If you're a contractor who has been in business for a while, chances are you've probably got a few unbelievable stories to share, whether it's about difficult clients with unreasonable demands, lots of money that was needlessly lost due to oversights, or just plain funny stories from your time in the field.

In this article, we've collected some of our craziest, most off-the-wall stories we've heard from our more than 950,000 clients, including some from our CEO who was a contractor for decades before founding ConstructionOnline^™.

Managing your construction project’s purchasing process is one of the crucial aspects of making sure things are on or under budget, but depending on how you manage expenditure, finances can get out of control pretty quickly.

In this article, we’ll tell you the common ways your construction business may be losing money in the procurement and expenditure stages of a project, and how you can use PO software to prevent these common expense mistakes from hurting your bottom line.

A lot of unexpected events can happen in a construction project, and change orders are one of those things you can almost never predict. Although you can’t plan for them, you can make sure that you manage them efficiently to reduce legal risks and financial catastrophe.

In this article, you’ll find out how change order management can make or break your project finances.

Creating an accurate estimate and managing finances is one of the most essential parts of completing successful projects and running a profitable construction business, and having a system in place for managing construction purchase orders (POs), billing, and payments is a big part of managing project finances.

In this article, we’ll tell you why POs can make or break the success of your projects in 5 crucial ways, and we’ll explain the single best way you can use technology to streamline your construction PO management.

When communication between your company team and external stakeholders like clients, architects, engineers, and other non-company team members is not optimal, you’ll end up missing deadlines and glossing over important project details, both of which expose you to legal risks and ultimately mean less money.

In this article, we’ll tell you how to streamline your external communication with people outside of your company so that you can reduce risks, stay on budget, and protect your bottom line.

With the accelerating rate of technological advances across the construction industry, it’s a natural expectation that contractors keep up with the times by utilizing technology in some form. Whether it’s using a basic spreadsheet to create accurate estimates or investing in a project management software that handles larger-scale projects, technology helps contractors execute successful projects with more ease.

Although the role of contractors hasn’t changed much since the onset of the digital age, the way in which contractors execute projects has changed from relying on manual documentation and tracking to more automated ways of carrying out project tasks. So in this article, we’ll explain the importance of tech, the risks of not using tech, and how contractors can embrace tech as the new way of doing construction.

The success of any construction project starts with an accurate, organized, and detailed estimate, and when you’re dealing with commercial projects which tend to be more complex and involved than say other types of estimates, the stakes are often higher. There are typically more fees, more permits, more compliance, and more safety considerations that take place.

That’s why it’s crucial that you get the estimate right from the get-go. In this article, we’ll lay out exactly how you should construct a proper estimate for commercial construction projects so that you can know what to expect financially, and ultimately protect your bottom line.

Did you know the vast majority of construction projects globally experience project cost overruns due to inaccurate estimates? Therefore, it should be no secret that getting the project estimate right sets a good financial foundation for the rest of the project, and fumbling the estimate can lead to lost money for your construction business.

As a construction estimator - whether you work for a contracting company or you're a freelance estimator - knowing how to create accurate estimates every time is the foundation of your job, so in this blog post, we've included some important skills that are crucial for being a successful estimator based on our experience with helping hundreds of thousands of construction professionals create accurate estimates worldwide.

Customer satisfaction has the potential to make or break your construction business; one happy customer can lead to three more leads who feel comfortable trusting your business - and this boosts your reputation. Alternatively, one unhappy customer can deter potential customers from choosing your business and may even have a negative impact your reputation in the long-term.

Have you ever started a project with one idea of what the project will include, but later on during project execution, it's clear that the client had a different idea of what would be done? Major issues like this can be avoided or at least mitigated by having a clear, detailed project scope. 

Defining a project scope is important for any project, and construction projects are no different. Because of the multifaceted nature of construction projects, it’s easy to run into problems if you, your client, and your team don’t have a clear picture of everything that is expected out of a project.

This article covers everything you need to know about defining a construction project scope, including what it is, why it’s essential to project management, and some steps you can take to clearly define a project scope, so that your projects and your construction business can be successful.