Excel and Google Sheets are the default estimating and bid-tracking tools for a reason: they are flexible, familiar, and cheap. You can shape a spreadsheet to match exactly how you price work, build your own trade tabs and rollups, and change a formula in seconds. For a small operation running a handful of bids, a well-built workbook can go a long way. What a spreadsheet cannot do is read a document — a subcontractor proposal, a vendor quote, a receipt, an invoice — and put those numbers where they belong. Every figure gets typed in by hand, every tab stays in sync only as long as someone remembers to update it, and a bid lives in a different file from the proposal you actually send.
Corten Technologies is construction management software for small and mid-size general contractors and subcontractors (1-20 people; Enterprise for 21+), built around an AI whose whole job is to remove that manual data entry. It reads the documents you already have — sub proposals and bids, vendor quotes, receipts, timesheets, invoices — and auto-loads the data into the right place: sub quotes flow into trade worksheets and roll up to the bid sheet, and the proposal drafts itself from the winning numbers with scope written from the subs' own quotes. Everything is queued for your review, not blindly trusted. From there it stays connected: enter once and it flows bid to proposal to budget to schedule to invoice, estimates convert to jobs, and approved change orders roll into the budget automatically with canonical bid-total math, markups, and profit. Field crews handle tasks, punch lists with photos, daily logs, RFIs, and submittals from any phone. (Corten is not a takeoff or blueprint-measurement tool — it works from the takeoff and quotes you already have as inputs.)
Corten's pricing is published and flat: Solo $99/mo for one user, Crew $229/mo for 2-8 users, General Contractor $449/mo for 9-20 users, and Enterprise (21+) custom — with AI included in every plan, never a paid add-on. Every plan comes with a 14-day free trial with full AI, and the current beta adds two months free. Spreadsheet costs work differently and depend on what you already run — Excel comes with Microsoft 365 plans and Google Sheets with Google Workspace (Sheets is also usable free with a personal Google account); check Microsoft's and Google's current pricing pages for the plan and per-user figures that apply to you.
| CORTEN | SPREADSHEETS | |
|---|---|---|
| Built for | General contractors and subcontractors (1-20 people; Enterprise 21+) who want one connected system from bid to invoice. | Anyone who wants a flexible, blank grid to build their own estimating and bid-tracking however they like. |
| AI data entry | Built-in AI reads sub proposals, vendor quotes, receipts, and invoices and auto-loads them into the right worksheet — queued for your review, not retyped. | Data is entered and maintained by hand; a spreadsheet cannot read a document and place its numbers for you. |
| Bid leveling / sub bids | Sub quotes flow into trade worksheets and roll up to the bid sheet with canonical bid-total math, markups, and profit; the proposal drafts from the winning numbers. | You can build your own leveling tabs and formulas; keeping them in sync and tying a bid to its proposal is manual. |
| Connected workflow | Enter once and it flows bid to proposal to budget to schedule to invoice; approved change orders roll into the budget automatically. | Each workbook stands on its own; linking bids, proposals, budgets, and invoices is up to how you set up and maintain files. |
| Pricing | Published and flat: Solo $99/mo, Crew $229/mo, General Contractor $449/mo, Enterprise custom — AI included in every plan. | Comes with Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace (Sheets also usable free personally); see Microsoft's and Google's current pricing pages for per-user cost. |
| Free trial | 14-day free trial with full AI included; current beta adds two months free. | Google Sheets is free with a personal Google account; for paid business plans, see Microsoft's and Google's current sites. |
If you want a blank, endlessly flexible grid and you're happy typing in the numbers and keeping the tabs in sync yourself, a spreadsheet is a genuinely solid pick — it's cheap, familiar, and hard to outgrow for simple work. If you'd rather stop retyping subcontractor quotes and receipts, keep every bid tied to the proposal it becomes, and have one connected system carry the work from bid to invoice, start a Corten trial — 14 days, full AI included, on your own numbers.