Cost calculator

What is your software really costing you?

Move two sliders. This is a rough, honest estimate of what a GC your size typically spends every year across a stack of separate tools, before anyone counts the hours spent keeping them stitched together.

Office and project staff carry the expensive seats: project management, estimating, BIM, accounting, and CRM. Field crews cost far less per head, so your mix matters more than your headcount.

Your likely software spend, per year
$285,000
Likely between $186,000 to $399,000, about $1,900 per employee, across roughly 11 separate tools.
CSS is all of that on one system, with everyone on it and nothing to reconcile. Get your real number on a demo →

Figured on the high side, assuming the best-in-class tool for each job: Procore, an Autodesk BIM suite, a construction ERP like Viewpoint or CMiC, premium estimating, ADP, Salesforce, and the rest. Run leaner tools and it comes down; run the premium stack most growing GCs drift into, and this is about right.

The hidden number

Why you've never actually seen this number.

Every GC is spending it. Almost none can tell you what it is, and that isn't carelessness. The number is built to stay invisible.

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It's on a dozen invoices, not one

Some bill annually, some monthly, some per project, paid by different people across ops, accounting, and IT. Nobody sits down and adds them all up.

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The pricing models don't match

One tool bills per seat, another takes a cut of your construction volume, a third charges per module. You can't just multiply seats by a price, so you never try.

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The biggest part is hidden labor

Implementation fees, the IT hours keeping fragile integrations alive, and the time your team burns re-keying the same number between systems never show up as a software line.

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It quietly creeps

Renewals tick up every year, and the volume-based tools charge you more the more you build. The number you signed up for is not the number you're paying now.

So the real figure is large, and no one has ever totaled it. The same blind spot hides your fully loaded cost per employee on the labor side, which CSS surfaces honestly because the accounting underneath is done right. You finally get the number to price and staff against.

Already inside

The point tools you buy separately, built in.

Beyond the core platform, these are the systems most GCs pay separate vendors for. In CSS they are part of the same ledger, not another subscription and not another login.

  • Subcontractor pay applications, gated by lien waivers and current insurance
  • Conditional and unconditional lien waivers
  • Preliminary-notice and lien-rights deadline calendar
  • Subcontractor prequalification, bonding, and surety tracking
  • Native e-signature with a tamper-evident audit trail
  • Certified and prevailing-wage payroll (Davis-Bacon, WH-347)
  • Insurance and COI compliance, enforced right at payment
  • Recruiting and applicant tracking, with onboarding, I-9, and E-Verify
  • Benefits administration and open enrollment
  • Accounts payable with subcontract commitment matching
  • Employee expense reimbursement, straight into payroll
  • Equipment and fleet: maintenance, depreciation, and driver qualification

Now picture it all in one place.

One platform, one ledger, one price, everyone on it. Bring your current stack to a demo and we'll show you the difference side by side.

Book a demo