Procore at a Glance

Welcome

Hello, and welcome. This is Super Structures General Contractors — a national general contractor headquartered in Powhatan, Virginia — here to help you and your clients build something that lasts. We're glad you're with us, and we look forward to connecting with you.

Here's one that matters more than its name lets on — Procore at a Glance. If you remember one thing, make it this: Procore is a cloud construction management platform built around the project, with project management, quality and safety, and project financials on one record, sold by construction volume with unlimited users so your subs and owner can be in it too. Do this right and you'll know whether Procore is a fit before the salesperson finishes the first slide.

A $40 million office project had the GC, fourteen subs, the architect, and the owner's rep all working out of one Procore project. An RFI raised by the electrician at 7:10 a.m. was assigned to the architect by 7:30, answered by 2 p.m., and the revised detail was on every tablet on site before the next morning. On the GC's previous job, the same question would have been an email thread with six people and a two-week wait. That is the thing Procore sells: one project record everyone works from.

A note before we start: this is a high-level overview, not the training you will need to run the product. Super Structures is not affiliated with, sponsored by, or paid by any company named in this course, we do not sell or support these products, and nothing here is legal, financial, or purchasing advice. This is for learning and education only. Features, editions, and pricing change often. Each lesson lists the vendor's own website, which is where to go for current details, demos, and training.

What it is

Procore is a cloud-based construction management platform. The organizing unit is the project, and inside each project you get tools grouped roughly as:

• Project management: drawings, specifications, RFIs, submittals, meetings, daily log, photos, schedule view, punch list, transmittals, correspondence.
• Quality and safety: inspections, observations, incidents, forms, and action plans.
• Project financials: budget, prime contract, commitments (subcontracts and POs), change events and change orders, invoicing, direct costs, and forecasting.
• Preconstruction: bid management, estimating and takeoff (added through acquisitions), and prequalification.
• Resource management: field productivity, timecards, crew and equipment scheduling.
• Analytics and reporting across projects, plus a company-level view for executives. It runs in a browser and on iOS and Android apps, with offline capability in the field apps so a superintendent in a basement can still fill out a daily log.

Who it fits

General contractors and construction managers from mid-size up are the core. Specialty contractors use it, often because their GCs do, and increasingly for their own projects. Owners and developers use it to oversee programs across many GCs. It is less common with small residential builders, where Buildertrend and similar tools fit better, and with very small subs who find the volume-based pricing hard to justify.

What it does well, and where it is thin

Strong: the document and communication tools (RFIs, submittals, drawings with markup and version control, meeting minutes with action items), the unlimited-user model that gets subs, architects, and owners into the same record, mature field apps, a large App Marketplace of integrations, and free role-based certification courses. Thin: it is not an accounting system, so job cost and the general ledger live elsewhere and must be integrated; the financials tools are only as good as that connection. Scheduling is a view of a schedule built in P6 or Microsoft Project, not a full CPM engine. Estimating is newer than the core and many firms keep a dedicated estimating tool.

How it is sold

Annual subscription priced primarily on your annual construction volume and the product lines you license, with unlimited users. Implementation and training are part of onboarding. Because the price tracks volume, a growing company should expect the renewal to grow with it, and should ask how volume is measured and when.

How it connects

Accounting and ERP connectors (Sage, Foundation, Acumatica, QuickBooks, CMiC and others through the Marketplace or middleware), scheduling imports from P6 and Microsoft Project, Bluebeam and Autodesk file workflows, DocuSign for signatures, and an open API. The accounting connection is the one that decides whether the financials tools are useful.

What it takes to run it

A Procore administrator who owns company settings, permission templates, cost codes, and the integration. Role-based training for PMs, supers, and subs. Discipline about keeping the drawing set current and closing RFIs and submittals inside the tool, not in email. Expect a few months before the field stops reaching for the old habits.

Where to learn more

For current details, go straight to the source: procore.com. Procore's site has product tours, pricing requests, and the free Procore Certification courses for every role. Super Structures has no affiliation with Procore and receives nothing from them; this lesson is for education only.

Going Deeper (Intermediate)

The cost code list is the hinge. Procore's budget, commitments, and change orders key off cost codes, and if they do not match the accounting system's codes exactly, the integration posts to the wrong place or fails. Settle the standard list before you turn on financials. Also decide which system is the system of record for commitments and change orders: Procore, where the PM lives, or accounting, where the controller lives. Both can work; doing both at once never does.

The second hinge is permissions. Procore's templates let you give a sub access to their own commitments, invoices, and daily logs without seeing the budget, and give the owner a view of RFIs and the schedule without seeing your margin. Set the templates once, at the company level, so every project starts right. A project where permissions were improvised is a project where someone eventually sees something they should not.

Advanced / Pro-Level

Pros standardize project templates so every new job starts with the same tools, folders, naming, and permission sets. They use the change event workflow to capture potential changes the day they are spotted, long before a change order exists, which is the earliest overrun warning the platform offers, and they review the open change events in every owner meeting. They push subs to submit daily logs, timecards, and invoices in Procore so field data arrives without re-keying, and they write that requirement into the subcontract. They measure RFI and submittal turnaround from the platform's reports rather than from memory, and they use company-level analytics to compare projects and PMs on the same numbers.

They also know what Procore will not fix. A company with no change-order discipline gets a change-event log full of items nobody prices. A company with no standard cost codes gets a budget tool nobody trusts. The platform amplifies the process you already have.

Practice Challenge

A 60-person GC runs Sage for accounting and spreadsheets for everything else. They want Procore. In what order should they turn on the tools, what has to be true before financials go live, and who should own it? (Answer: start with project management, drawings, RFIs, submittals, meetings, and the daily log on one pilot job with a willing superintendent; name a Procore administrator in the office; standardize the cost code list to match Sage and set up the Sage connector; then enable budget, commitments, and change orders with a named owner for the integration and a decision on which system owns commitments; leave estimating and resource tools for later; write sub participation into the next round of subcontracts.)

In Practice

The GC whose subs log in to Procore gets daily logs and invoices without chasing anyone. The GC who bought it and kept running email has an expensive document folder.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

• Turning on financials before the cost codes match accounting
• Buying it for the subs and never requiring the subs to use it
• Improvising permissions project by project
• Letting RFIs and submittals leak back into email
• Expecting it to be an accounting system or a CPM scheduler

Takeaway: Procore is a cloud construction management platform built around the project, with project management, quality and safety, and project financials on one record, sold by construction volume with unlimited users so your subs and owner can be in it too.

Educational content, for learning only. This is a vendor-neutral, high-level overview, not product training, support, or a recommendation. Super Structures General Contractors and Super Structures Learning are not affiliated with, endorsed by, sponsored by, or compensated by any company or product named here, and we receive no money from them. Product names are trademarks of their owners. Features, editions, integrations, and pricing change; verify current details on the vendor's own website before you buy.