Construction crew management software gives the office and every crew one shared system: who is on which job, what needs doing, how long it took and what it cost. For a contractor with 15 to 50 people, Contruva covers crew scheduling, a crew app with clock-in, checklists and photos, permissions for who sees what, job costing and one inbox for the office, at $249.99 CAD a month for the whole business with no per-seat fees.
This is the size where the cracks show. You might have three to eight crews, a dispatcher or office manager, someone on the books, and an owner who has finally stepped off the tools. The tools you picked when you were six people (a group chat, a shared spreadsheet, a quoting app and paper timesheets) now take more time to manage than the crews do. Here’s what to look for and how to make the move without stalling the business.
What does crew management software do for a contractor?
The phrase covers a lot of products, from simple time clocks to full construction suites. For a trades or residential contractor running multiple crews, it should do five things well:
- Scheduling. Put every crew on a shared calendar, move jobs when the weather changes, and have the crew see it on their phone.
- Job information in the field. Address, scope, checklist, photos and notes on the crew’s phone, so the lead hand doesn’t call the office for them.
- Time against jobs. Clock-in and time entries tied to the job, not just the day.
- Access control. The crew sees their work, the office sees the business, and pricing stays with the people who need it.
- Costs. Labour, materials and receipts tied to each job, so you know what made money.
Some crew tools stop there, and you still need a separate quoting app, CRM, website and payments tool. Contruva covers those too, which matters more at this size than at any other: the office spends its day passing information between stages, and every hand-off between apps is a chance to drop it.
Construction crew scheduling software that the crew actually opens
The calendar is drag and drop. The office sees every crew’s week, moves a job when a delivery is late, and the crew sees the change on their phone. Recurring jobs, like maintenance visits or weekly service, repeat on their own, and the calendar syncs with Google or Outlook for anyone who lives in those.
On site, the crew app shows the day’s jobs with everything attached. The lead hand clocks the crew in against the job, works through the checklist, takes before and after photos, records materials used and writes the daily log. The office sees all of it without a phone call.
Contruva doesn’t do GPS tracking, route optimization or payroll. Time entries are recorded against each job for your payroll process. If live vehicle tracking is a must, plan to keep a separate fleet tool.
How to control what each person sees
At 6 people everyone can see everything. At 30, you don’t want every apprentice seeing your margins, and you don’t want the bookkeeper accidentally moving jobs on the calendar. Each person in Contruva has an access level (owner, admin or member) and, for each module, a setting of none, view or edit. The modules are the inbox, contacts, requests, deals, tasks, calendar, jobs, quotes, invoices and payments, and expenses. A common setup:
| Role | Access level | Typical module settings |
|---|---|---|
| Owner | Owner | Everything |
| Office manager / dispatcher | Admin | Edit inbox, contacts, requests, calendar, jobs, quotes, tasks |
| Bookkeeper | Member | Edit invoices and payments and expenses; view jobs and contacts; none on deals |
| Estimator / sales | Member | Edit requests, deals, quotes, contacts; view calendar |
| Lead hand | Member | Edit jobs; view calendar and quotes; none on invoices and payments |
| Crew member | Member | Edit jobs (their checklists, photos, time); none on quotes, invoices and payments |
Because there are no per-seat fees, you don’t have to choose between giving someone a login and keeping costs down. Seasonal workers get accounts in April and you switch their access off in November.
What per-seat pricing costs a growing team
Per-user pricing is reasonable for small teams. It gets expensive as you grow, and it pushes you to share logins, which defeats the point. Here’s what two popular field service apps list on their own pricing pages (checked November 2026):
| Software | What’s listed | Currency |
|---|---|---|
| Jobber | Grow: $499/mo for 15 users with no commitment ($399 billed annually). Extra users $29/mo each. Teams of 16 or more are pointed to sales. | USD |
| Housecall Pro | Max: $329/mo for 8 users on monthly billing ($299 annually), plus $35/mo per extra user. At 25 users that’s $924/mo. | USD |
| Contruva Pro | $249.99/mo for the business, no per-seat fees, everything included. | CAD |
Those tools have features Contruva doesn’t, and some teams will need them. But if your crews mostly need their schedule, their checklists, a clock-in and a camera, paying per head for that adds up quickly. The ServiceTitan pricing breakdown covers the heavier end of the market, and Housecall Pro alternatives compares more options.
Running the office from one inbox
The office at this size usually has one or two people handling everything that comes in: new leads, customers asking when the crew is coming, suppliers, reviews, the odd Instagram message. In most businesses those arrive on the owner’s cell, the office line, a shared email and a Facebook page nobody checks.
Contruva’s inbox puts calls, texts, email, WhatsApp and social DMs in one place. The AI receptionist answers when the office is busy or closed and books jobs into the calendar. Contruva AI can do the routine follow-up (open quotes, overdue invoices, past customers due for a check-in) and you decide what it does on its own and what it asks about first. That’s often the difference between hiring a third office person and not.
Job costing across crews
With one crew, you know roughly which jobs went well. With six, you don’t. Contruva ties crew time entries, materials, receipts and mileage to each job, then shows quoted against actual while the work is underway. If one crew is consistently over on labour for the same kind of job, you’ll see it in a month instead of at year end. Our job costing guide covers what to track, and the labour burden calculator helps you load your hourly rates properly. Invoices, payments and expenses sync with QuickBooks or Xero for the accountant.
How to move a 30-person team off spreadsheets
The risk at this size isn’t the software. It’s trying to switch everything at once in the busy season. A phased rollout keeps the work moving:
Import contacts, set up the price book, connect the inbox and the receptionist. The office learns it before the crews do.
Pick your most organized lead hand. Their crew uses the crew app for clock-in, checklists and photos. Fix the checklists based on their feedback.
Add the rest of the crews and set permissions by role. Retire the paper timesheets.
All new quotes and invoices go out of Contruva, connected to QuickBooks or Xero. Old jobs finish where they started.
Look at job costing by job type and crew, and adjust your pricing.
Book a demo before you start and a real person will help you map your crews, roles and permissions. If you’re still a smaller crew, the small business page is a better fit. If you’re well past 50 people or need multi-branch and ERP connections, read the enterprise page first, because it’s honest about where Contruva stops.