Premier Reviews

The integration of the project management and accounting modules.

The Mobile app needs improvement specially for the site staff.

Jonas offers a lot for the costs to use this programme, however its low cost compared to other programs does mean that it lacks some of the features of larger companies like Jobpac. Its an affordable alternative to these companies and will do all you need it to for accounts AP and AR.

Lacks the usability of project management modules, this needs improving to become a better product that project teams can use well.

Cost Transparency
Cost Tracking
Organization

Training - in person training would be better than the webinars

So far, the individual approvals for invoices, subcontracts, COs are all really great and have already streamlined a lot of clunky process we had in the past. It's hard to evaluate job costing and budget management since we don't have a ton of historical data in there for jobs yet.

It's very difficult to get it to integrate with our current estimating software. We're in the process of changing over, so I know it's only temporary

The budgeting and subcontract is something we need greatly. This tool is helping us get our budgets in line and mange our subcontracts better.

Did not like having to setup the journals. You had to set up General Journal, Sales and purchase. These are pretty standard so not sure why these need to be set up

1. Full service software
Jonas is a full service software that includes original estimates, subcontract creation, change orders, progress billing, T&M billing, RFIs, data management, and much more. Everything is included under one roof so instead of having to bounce back and forth between multiple programs we can access almost everything we need in one place.

2. 6 weeks of amazing training!
The training and implementation aspect of this software was excellent. The team is friendly, professional, helpful, and always willing to answer questions (and I asked a TON of questions) and help us figure out how to make Jonas work for our company. I really appreciated that they helped train us in best practices and showed us ways to improve upon our current processes. We loved having people to hold our hands and guide us through the process.

3. Organization
I really love the flow of the software and how well it organizes our jobs in an easy to use system. It's quite robust and takes time to learn, but once we're up and running I know we will be so grateful to be able to perform so many operations with the click of a button. No more hunting down important info in emails, printed documents, or computer files. We'll be able to access so much information in a short amount of time.

Learning anything new takes time and effort. There was definitely a lot to learn but Jonas emails us all of the training videos so we can access them at any time and there's a ton of support once we Go Live. We're a small team, so it felt like a lot of work, but that's normal with any new software implementation. If you have a small amount of employees, you'll really need to manage your work hours well so you can continue running your business and handle all of the training and implementation. We did it, and you can too!

Our trainer truly took the time to understand our business and individual requirements for each of our PMs & Accountants. We are a very detailed organization, and he was able to ask the right questions and get into the details that matter. Coming from AccuBuild – it was difficult to process CORs and link them to the subcontract. In Premier, everything is so automated!! It provides great visibility in your profitability and makes it easy for project managers & estimators to drill down into information real-time. Having this transparency is important to help us make more informed decisions. Best of all, it’s easy to use – even the PMs & Senior estimators love it and have adopted it. This is one solution that makes it easy to better manage your people and projects.

At this moment there isn't any thing we feel is missing from the software.

When we decided to launch our construction company we wanted to invest in the best tools, equipment and back-end management software. We found everything we needed from Jonas Premier. The implementation and learning curve required a lot of energy and input, but very well worth the effort.

The Premier user interface feels dated; it's probably due for a refresh.

The interface is very easy to use. Our implementation specialist was very helpful and made the set up process very easy and always answered any questions we may have.

The software is quite complex so it will take a while to get used to.

We are currently in the training phase and are about half way through. I love that during training we have live webinars with the trainers and are able to ask questions and follow along in our test environment. Trainers are very knowledgeable and patient and the webinars are designed to be easy to follow along! The provided recordings of the webinars are a big help in going back and working in the test environment on your own afterwards. The webinars are followed up by one on one calls to discuss your company's specific needs and to dig deeper into specific areas; these sessions have been incredibly helpful and I highly recommend taking advantage of them. Coming from an environment that has done all of its project management manually, this is a huge conversion for us and based on everything we are experiencing during training, we made the right decision to go with Jonas!

