If you are a General Contractor doing between $2M and $10M in revenue, your business likely runs on two things: caffeine and Microsoft Excel.
We get it. Excel is comfortable. It’s flexible. And best of all, it’s “free.” You probably have a master spreadsheet right now named Master_Bid_Tracker_FINAL_v3_UPDATED.xlsx that holds the fate of your next three projects.
But while Excel is an incredible calculator, it is a terrible project manager.
As you grow from a “man with a van” to a custom builder with a team, Excel starts to crack. Formulas break. Files get buried in email threads. And suddenly, you aren’t building houses—you’re managing rows and columns.
There is a better way to track bids than Excel, and it doesn’t require buying expensive enterprise software like Procore. Here is why it’s time to upgrade your workflow.
The biggest lie we tell ourselves is that Excel is free. It might not have a monthly subscription, but it charges you a “tax” in other ways.
A single broken formula can wipe out your profit margin. If you accidentally drag a SUM cell one row too short, you might miss $15,000 in plumbing costs. Excel doesn’t warn you when your math is wrong; it just quietly lets you submit an underpriced bid.
This conversation happens every day in construction offices. When your bid tracker lives on a local hard drive (or even Dropbox), you never truly know if you are looking at the live numbers.
Excel is passive. It sits there waiting for you to type in it. It cannot email your electrician to remind him that his quote is due tomorrow. It cannot tell you which sub has opened your invitation to bid.
You end up playing “secretary”—manually checking your spreadsheet, then opening Outlook, then typing a reminder email, then updating the spreadsheet again.
Moving away from Excel doesn’t mean you need to learn complex software that requires a PhD. You just need a tool designed for Bid Management, not generic data entry.
Modern, cloud-based bid tools (like Bid Bench) are built specifically for the workflow of a General Contractor.
Instead of a file that you email back and forth, your bid board lives in the cloud.
This is the game-changer for GCs who hate admin work.
Comparing quotes in Excel is a headache. Sub A excludes waste removal; Sub B includes it. Sub C combines labor and materials; Sub D separates them.
Dedicated software helps you “level” these bids side-by-side. You can spot the outliers instantly—seeing that one framer is 40% lower than the others (likely missing scope) before you accidentally hire them.
If you are building one house a year, stick with Excel. It works fine for hobbyists.
But if you are juggling multiple projects, inviting dozens of subs, and trying to scale your revenue past $2M, Excel is holding you back. You need a system that works for you, not one that you have to work on.
Stop managing spreadsheets and start managing projects.
Ready to ditch the spreadsheet chaos? Try Bid Bench for free and see how easy bid tracking can be.