The Math A Look Inside The Paperwork What We Run Is This You FAQ Book a savings call
For contractors running 5–40 crew

Run the job.
Skip the payroll.

A trained project manager runs your jobs — scheduling, subs, RFIs, billing — backed by an administrative team and our own construction software. Without you hiring anyone, insuring anyone, or renting them a desk.

Book a savings call
No contract to start Cancel anytime
Trained admin team 100% U.S.-based Based in California Native English speakers
app.pmforcontractors.com/maple-st
Maple St. Kitchen Remodel
Draw 3 due Aug 29
On track
Change order #4
Sent to homeowner for signature
Pending
Riverside Electric
Rough-in scheduled Thu
Confirmed
Budget vs. actual
Framing + electrical complete
98%
New RFI answered
Draw 3 sent to bank
Trusted by contractors across California
A look inside

Your whole job, one screen.

Not a mockup — this is the actual layout your PM works from every day.

Real critical-path scheduling

Not a shared calendar — an actual CPM engine underneath: task dependencies, float, baseline snapshots, and a live Gantt view per job, so a slipping task shows you exactly what it drags with it.

  • Dependency-aware — one delay flags everything downstream
  • Baseline vs. actual, so drift is visible, not a surprise

Change orders that hit the budget

Change orders itemize against specific budget lines, not a free-text total. Approve one and the deltas apply straight to the job's budget grid — no separate reconciliation later.

  • Every commitment (PO, sub PO, manufacturer order) ties to a budget line
  • Live depletion bars — see a line running hot before it's over

AIA-style progress billing

Schedule-of-values draws with retainage that can step down mid-contract, plus WIP reporting in the format your bank or bonding company actually wants — not a generic invoice export.

  • Retainage tracked per invoice, not bolted on after
  • WIP report in bonding/accountant format, ready to hand over

Vendor paperwork files itself

Every document is read the moment it lands — what it is, what it totals, which order it belongs to. It is matched to a job by the P.O. number your team wrote on it, or by the window schedule itself.

  • Never matched by address — a vendor's letterhead is on every page they send
  • Ambiguous ones are held and asked about, never filed on a guess

A real phone number, not an inbox metaphor

Calls and texts run through an actual business line tied to the job — not a shared inbox. Your PM answers, logs a summary, and it's attached to the right customer automatically.

  • A real person answers, not a script
  • Every call and text logged to the job, automatically
app.pmforcontractors.com/schedule
Riverside Electric
Rough-in — Maple St.
Thu 8:00a
Delgado Roofing Co.
Tear-off — Oak Ave.
Awaiting confirm
Framing crew (4)
Sierra Grade — Unit B
Mon 7:00a
Inspection — rough electrical
Maple St.
Fri 10:30a
RFI #12 — beam clearance
Maple St. · sent to architect
Awaiting
RFI #11 — tile spec
Oak Ave. · answered
Closed
Change order #4
Maple St. · $4,280
Sent
Change order #3
Oak Ave. · $1,150
Signed
Draw 3 — Maple St.
Due Aug 29
Drafted
Draw 2 — Oak Ave.
Paid Aug 12
Paid
Invoice #204
Sierra Grade · 6 days overdue
Reminder sent
Final draw — Birch Ct.
Released to bank
Complete
Est_40890 — Rich Windows
P.O. A1-01 · matched to Harold St.
Filed
Invoice 113788
Duplicate of one already on file
Flagged
Certificate of insurance
Expired 11 days before it was filed
Flagged
Est_40699
No P.O. · needs a decision
Held
Homeowner — Maple St.
"Can we push Thursday?"
Reply needed
Riverside Electric
Confirmed rough-in time
Resolved
Bank — draw inspector
Site visit requested
Scheduling
Homeowner — Oak Ave.
Approved tile selection
Resolved
The math

Drag the slider. Watch the payroll disappear.

Most contractors don't compare software plans — they compare a person's fully-loaded cost against a flat monthly fee. Set your job volume and see it for yourself.

Your operation

How many jobs are you running at once?

The more concurrent jobs, the more a W-2 PM's overhead multiplies — and the more you save bringing one in this way instead.

Active jobs at once3
Line item
In-house W-2 PM
With us
Salary + payroll tax2026 median construction PM, $116K base
$10,633/mo
Included
Workers' compOffice/clerical class
$760/mo
$0
Unemployment insuranceState UI reserve
$250/mo
$0
Office & phoneDesk share, line, equipment
$380/mo
$0
CRM softwareSeparate seat license
$150/mo
Included
Total
$12,173/mo
$1,900/mo
You save $10,273/mo

Base salary is the 2026 median for a construction project manager ($116K–$125K nationally; $78K–$185K by market and experience). Comp and UI are illustrative — your call gets them run against your actual state's rates. None of this counts the cost of a hire that does not work out.

