Jonas Premier, also called Premier Construction Software or simply Premier, is a cloud-based accounting and construction management software designed to support the needs of general and specialty contractors, land developers, and home builders. It includes various integrated modules tailored for construction companies, such as job costing, project management, construction billing, and subcontractor management.
Premier’s Starter plan starts with a $15,000 one-time implementation fee plus $299 per month per user. You can schedule a product demo to see how it works and decide whether to buy it.
Pros
- Offers more features and customization options than most similar software
- Lets you create drill-down reports to gain deeper insight into your business
- Uses an artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled invoicing automation system to simplify accounts payable (A/P) invoice creation
- Has excellent job costing module
- Supports construction billing methods including progress billing and time and material billing
Cons
- Required to pay implementation fee, which is a bit expensive
- Doesn’t have a payroll module
- Has no client portal
- Lacks customer relationship management (CRM) features
- Project managers that need high-level key performance indicator (KPI) reporting: Premier lets you drill down job costs to micro-level details, such as labor, materials, and overhead costs—helping you gain a better understanding of your company’s performance.
- Large companies that need training and implementation assistance: As part of your package, Premier will install and set up your software and train your team members to help you achieve optimal outcomes from your new program.
- Companies that often hire subcontractors: You can use Premier to create subcontractor agreements and change orders using fully customizable AIA forms.
- Companies that manage multiple construction sites: The time tracking feature lets you track your crew’s working time and progress and identify which employee or subcontractor is working on each site.
- Construction companies that need a payroll system: Unlike Premier, JOBPOWER has a payroll module that lets you pay employees with checks and direct deposits and file W2s and 1095 forms. Head to our JOBPOWER review to learn more about its other features. If you already have an accounting system and want a standalone payroll solution, check out our list of the best construction payroll software.
- Companies that require CRM features: If you need to track and manage contact information and monitor marketing leads, Buildertrend is a great alternative. Read our detailed Buildertrend review to see if its CRM features are right for you.
- Contractors seeking a low-cost solution for tracking activity by class and location: Despite lacking construction-specific features, QuickBooks Online Plus, at only $85 per month, lets you create classes and locations to track your income and expenses. Check out our QuickBooks Online review to see if it suits your needs.
Are you looking for something else? If you think a general business accounting solution is a fit for your construction company, check out our guide to the best small business accounting software.
Jonas Premier Deciding Factors
Supported Business Types | Construction companies looking for an all-in-one accounting and project management solution |
Pricing | Starts with a $15,000 implementation fee plus a monthly fee of $299 per user |
Free Trial | None, but you can request a personalized product tour |
Standout Features |
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Scalability | Offers a plan depending on your company’s size |
User Reviews | 4.6 out of 5 on Software Advice1 |
Customer Support | Phone and email support, community forums, videos, and online articles |
Jonas Premier Alternatives
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Best for: Companies that need a payroll management module | Best for: Companies that want CRM features | Best for: Companies seeking a low-cost solution for class and location tracking |
Cost: Quote-based | Cost: From $399 per month | Cost: From $30 per month |
Premier vs Competitors
We devised an internal scoring rubric and compared Premier against Buildertrend and QuickBooks Online. Based on the results (summarized in the chart below), Jonas Premier shows dominance in construction-specific features, which explains why it’s our best construction accounting software. It trails behind QuickBooks in general accounting because it doesn’t have a payroll feature. QuickBooks Online is also the leader in pricing and mobile app. Buildertrend and Premier’s mobile apps have no accounting features like invoicing and payment processing, which are found in the QuickBooks app.
Jonas Premier vs Competitors FSB Case Study
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Jonas Premier From $15,000 one-time fee plus $299 per month
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Buildertrend From $399 per month
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QuickBooks Online From $30 per month
Jonas Premier Pricing
Jonas Premier comes with three subscription plans with prices starting at a $15,000 one-time implementation fee plus $299 per user per month. The higher plans, designed for growing and large businesses, have lower monthly costs but steeper implementation fees.
Below is a breakdown of Premier’s pricing.
