, PM, payroll, equipment, HR | Per-user ERP licensing + implementation services (quoted privately) | Mostly — at the high end, enterprise ERP may still want Vista-class depth |
| Standalone payroll (ADP, Paychex, etc.) | Construction payroll w/ prevailing wage, certified payroll, multi-state | Per-employee per pay period | Yes — with Payroll add-on |
| Compliance vendors (myCOI, levelset, etc.) | Sub COI tracking, lien waiver registry, preliminary notices | Per-project or per-subcontractor flat fees | Yes — with Sub Compliance + Compliance Pro add-ons |
| Helpdesk / KB / IT asset (Zendesk, Confluence, Asset Panda) | Internal IT helpdesk, knowledge base, asset checkout | Per-agent or per-user / month | Yes — included in the base bundle |
| Sum that across your business and you'll usually land between | $80k–$300k / yr | ||
An honest take, one at a time.
No screenshot battles, no superlatives. Just what each platform is good at, how it's priced, and where AOS sits relative to it. Dedicated comparison pages below ↓
Same shape. Without the percentage of ACV.
Procore is the dominant commercial-GC PM platform. The hardest single thing about Procore isn't the product — it's the math. Procore is priced on a percentage of your annual construction volume. Even at a conservative 0.2% of ACV, a $40M GC's software bill scales with bookings; an $80M GC pays roughly double for the same software. AOS is a flat fee. And the comparison understates the value: Procore covers PM, drawings, RFIs, submittals, COs, daily logs, plus Financials as an add-on. AOS covers all of that plus accounting, payroll, compliance, owner command center, boardroom, back office, travel, and the portals — so the AOS line item replaces Procore and four to six other vendors at once.
- Their pricing — quoted privately on a percent-of-ACV basis. Renewal year is "what did you book?", not "what do you use?"
- Their strength — broad PM feature set, polished UX, large integrations marketplace, dominant brand awareness with owners.
- Where AOS fits — flat $500/mo beta, projected $1,000–$2,000/mo all-in at GA for a typical sub-$15M GC, with the same core PM scope plus accounting, field, compliance, boardroom, and back-office in one platform.
- What AOS replaces — Procore PM, Procore Financials, Procore Quality, Procore Documents.
- Where Procore still wins — third-party app marketplace breadth (we're newer), and brand recognition with very-large institutional owners who pre-list Procore in RFPs.
| Company size | Procore (0.2% ACV) | AOS (typical) |
|---|---|---|
| $10M ACV | ~$20k / yr | ~$12k / yr |
| $25M ACV | ~$50k / yr | ~$18k / yr |
| $50M ACV | ~$100k / yr | ~$24k / yr |
| $100M ACV | ~$200k / yr | ~$36k / yr |
The accounting that stayed on the desktop.
Sage 300 CRE (formerly Timberline) is the construction accounting backbone for thousands of mid-market GCs. Strong job-cost depth, well-known by every construction CPA, decades of reliability. It's also traditionally Windows-deployed, with the field happening in a different system and the integrations done in spreadsheets. AOS puts accounting on the same record as the project.
- Their pricing — per-user licensing with annual maintenance; private quotes; cloud hosting via implementation partners adds a layer.
- Their strength — deep job-cost accounting, strong AP, payroll, and reporting; mature audit trail; CPA-trusted.
- Where AOS fits — the Accounting & AP add-on covers AIA pay apps, AP, GL, multi-EIN consolidation, and 1099s at $1,000/mo + $750/additional EIN, on the same record as the project record, field timesheets, and the owner portal.
- What AOS replaces — Sage's PM-adjacent modules (job cost, AP, AR, GL, project billing). For shops with deep Sage-specific reporting we offer a CSV export to keep auditors happy during transition.
- Where Sage still wins — pre-existing CPA familiarity, legacy ERP integrations, very-specific tax/regulatory edge cases that have been bedded into Sage for 20+ years.
The payroll the union shop trusts.