What we run

Everything a PM's desk would touch

A named PM on your account, a trained administrative team behind them, and our own software doing the reading, cross-checking and remembering that people do slowly and sometimes miss.

Critical-path scheduling

A real CPM engine — dependencies, float, baseline snapshots — with a live Gantt view, not a shared calendar.

Budget grid & change orders

Every PO and manufacturer order ties to a budget line. Change orders apply straight to the grid on approval — no reconciling later.

AIA-style progress billing

Schedule-of-values draws, step-down retainage, and WIP reporting in the format your bank or bonding company wants.

Paperwork read on arrival

Every document is read as it lands — type, total, dates, order number — and matched to its job by the P.O. your team wrote, or by the window schedule. Never by the address, because the vendor’s own is on every page.

Egress and Title 24, checked

Tempered glass, bedroom egress clear opening, U-factor and SHGC — checked against the measurement before an order goes out. Unrated products are reported separately from failing ones.

Commitments that come back

A vendor owing you a replacement has no due date. It reappears the next time you raise a purchase order against that vendor — tomorrow or in two months.

Real phone line, per job

Calls and texts run through an actual business number tied to the customer, not a shared inbox — every call summarized and logged.

Sub compliance & lien waivers

License and workers' comp expiry tracked automatically. Subs sign conditional/unconditional lien waivers right from the field.

Homeowner portal

A no-login link where your client sees job status and the documents you choose — without another login to manage.

Before the order goes out

The checks nobody remembers to run

A window that fails egress fails it after it is installed — which is the expensive moment to find out. Every measurement is checked against the code before it becomes an order, and the answer is arithmetic, not opinion.

Clear opening is not unit size: a slider gives up half its width, a hung unit half its height. That distinction is where bedroom egress usually goes wrong.

CRC R308.4CRC R310.2.1Title 24 U ≤ 0.30SHGC ≤ 0.23
901 Harold St — 13 openings checked on measurement
Safety glazing where it is requiredTwo units within 24″ of a door edge, both specified tempered. R308.4
Bedroom 2 egress is short by 1½″58½ × 79½ slider gives a 29¼″ clear width. Widen the unit or change the operation. R310.2.1
11 of 13 units rated and passingU-factor and SHGC within Title 24 for this climate zone. T24
2 units have no rating on fileReported separately from failing. “No failures” is a different claim when two were never rated. T24
Opening G7 has no vendor quoteTwelve of thirteen P.O.s appear on a Rich estimate. This one appears on none. P.O. G7-07
How we compare

Not another app to run yourself

Most tools in this space sell you software and leave the running to you. This is a trained team, running your jobs in software we built for GC-scale work — not just service-business scheduling.

  With us BuilderTrend ServiceTitan Procore
Includes a person running your jobs ✓ Included
Real critical-path scheduling (CPM, float, baseline) Basic Gantt
Change orders linked to budget lines Partial
AIA-style retainage & WIP reporting Partial
Subcontractor lien waivers & compliance tracking Partial
Reads and files vendor paperwork automatically
Egress & Title 24 checks on the measurement
Commitments that resurface when they matter
Homeowner-facing job portal
Built for medium contractors, not enterprise GCs Service trades
Typical monthly cost Flat fee, no seat pricing Per-project fees $300–900+/user Enterprise contract

General positioning based on each vendor's public marketing as of 2026 — not a paid or affiliated comparison. Confirm current pricing and features directly with each vendor before deciding; we're happy to walk through the differences on a call.

How it starts

Four steps, no software rollout

STEP 01

Savings call

We run your actual numbers — crew size, current overhead, job volume.

STEP 02

Job handoff

Your open jobs, your contact list, your folder of vendor paperwork. Spreadsheets import; documents are read and filed.

STEP 03

We run it

Your PM works the job daily, with the admin team behind them. You get updates, not busywork.

STEP 04

You approve, always

Change orders, payments, and commitments route to you before anything's final.

Your CRM

The software stays yours, even if we don't

Every job, contact, and document your PM touches lives in a CRM you own. No black box, no lock-in.