So far in training, there isn't anything I don't like about the software, as we are still digging in and learning our way. Some modules are easier to follow along than others, although I think that has a lot to do with personal preference (I enjoy the PM training sessions much more than the accounting). I think for me my biggest frustration with the training is the scheduling of the webinars. As the person leading the conversion, but also having to accomplish my regular work on a daily basis, two back to back hours of webinars twice a week is sometimes difficult to manage and I find myself having to skip or leave early at times. If i could change anything it would be maybe to have a morning and afternoon session instead of back to back.

Speed, versatility, customer support, and friendly staff. When work/construction was scarce for our company, you took the time to help us come up with a payment plan. The reporting is amazing! You have made a lot of changes in regards to being “user friendly” AKA the ability to delete. Keep this going! Pending AP Invoice Report is also a great addition. I am grateful for your monthly webinars followed by the taped session to refer back to. Dashboard is fresh…love it!

On reporting such as the financial statement report we see -#’s different then we are accustom to. When the number is negative it shows in positive and when positive it shows in negative (with bracket). Can that be reversed? Since the new update I have posted some items and they don’t show up on other tabs unless I logout and back in (even after refresh) this has happened 3 times. When a change order is rejected its unable to be modified. I would like more opportunity to drill down into reports.

Jonas Premier has surpassed our expectations. Premier has reduced the overall time we spend on accounting procedures every month, allowing us to focus more of our attention on our customers needs, estimating, and selling jobs. There are many reports to make sure we stay on top of our AP and AR. Although we haven't started to use the Subcontract portion of the software yet, we are hopeful that it will streamline our subcontract agreement process. The Accounts Payable section is extremely easy to use, and with the Jonas Premier add-in for Excel, entering new information is a breeze.

There are still a few small things that need to be worked out, mostly ease of use features. Sometimes it can be a bit difficult to remember to post your work; for example, we pay bi-weekly, timecards must be posted each week, and then again at the end of the pay period. So, for a two week time period, I have entered and posted timecards on two occasions, but then after the second week is posted, you have to post the whole payroll period in a separate location.

Onboard training was excellent. Support for questions or issues after implementation is excellent. Web-based software so employees and owners can view and add information from where ever they are working. Plus backup is current and ME rollover is smooth and doesn't require lots of processing to accomplish. Lots of reporting options and owners find the information easy to locate and readily available for review as needed. Very intuitive to use once for day to day activities.

Lien waivers need improvement - difficult to use. Premier is in the process of updating this feature and we are excited for that to be rolled out.

This software is the first of its kind to give us real time financial information on our projects and company as a whole. The Job Dashboard and Job Forecast screens are everyone's favorite. It shows you everything you need to know on the financial health of your project/budget at any given time and you can drill down into pretty much anything for more detail. Commitments and compliances are easily trackable and things like double entries are avoidable because payments are done directly out of the software. Premier's customer support is extremely responsive, helpful and knowledgeable and always offers solutions on how to best customize the software for our company's unique goals and objectives.

The software is not the easiest on the eyes and initially intimidates our project managers because it really looks and behaves like an accounting software. However, once the Project Managers learn the true capabilities of Premier, they are truly blown away. Would also be an added bonus if the software had more project management tools that are not related to the finances of the project.

So far, the product has been easy to maneuver and understand. When I purchased Jonas a competitor asked why Jonas? Here is my response: "I liked the fact that I don’t buy modules. I buy a complete package that is updated regularly and I get those updates. All apps are part of the package. This enlarges our use of licenses. Since Jonas is Microsoft based, we use our existing estimating system and it will populate the Jonas system. One less group to train. I am locked into unlimited training at a defined cost. The system is cloud based not cloud stored. Access is anytime as a result. I was able to define my cost exposure 100%. That was a tremendous comfort zone. I know what my yearly cost exposure potential is limited to.
I hope that helps as I wanted a solid comfort with the system I chose. In all cases Jonas seemed to best fit our needs."
Response from competitor:
"Thank you for your candor. All good reasons, especially pertaining to the “good fit” statement. I wish you and Max Construction all the best in the coming years and hope I get to hear how everything goes at some point in the future. It has been a pleasure working with you."