Foundation is mid-market construction ERP with deep certified-payroll, prevailing-wage, and union-fringe handling. If you run union work or prevailing-wage projects, Foundation has decades of muscle memory on the specific edge cases that trip up generic payroll vendors. AOS has the same handling in our Payroll add-on, plus the rest of the platform on the same record.
- Their pricing — per-user license + module pricing, quoted privately; payroll typically priced as part of the suite.
- Their strength — certified payroll, multi-state withholding, union fringe pools, prevailing-wage reporting; well-understood by construction-experienced accountants.
- Where AOS fits — Payroll add-on at $500/mo covers certified payroll, Davis-Bacon, prevailing wage, multi-state, per-diem, fringe handling, and accounting GL sync. Accounting & AP at $1,000/mo + $750/EIN covers the rest of the ERP scope.
- What AOS replaces — Foundation accounting, payroll, AP, GL, job cost.
- Where Foundation still wins — niche union-local fringe configurations and decades-old reporting templates. We support the patterns; some specific local reports may need a one-time mapping.
Enterprise ERP without the enterprise rollout.
Viewpoint Vista (and its Spectrum sibling) is the construction ERP that runs many $200M+ commercial GCs. Real strengths in equipment economics, deep ERP integration, multi-entity consolidation. Real costs in implementation services, per-user licensing, and the team you have to staff to keep it running. AOS is targeted lower in the market — purpose-built for sub-$100M GCs who don't have an internal Vista admin team.
- Their pricing — enterprise ERP licensing per-user + implementation services (publicly described as a six-figure rollout for mid-market clients); ongoing maintenance.
- Their strength — full ERP scope with deep equipment economics, large-firm scalability, established with mid-to-large GCs.
- Where AOS fits — sub-$100M commercial GCs who'd be over-served by Vista's scope and underserved by lighter PM tools. Implementation in weeks, not months. Per-EIN scaling instead of per-user.
- What AOS replaces — Vista's PM, accounting, AP, payroll (with our Payroll add-on), and reporting modules. Pay apps, RFI, submittal workflows, daily logs, field timesheets.
- Where Vista still wins — equipment-heavy contractors with rental fleets, mining / heavy civil firms with deep equipment-economics needs, very-large GCs at the $300M+ level. AOS will grow into more of that scope post-GA; today, Vista is the better fit for that customer.
| Phase | Vista-class | AOS |
|---|---|---|
| Kickoff & scoping | 2-4 weeks | 1 week |
| Data migration | 4-8 weeks | 1-2 weeks |
| COA / config / training | 6-12 weeks | 1-2 weeks |
| First live project | ~4-6 months | ~3-4 weeks |
| Steady state | ~9-12 months | ~6-8 weeks |
Looking at one vendor in particular?
Deep-dive pages per competitor — where each one wins, when to stay with them, and when AOS is the right swap.
AOS vs Sage 100 / 300 CRE
Sage owns construction accounting on the desktop. Here's where AOS picks up the rest of the stack — and where Sage might be the right call to stay on.
Read the comparison →AOS vs Foundation Software
Foundation is the union-and-prevailing-wage payroll standard. AOS keeps that strength and adds PM, portals, compliance, and field on one record.
Read the comparison →AOS vs Trimble Viewpoint
Viewpoint Vista is enterprise ERP for AEC — broad, configurable, and consultant-heavy. AOS is the same breadth without the rollout.
Read the comparison →AOS vs Yardi
Yardi runs "own and operate." AOS fills the construction half of "own and build" — on the same record your asset team works from.
Read the comparison →AOS vs Buildertrend
Buildertrend nails residential PM and the homeowner portal. AOS keeps that and adds GL, multi-entity, lender draws, and commercial workflows.
Read the comparison →We're not the right answer for everyone.
Construction software is too important to oversell. Four buyer profiles where one of the alternatives is genuinely a better fit than AOS — today.
