We went from Excel/ Pen and paper to using a standardized database that will integrate with out new Viewpoint Vista Accounting package.

Best ease of use cost to price Construction Estimating Product out there. Best bang for the buck. If familiar with cost coding, production rates, cost to price estimating; the setup and go live can be achieved in a relatively short time span. Being able to have a standard with the entire team (Estimating, Project Management, Accounting, & Field personnel) is worth the purchase alone.

MSA and Blanket contracts are challenging to build in Estimate.

B2W is great, and has saved us time and allowed us to bid more projects, thus making more money each year. It also helps a new hire or intern understand the construction process by showing labor and equipment for each task.

Setting up and bidding a project is much easier now that we have B2W. Before we used spreadsheets with formulas to calculate production and pricing. B2W does all of that for us, especially when your resources are set up correctly to your needs. I can auto populate items with tasks that have all formulas built in, so all I need is the takeoff area or volume. Setting bond, profit, overhead and labor burden is a breeze with B2W.

Integrating with Spectrum accounting software is still a bit of a challenge. We have to export to excel and spend about an hour or two to prepare a budget so it will upload correctly.

I like that the software is very user-friendly and pretty straightforward.

A lot of data entry is required for the estimates. Even if you link an Excel spreadsheet to the estimate, the process of adding a comment for each cell you want to link is tedious, and it doesn't really work for a lot of things, like the equipment quantity. Also, I am not a big fan of the reporting. Most of the reports are confusing, and when presenting the estimate to upper management, it is always hard to explain that it is that way in the reporting, but if you do a multiplication for example, that is the correct number. I just think the reports should show the actual numbers, or maybe we are just using the wrong product for the kind of work we do, and that is why the reporting in the software does not meet out needs.

Overall it has been a great experience. In the end it is up to the user to determine how much that they want to get out of the system . You get what you put into it (if you put in a lot of time and effort your results should be great).

Usability and user friendly. Easy for new employees to pick up. Security - we have the ability to allow user different levels of access. Also, integrates well with our accounting system.

Takes a lot of time and effort to get the system up and running. Have had some issues with mapping to our accounting system.

Having used multiple estimating packages including Harddollar, HCS, Success, MCACES, and MCII, this program is by far the most user-friendly and feature-rich system in the commercial marketplace today, in my opinion. Additionally, the Bid2Win Software Engineers are eager to hear of user-identified feature requests and incorporate them into the software as new feature updates. We have used the system for 10 years, now, and have been very satisfied with the stability, speed, ease of use, minimal learning curve, and scalability of the program. I would give the software a 9.2 out of 10 and would raise the rating to 9.8 out of 10 if the Cons posted above were addressed.

Our company is a heavy/highway general contractor that self-performs removals, earthwork, bridges and retaining walls, underground utilities, asphalt paving and concrete paving. We investigated other options prior to commiting to the purchase of Bid2Win, choosing it because of its intuitive, tabbed user-interface and the ability to construct reusable task templates for any kind of work imaginable. The following bullets give an overview of the features available: - User defined work categories / sub categories - User defined labor classification / burden database - User defined equipment classification / rates database - Unlimited task template creation for repetitive work items - Tabbed costing interface for calculating costs / markups / and bid pricing - Markup distribution strategy tab for spreading costs to maximize project cash flow - Automatic bond cost table - Microsoft SQL server-based for unlimited concurrent user access (multiple estimators work at the same time)

- Weak export of costs and resources to Critical Path Method scheduling software (i.e. Export to Microsoft Project, not Primavera) - Only basic implementation of Disadvantaged Business Enterprise (DBE) subcontractor assignments (still requires additional spreadsheet work outside of the program to get a complete analysis of DBE participation)