If you are like most General Contractors, you built your business on two things: hard work and Microsoft Excel.
For years, Excel (or Google Sheets) was enough. It’s flexible, it’s free, and you can structure it exactly how you want. But as your revenue grows from $1M to $5M and beyond, that flexibility starts to feel a lot like chaos.
You find yourself managing files named Project_Budget_Final_v3_ACTUALLY_FINAL.xlsx. You spend late nights trying to find a broken formula that is throwing off your margin by 2%. You waste hours manually copying data from a subcontractor’s PDF proposal into a spreadsheet cell.
Excel is a great calculator, but it is a terrible project manager. If you are looking for Excel alternatives for construction bidding, you don’t necessarily need expensive enterprise software. You just need a tool that handles the specific chaos of construction budgets.
Here is why GCs are moving their bid logs to the cloud—and what you should look for in an alternative.
The biggest argument for Excel is that you already own it. But if you calculate the hours spent managing the spreadsheet rather than managing the project, the cost is massive.
When you use Excel, the “truth” is trapped in a file on someone’s hard drive. If your Project Manager updates a line item but forgets to email the new version to the office, you are now working off two different budgets. Cloud-based alternatives ensure everyone is looking at the same numbers, in real-time.
This is the most common complaint we hear. A subcontractor emails you a PDF proposal. You have to open the PDF, find the number, open Excel, and type it in. Then you have to save that PDF in a Dropbox folder so you don’t lose it.
Doing this for 30 subcontractors across 5 projects is a massive waste of time. Modern alternatives can automate this, keeping your budget and your files in one place.
One accidental keystroke can delete a formula that calculates your markup. Unless you are auditing every cell before you hit send, Excel exposes you to financial risk. Dedicated software locks down the math so you can’t accidentally bid a job at zero profit.
You might be hesitant to switch because you don’t want to pay for a bloated platform like Procore or BuilderTrend. That’s understandable. You likely don’t need complex scheduling or daily logs yet; you just need to fix your bidding.
Here are the three features that make a piece of software a viable alternative to Excel:
Excel is bad at tracking relationships. A good bidding tool should allow you to send Invitations to Bid (ITB) and track who has opened them, who has declined, and who has submitted a number—all in a simple dashboard.
In Excel, your budget is in one window and your blueprints are in another. A purpose-built tool combines them. You should be able to upload your proposal PDFs directly to the line item they belong to. When you review the “Plumbing” budget, the plumbing quote should be one click away.
Comparing three bids is hard in a spreadsheet. You have to create side-by-side columns manually. Software should do this for you, highlighting the differences so you can make a quick, informed decision on which sub to hire.
You are growing out of Excel, but you aren’t ready for enterprise ERP systems. You need a middle ground.
That is exactly why we built Bid Bench.
We designed Bid Bench for the General Contractor doing $1M–$15M in revenue. It keeps the simplicity of a spreadsheet list but adds the automation you need to scale.
Excel got you to where you are today, but it won’t get you to the next level. If you are tired of broken links, lost files, and manual data entry, it’s time to upgrade.
You don’t need to change your entire business to change your bidding process. Try a tool that works the way you do—just faster, safer, and smarter.