I do not have any dislikes at this time. Jonas has shared new products coming on line and I am truly excited about the whole thing.

The newly released Premier is very responsive; crisp and quick, with drill down capability throughout. We have yet to fully use the capabilities of the software.

Although all of the data is accessible via Odata and can be formatted and reported in unlimited ways, I'd like a few additional canned reports.

The ability to drill down to trace transactions. How it is intuitive to project managers to manage their budgets and cost controls seamlessly with the accounting team.

I really wish that there was a notification function as it relates to new AP and POs to be approved.

I like that it's an all-in-one accounting and project management software, making information collected via data management, AR/AP, and PM integrated and centralized. They also provide excellent onboarding and ongoing customer support. I'm new to construction as well as to bookkeeping and their team has had endless amount of patience and for my equally endless number of questions. No problem is too big, small, or ridiculous for them to tackle.

I made the somewhat unfortunate decision to request a Macbook instead of a PC for work. While the add-ons are mainly used only in the setup portion, the only thing that isn't ideal is that some of the MS Office Applications Add-Ons do not work with the applications for MS Office for Mac. The team, however, is super great about making the necessary adjustments on their computers so that it's not remotely the end of the world.

The system is pretty user friendly and I can access everything I need to do my role within the company.

I wish I was able to run more reports straight from Jonas vs having to use Excel Add-In. I don't like that the newest version of the Aged Receivable Report where the Job # and Job name are combined together in one field. This makes it difficult to sort/combine reports in Excel. Also, on the AR Customer Deposits Report, I wish there was an option to check so that it wouldn't include the lines with a 0.00 remaining balance.

1. Logical sequencing of menu items
2. End to End consistent user interface
3. Excel training program
4. Committed and customer focused client support
5. A robust document management system

I would love to see:
1. Complete glossary of all field headings used in all forms and reports
2. A user driven Report Builder that allows the user to pick and choose various fields, make choices for filtering, grouping, sorting and totalling data, enabling them to design their own reports

The software meets all our needs. We run 13 companies each with different needs. This is a construction software, but we do other companies involving investments, property management, and it meets all our needs and more. One of our favorite features is the document manager. It is super easy to grab documents and attach that document to any transaction. It frees up our computer space and organizes it much better than we could have by ourselves. This software really is for everyone that wants to take the time to learn. It is a tedious process to get started, but well worth it and will save you a lot of time in the long run.

My only con would be that the training videos are a little long. I think the videos could be a quick overview of the item that is being trained on, then we are required to go and try and figure it out ourselves. The great thing with Jonas is that you can mess up in your test company and nothing carries over once you go live. So mess up as much as you want, it will help you learn. If the videos had a little revamp and shortened with more interaction, there would be not a single con to this software.

I like that this is truely software in the cloud and not just a hosted solution. Jonas has put together an excellent solution for the construction industry for medium-sized businesses. The integration between accounting and PM is excellent and the ability to easily customize forms without a substantial coding background makes it easy for our company to appear professional to our clients without too much effort. Jonas has an organized on-boarding process which forced me to slow down and really learn the software before we went live.

So far, my only issue is that I wish we could approve a subcontractor change order from a PCO - as it happens, more than anyone wants to admit. But honestly, I haven't been using the software long enough to know whether there is a good work-around.

Great customer service. Constant updates to the software have greatly improved Jonas Premier over time. Has improved since the move to Chrome.

Some common functions that should be available are difficult to access like an hours and time report based on time frame and not just jobs. Thankfully we can now access this but we must access it through excel which is cumbersome. Also, I am happy that Premier is on Chrome now so I can use it with my mac, but having some external links through excel only, is not helpful; perhaps make add ons so that we can access these same functions on excel for mac.

The project management aspect and the integration between the project management and accounting are excellent, especially with subcontracts.

Invoice entry can be very frustrating, e.g. not being able to add vendors from the invoice screen, and not being able to see the remaining budget for cost items until after sending invoices for approval. Also, editing things that were previously posted can be extremely frustrating.