How we review

The short version

We sign up as a paying customer. We use the tool on real jobs for 30 days minimum. We score it across 10 dimensions. We give the vendor 7 days to respond before publishing. We retest every 12 months.

The 10 dimensions and their weights

#	Dimension	Weight	What we test
1	Quoting & estimating	12%	Template depth, mark-up handling, materials catalogue, PDF output quality
2	Job management	14%	Scheduling, dispatch, status tracking, multi-job visibility
3	Time tracking	10%	Field-side usability, accuracy, exception handling
4	Invoicing & receivables	12%	Flexibility, progress claims, retentions, payment terms
5	Mobile field experience	14%	Works in poor reception, on a 5-year-old phone, with paint-covered hands
6	Integrations	10%	Xero, MYOB, QuickBooks, Sage, calendar, storage, accounting depth
7	Onboarding & learning curve	8%	Time-to-first-quote, training materials, friction
8	Pricing fairness	8%	Value vs. delivered features, tier transparency, contract gotchas
9	Support responsiveness	6%	Reply time, quality of response, channel mix
10	Trajectory	6%	Release cadence, roadmap transparency, financial signals

Composite score = sum of (dimension score × weight). Maximum 10.0. Composites under 5.0 are not published — we write a "we don't recommend this tool yet" note instead, and explain why.

The testing process

1. Sign up. We sign up as a customer on the same paid plan a small construction business would pick. We pay the bill.
2. Configure. We set up a representative trade business: 3 trades, 5 active jobs, 2 office staff, 4 field staff, Xero integration.
3. Use, for 30 days minimum. At least one full month on real jobs. Multiple users. Field and office. Quoting, invoicing, time tracking — the lot.
4. Stress-test. We deliberately try the things that break tools: 50-line quotes, variation chains, retentions, progress claims, weird tax codes.
5. Score. Each dimension gets a 0-10 with a written rationale.
6. Vendor right-of-reply. The vendor sees the draft 7 days before publication and can submit a 500-word response we publish verbatim.
7. Publish. The review goes live with last-tested date stamped at the top.

Retesting

Every tool is retested at least once every 12 months. Major releases trigger an earlier retest. The "last tested" date is published at the top of every review and is what drives the freshness signal in our search ranking.

What disqualifies a tool

A tool will not be reviewed (or will be removed) if:

• The vendor refuses to allow us to sign up as a paying customer
• The product is in beta with no production deployments
• The vendor is unresponsive to right-of-reply requests for >30 days
• We discover material misrepresentation in the vendor's public marketing

Editorial independence

Sponsorship and featured-listing dollars go to the business. They do not reach the editorial team's decision-making. We publish a quarterly transparency report listing every sponsor, every featured listing, and every affiliate program we participated in, including totals.

Affiliate and sponsorship disclosure

Many reviews link to the tool's signup page via an affiliate link. If you sign up, the vendor pays us a referral fee. Your price is unchanged.

Featured listings are clearly labelled "Sponsored." They get pinned-top placement in their category but receive no editorial benefit — score, review content, and vendor response are unaffected by sponsorship.

Newsletter sponsorships are confined to a single placement per issue, clearly labelled at the top of the email.

Changes to this methodology

If we change the rubric, the weights, or the testing process, we publish a changelog at the bottom of this page and date it. The current methodology version is v1.0, last updated 17 May 2026.