  • Full lead-to-close pipeline, not just a job list
  • Export everything — contacts, jobs, docs — anytime, no fee
  • If you ever bring PM in-house, the system comes with you
  • One client across ten addresses groups into a single contract view
  • Syncs with QuickBooks and Google Sheets — your books don't move
app.pmforcontractors.com/pipeline
Lead — Thompson kitchen
Estimate sent 2 days ago
Follow up
Maple St. Kitchen Remodel
Active job
On track
Oak Ave. ADU
Final draw released
Closed
Contacts synced
142 clients · 38 subs
Exportable
Is this you

Built for a specific size of contractor

Good fit

  • General or specialty contractor, 5–40 crew
  • 3+ active jobs running at once
  • Currently doing PM work yourself, or about to hire for it
  • Wants a local, English-speaking PM — not an overseas call center
  • Wants a trained team accountable for the job — not a dashboard you are left to run

× Not a fit yet

  • Solo operator with one job at a time
  • Enterprise GC with an existing PM department
  • Looking for software only, no service
Questions

Before you book the call

No. Every PM here is based in California, works U.S. business hours, and speaks English as a first language. There's no call center, no time-zone lag, no outsourcing — you're talking to the same person on your account every time.

A person, assigned to your account — the same one every time, who answers the phone and is accountable for the job. Behind them is a team of trained administrators and software we built ourselves for this trade, which is how one PM covers a desk that would otherwise need three people. What you will never get is a bot making a decision, sending your customer something, or committing you to anything.

They get read and filed against the right jobs. Matching is done on the P.O. number your team wrote on the document, or on the window schedule where there is no P.O. — not the address, since the vendor’s own address is printed on every page they issue and matching on it files everything to the vendor.

Where the evidence is genuinely ambiguous, the document is held and you are asked. An unfiled document is recoverable; one filed against the wrong job is a wrong number in a cost report.

Approve change orders, payments, and anything contractual. We run the operational work; you keep authority over money and commitments.

You export it — jobs, contacts, documents — in full, at no charge, whenever you want. It was never ours to keep.

A W-2 PM costs salary plus payroll tax, workers' comp, unemployment insurance, and a desk — usually 25–35% on top of salary before software. One PM's overhead is spread across several accounts, so you pay a flat fee instead of carrying all of that alone.

Yes — the CRM and every record in it come with you. Nothing is rebuilt from scratch if you hire your own PM down the road.

Those are software you run yourself — you still staff the person who lives in it every day. This includes that person. On the software side: real critical-path scheduling and budget-linked change orders like Procore, at a flat fee instead of an enterprise contract, sized for a 5–40 crew contractor instead of a large commercial GC.

Yes, and here is exactly where the line sits. The software reads documents, checks measurements against code, and drafts schedules and summaries — the mechanical work a person does slowly and occasionally misses. Every draft is logged and held; nothing becomes a real record on your job without your PM signing it off.

An agent can earn a quieter mode only after 25 consecutive human approvals, and the ones that reach outward — sending your customer a message, moving money, signing something — never earn it at all. That is a rule in the system, not a policy we promise to remember.

If you have done this before

You hired a PM once. You were still working nights.

This is the most common thing we hear, and it is usually read as “project managers don’t work.” It is worth looking at what actually went wrong, because it was probably not the person.

There was nothing to hand over

The schedule was in your head. The sub’s number was in your phone. The receipt was in the truck. A new PM cannot take over a system that only exists in one person’s memory, so they spend six months asking you questions — which is slower than doing it yourself.

What changes here: the system arrives before the person does. Your jobs, contacts, documents and history are in a CRM on day one, so there is something to hand over.

You could not let go, and you were right not to

You came up through the trade. You know how it should be done, and one bad call on a change order costs more than the salary. So you checked everything — which meant you were still doing the job, plus managing someone doing the job.

What changes here: approvals are structural, not a habit you have to break. Money, commitments and anything going to a customer stop at you by default. You are not trusting; you are approving.

One person cannot cover the whole desk

Scheduling, submittals, invoicing, vendor paperwork, compliance and the phone are different skills. One coordinator is strong at two of them. The other four quietly come back to you.

What changes here: your PM is backed by trained administrators, so the parts they are not best at are still covered — without you carrying another headcount for each one.

Then they left, and took it with them

Replacing a leadership hire runs $50,000 to $75,000 once recruiting, onboarding and lost productivity are counted — and whatever they knew about your jobs walked out with them.

What changes here: the record is yours and stays put. If we stop working together, the CRM and every job in it remain with you, so nothing has to be rebuilt.

Salary, replacement and bad-hire figures are from published 2026 industry data — construction salary surveys, SHRM replacement-cost guidance, and industry writing on after-hours admin. The patterns above are what contractors describe to us; they are not quotes from named individuals.

Start here

Bring your job list.
We’ll bring the math.

Twenty minutes on the phone with your actual numbers — crew size, job volume, what you are carrying in overhead today.

  • No contract to start, cancel anytime
  • A California number, answered by a person
  • We will tell you if you are not a fit yet
We call you. No sales sequence, no drip email.

Got it.

We will call you at the time you picked. If you would rather reach us first, the number is on your confirmation email.