- Starter: $15,000 implementation fee plus $299 per user, per month
- Premium: $25,000 implementation fee plus $249 per user, per month
- Enterprise: $50,000 implementation fee plus $199 per user, per month
Jonas Premier General Accounting Features
Premier has various A/P-related features that help you manage your vendors easily, pay bills, and create and manage purchase orders and convert them to bills for payment. Its most notable A/P feature is SmartUi’s intelligent invoice automation system. This AI-enabled system lets you extract data from emails and scanned documents automatically and then transfer them to Premier, removing the need for manual data entry. The platform classifies the document type, such as vendor invoice, credit note, or statement, automatically, depending on the page’s content. When an invoice is validated, it will be posted automatically to Premier, awaiting approval and payment. When a vendor invoice matches a purchase order, they are posted directly for payment, eliminating the need for human action.
The program provides multiple options for bill payments, such as electronic payments, credit card payments, and manual check printing. To help you stay on top of your payables, you can generate various reports, including vendor summaries, aging reports, payment history, and purchase order reports.
A/P module in Premier (Source: Jonas Premier)
With Premier, you can create customized invoices and send them to your customers through email. You can track payments against each invoice, view outstanding balances, and alert your customers of overdue payments. You can also set credit limits for your customers to encourage them to make quick payments and remain under their limits.
Premier supports construction-specific billing methods, including cost-plus billing, progress billing, and time and material billing (explained in greater detail in the Construction Features section).
Premier lets you create more than 50 financial reports with drill-down capability. You can customize your reporting dashboards by setting up different filters and widgets. Within each module, you can access standard reports ready to run, apply filters, and drill down to microlevel items for more detailed reporting.
Jonas Premier Construction-specific Features
The job costing module is the “heart” of Premier. It allows you to track all costs related to a job, including original and forecasted estimates at completion. You can also break down each cost further by item, such as estimate, type, and how much of the budget your project uses. This gives you a detailed breakdown of each project, allowing you to track expenses in real time and accurately calculate future profitability. There is also an option to import estimates from Microsoft Excel or any other third-party tools.
The job costing dashboard shows essential details about a job, including your top KPIs, at-risk items, pending items, and approvals.
Job costing dashboard in Premier (Source: Jonas Premier)
Contractors use Premier to bill their customers based on progress, time and materials, and cost plus:
- Progress billing: Premier allows you to bill clients for completed work on a project instead of waiting until the project is fully completed. This billing method is for contractors that handle projects with multiple phases or milestones. Using AIA 702/703 and % complete forms in Premier, project managers can enter the percentage or amount completed each month and quickly create an A/R invoice to send to their customers.
- Time and material billing: Premier lets you bill your clients based on hourly labor costs and the price of materials used. You can do this by creating a time and material contract, which outlines the billing terms and conditions, including hourly rates and material costs. You can also set up billing schedules to determine when invoices will be generated. In addition to tracking the time and material used on a project, Premier will automatically update markups.
- Cost-plus billing: Cost-plus billing lets you bill your client based on the actual costs of the project plus an additional markup percentage. When you’re in the cost-plus billing module, you can enter the cost of materials, labor, and any other expenses related to a project. The program will calculate the total value automatically and add a markup percentage to determine the final amount to be billed to the client. The markup percentage typically is negotiated with the client beforehand.
Premier has robust project management features, including the ability to create, send, and track RFI, monitor your crew’s project with detailed daily logs, and create and send change orders:
- RFI Management: You can use a default RFI template or customize it with all your customer and subcontractor information. You can attach documents, add recommendations, and send the RFI to one or several contracts with one click. Your customers and subcontractors can view these RFIs easily in a mobile-friendly format. When a contact responds to your RFI, Premier will alert you via email automatically. You can also track outstanding and overdue RFIs directly from your web dashboard.
Sample RFI response in Premier (Source: Jonas Premier)
- Detailed daily logs: Project managers can monitor their crew’s projects with detailed daily logs. Using the time entry mobile app, your crew can log their work and easily snap and upload photos related to their work from their smartphone. It also allows you to track which subcontractors are on certain sites. Your team can also record weather delays or safety problems, allowing you to make a plan and take action if needed.