$300M+ enterprise commercial GCs
If you run a 200-PM organization with a dedicated software-admin team and need every enterprise ERP integration, Vista / Spectrum is closer to the right shape. We'll get there post-GA; we're not there today.
Heavy civil / mining w/ rental fleets
If your business is equipment economics — utilization curves, rental fleet management, depth of equipment-cost analytics — Viewpoint and several specialty platforms beat us today. Our field module pins equipment to sites; we don't yet do fleet economics.
Pure sub trades w/ no PM workflow
If you're a subcontractor whose only need is certified payroll and you don't manage projects or own owner relationships, Foundation or a standalone payroll vendor is cheaper and more focused.
On-premise / air-gapped deployments
AOS is cloud-only. If your government / defense contracts require on-premise deployment for compliance reasons, we're not the right answer — Sage 300 CRE and Vista have desktop-deployable options that meet those requirements.
What replacing your stack actually looks like.
Software migrations are the moment most replacements stall. Here's the four-step shape we run — same shape for replacing one vendor or four.
Bring your contracts
Send us your last 12 months of software invoices and your current contract terms. We map every line item to AOS scope and tell you exactly what we replace and what we don't.
One-page recommendation
You get a single-page recommendation: tier, add-ons, locked beta rate, migration timeline, and the line-item picture of what your stack looks like under AOS vs. today.
Data import + chart of accounts
We import users, projects, cost codes, vendors, subs, open AP, in-flight pay apps, active subcontracts, COIs, and lien-rights deadlines. Your CPA stays in the loop for the COA mapping.
Parallel run, then cutover
Run AOS in parallel with your current system for one full pay-app cycle. Cutover happens at the start of a month; the prior system stays read-only for the auditor for 7 years.
The replacing-our-stack questions.
What if we're locked into an annual contract?
Most construction software is annual with auto-renew language. We help you time the AOS migration to your renewal date so you don't double-pay. If you're mid-contract, we'll either time the cutover for renewal or, in a few cases, cover the overlap period as part of the beta-cohort offer — case-by-case.
Will our CPA / auditor accept AOS?
Yes. AOS produces standard AIA G702/G703 pay apps, GL reports, AP detail, audit trails on every transaction, and CSV exports for every data table. We've been through walkthroughs with mid-market CPA firms during the closed-beta cohort design. Bring your CPA to the demo if you want to short-circuit the question.
What about historical data from our old system?
Two patterns: (1) import the open transactional data (vendors, subs, open AP, in-flight pay apps, active subcontracts, current cost codes, COIs, lien rights) into AOS as the new system of record; (2) keep the old system in read-only mode for the 7-year auditor retention window. Most customers do both. The historical data doesn't need to live inside AOS for audits to work.
How long does a typical migration take?
For a single-vendor replacement (e.g., dropping Procore alone), 2-4 weeks from contract signature to first live project. For a full multi-vendor stack replacement (PM + accounting + payroll + compliance), 6-10 weeks to steady state. The Vista / Spectrum table above gives the comparative shape.
What if AOS doesn't replace one of our vendors fully?
We tell you that up front in the one-page recommendation. AOS plays well with vendors we don't replace: a Plaid bank connection, an open API to push data to a specialty BI tool, webhooks to your existing ERP, CSV in/out for any tool. We don't lock the data in.
What if we want to switch back?
Every data table is CSV-exportable. Every external user (owners, subs, board) gets a one-click "download my history" link. Lock-in is a function of how good the product is, not how locked-down the export is. We don't believe in the latter.
Bring your last 12 months of software invoices.
We'll send back a one-page replacement plan: what AOS replaces, what it doesn't, what your stack costs today, what it costs under AOS, migration timeline, and your locked beta rate.
Comparisons on this page reflect publicly available information and AOS's own understanding of each product; features and pricing change, so verify current details with each vendor. All product names, logos, and trademarks are the property of their respective owners and are used here for identification and comparison purposes only — their use does not imply any affiliation with or endorsement by AOS.