Mobile time entry app in Premier (Source: Jonas Premier)
If you want to request a change to your agreed-upon scope of work, you can easily create internal change orders in Premier. Complete the change order form and send it electronically to your client for approval. Additionally, you can send change orders to your contractors if they will be affected by the proposed change in the project.
Change order form in Premier (Source: Jonas Premier)
You can store and organize any type of construction document inside the platform, whether it’s a photo, PDF file, compliance document, or project plan. You can create customized folders and search documents using various filters, such as fields, dates, file types, and customers. Each document uses version control so you and your team can easily track the entire history of a document.
Document management module in Premier (Source: Jonas Premier)
If you are subcontracting some of your work, then you have to make sure that your subcontractors execute the tasks according to the contract. With Premier, you can easily create subcontract agreements using AIA forms. You can completely customize each form, such as add your signature and insert custom fields. The platform sends secure links to your subcontractors via email, where they can view, print, and sign the agreement easily even from their smartphones.
Sample subcontractor agreement using the AIA form in Premier (Source: Jonas Premier)
Premier can help you centralize and streamline all your compliance paperwork, helping you ensure that you are following regulations. It allows you to build and customize a compliance list so that you can easily track important documents, such as contract agreements, insurance, and bonds. The platform will alert you to expired or soon-to-expire documents and update statuses instantly if needed. You can manage all your documents from your dashboard.
Jonas Premier Ease of Use & Customer Support
While Premier is a sophisticated software because of its robust set of features, the modules are very comprehensive and easy to learn. The dashboard displays high-level KPIs, but with enough time and practice, project managers can easily understand the program and appreciate its benefits. It has a Quick Search bar so that you can find exactly what you need easily. Also, you won’t be learning on your own since Premier will build your expertise with its complete implementation and training services.
You can seek support through telephone and email support. You can also learn more about the software at your own pace by watching videos, reading knowledge base articles, and joining forums.
Jonas Premier User Reviews
Premier, which is rated 4.61 out of 5 by users at Software Advice1, has mostly positive user reviews. Happy and satisfied users shared that Premier is easy to use and provides more customization options than similar software like Sage 100 Contractor. Others are delighted that its implementation team is very helpful and responsive to questions. Meanwhile, we found some negative user reviews, particularly about the lack of essential accounting features like automated expense tracking and payroll.
How We Evaluated Jonas Premier
We used an internal scoring rubric to evaluate and rate Premier and our other best construction accounting software.
10% of Overall Score
Construction accounting software is sophisticated and generally requires the most expensive version of most software. Pricing is only 10% of the score because it’s more important to focus on getting the contractor accounting software that fits your business than to fixate on price.
30% of Overall Score
General features are weighted to give more importance to features particularly important to contractors, such as tracking project income or loss, tracking employee time and assigning it to jobs, and integrated payroll.
30% of Overall Score
Contractor features include accounting features like creating customer estimates and budgets for individual projects. They also include enterprise resource planning features like managing jobs and service departments, tracking employee locations, managing bid requests, and managing equipment.
15% of Overall Score
Ease of use is an important factor, particularly if the owner or other nonaccountant will be keeping the books. In addition to our subjective evaluation, ease of use includes the availability of customer support and whether common integrations require third-party software.
10% of Overall Score
Most construction companies have crews working in the field, so it is important to have a mobile app that allows them to record their activity anywhere from their smartphone.
5% of Overall Score
We use software ratings from several review websites but note that these ratings may change quickly depending on user reviews.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Premier runs from a $15,000 one-time fee plus $299 per month to a $50,000 one-time fee plus $199 per month.
No, the implementation package is required. Premier’s team will be the one to set up and implement your new software for a smooth transition. It will also migrate all key data and train you and your employees to use the software effectively.
No. Premier doesn’t integrate with any third-party accounting software, including QuickBooks Online. This is not a surprise since Premier claims its software to be an all-in-one accounting and construction management solution.
Bottom Line
Premier is more expensive than other similar software, but we believe it can provide all your construction accounting needs. If you have an adequate budget and want to transition into a new accounting program with less admin work, then the steep one-time implementation fees are worth it.
User review reference
