Sage Intacct Construction deserves the stronger first look when job costing, work in progress, multi-entity consolidations, and financial reporting drive the decision. Acumatica deserves serious consideration when a contractor also operates a manufacturing department, such as a precast operation, fabrication shop, or production line. Its all-in-one CRM and payroll approach may also appeal to some buyers, although that breadth comes with tradeoffs.
We implement Sage Intacct Construction for contractors. For this comparison we sat down with Monica Delisle, who implemented Acumatica Construction before she joined us, and with Troy Guevara and Brady Curtis.
Job costing and the chart of accounts
A general ledger records what happened to the company. Job costing shows how each project performed.
That distinction sounds simple, but it shapes nearly every construction accounting decision. Coding a check to an expense account does not provide job costing on its own. Contractors need costs and work in progress organized to support both project-level reporting and the financial statements.
Sage Intacct Construction is a separate product from standard Sage Intacct. Cost codes, cost types, and work in progress are built into the construction product.
Monica considers the way Sage Intacct Construction organizes job costs one of its advantages.
When Monica implemented Acumatica Construction, she found a different structure. Everything revolved around tasks. Account groups served as cost types, and cost codes had been added when the construction package arrived, but there were no parent-child relationships between them.
Controllers are used to seeing a cost code roll up cleanly to a phase and then to the job. Setting up a project in Acumatica required Monica to work in the opposite direction, which she found difficult to follow.
An accounting structure may work technically but still be unfamiliar to the people responsible for running jobs.
It's something that's just going to feel weird or not right to a project manager.
Monica Delisle · Solutions ConsultantAsk for a current demonstration built on your own cost codes, cost types, tasks, and WIP, and watch how a project gets set up.
Brady points to another difference in the chart of accounts. Acumatica uses a segmented, hybrid dimensional chart of accounts, while Sage Intacct Construction is fully dimensional. Ask both sales teams to show how the system handles a new entity, department, location, project, and reporting requirement. Seeing the process is more useful than reviewing a diagram.
Reporting you can build yourself
Reporting costs can grow when every new question requires help from a consultant.
Monica learned that lesson while working in Sage 100 Contractor. Its standard WIP report was built in code and could not be changed, so creating a custom version meant starting over in the report writer.
It took me over 40 hours to build a single WIP report, and I ended up with formulas that were literally paragraphs long.
Monica Delisle · Solutions ConsultantThat experience gave her a basis for comparing reporting tools. When she moved to Acumatica, she expected a modern tool to make the job easier.
When I went to Acumatica, I was like, okay, great, this is a new modern, awesome tool. The reporting's got to be so much better. It wasn't. It was worse. Trying to modify or build a WIP report from scratch in Acumatica was, if anything, worse than what it was in my legacy software that had been around for 20 years. Their table structure is very confusing and very difficult to work with for reporting.
Monica Delisle · Solutions ConsultantHer experience with Sage Intacct Construction was different.
I took that report writer class — the class was about eight hours. I was brand new to Intacct. I spent a few hours messing around with it, and I was able to build a WIP report as a brand new novice to Intacct in like three hours. I was like, okay, I'm sold. I'm all in right now.
Monica Delisle · Solutions ConsultantSage Intacct Construction offers two reporting tools. One is designed for end users, while the other requires more expertise and provides more power. Monica considers both much simpler than the Acumatica tools she used and the report writer behind her 40-hour WIP report.
She sees reporting as the clearest difference between the products. It determines whether end users can build their own reports and dashboards or need to pay consultants and programmers for each change.
Do not judge reporting solely by whether a salesperson can display a polished dashboard. Find out whether your controller can change it after implementation. Give both teams the same WIP reporting requirement, ask them to build it, and then ask what skill level your staff will need to maintain it.
Where Acumatica is stronger
Acumatica has a clear advantage when a contractor also operates a manufacturing department. Examples include precast concrete, fabrication, or another true production line. Buying materials and tracking inventory alone does not make a business a manufacturer.
I think Acumatica is probably stronger in the manufacturing space than what Intacct is, but Intacct definitely has the edge in the construction space.
Monica Delisle · Solutions ConsultantInventory alone does not determine the decision, because Sage Intacct Construction has a strong inventory system of its own. Consider whether your business actually manufactures something.
When Monica implemented Acumatica, it also had an advantage in the project screen.
One thing I appreciate about Acumatica that frustrates me still in Intacct: when you've opened up a project, you could really work directly from that project. You could create any transactions you needed from that project without having to go navigate to other different modules.
Monica Delisle · Solutions ConsultantSage Intacct Construction has since expanded its own project screen, though Monica says some parts of the workflow are still missing.
Intacct has kind of gotten halfway there. They've built out the project screen so we can get access to all the different pieces and parts of the project without having to run reports or open a dashboard or go to different modules. But it's like they're so close but not quite there, because they didn't pull in the edit button. I can open up and view all those documents, but if I actually need to change one or create one, I still got to go over to the module.
Monica Delisle · Solutions ConsultantThe effect of this difference depends on each user's role. Accounting users generally work by task, while operations users generally work by project.
Accounting users are very task oriented — I'm going to do my AP invoices, I'm going to do payroll. For the operation side, they're looking at projects and they're working on projects.
Monica Delisle · Solutions ConsultantSage 100 Contractor also used a project-first workflow, which is part of why Monica notices the gap. If your project managers will use the system regularly, include this workflow in the demo script. Also keep the scope clear: Sage Intacct Construction covers the accounting and job-cost side of a project. Project management itself runs through Sage Construction Management, a separate portal with an integration into Intacct.
User licenses and consumption tiers
The two products use different pricing models, so different factors cause each subscription to grow.
Sage Intacct Construction licenses users. Acumatica prices by consumption tier and lets you add as many users as you like inside that tier. This can benefit a company that wants field and office staff in the system without counting seats.
Acumatica's unlimited users still operate within usage limits, and its pricing can be difficult to understand.
That's a big thing that Acumatica leans into hard. You can have as many users as you want in this system, you're not going to be charged for licensing. But you are being charged, essentially. It's very complicated to understand.
Monica Delisle · Solutions ConsultantThe tiers have hard limits, and Monica saw customers reach them earlier than anyone expected. Some reached the limits before go-live.
When I was doing implementations we would create what they call a snapshot, because we were testing things and deploying things, and we would run into times when they would literally be out of space and it would not let me create the snapshot — and I was only in implementation. They hadn't even started using it.
Monica Delisle · Solutions ConsultantBefore you sign, ask which activities count toward consumption, how usage is measured, and what happens when you reach the limit. In Monica's experience, reaching the limit required moving to the next tier.
The pricing model is definitely different. There are no licenses, but don't think that there aren't going to be limits, because there are. And when you hit them, the only option you got is to pay more for the next tier.
Monica Delisle · Solutions ConsultantMonica finds Sage Intacct Construction’s licensing model easier to understand and verify.
The Sage Intacct licensing structure is much more straightforward and understandable. It's documented.
Monica Delisle · Solutions ConsultantBoth models can work. Brady’s advice is to weigh the value of unlimited access against the number of people who actually need to use the system, and to ask what happens to the subscription when the company grows.
Ask both sales teams to model the business as it exists today and as it could look after growth. For Acumatica, focus on the variables that drive consumption and the consequences of reaching a tier. For Sage Intacct Construction, identify every person who truly needs a full license and every person who does not.
Construction payroll
Sage Intacct Construction does not include its own payroll module. Sage chose to leave payroll to specialists, and we include one in our package. Hammr is our preferred provider, and it covers certified payroll, prevailing wage by county and trade, multi-union projects, timesheet-level labor sync, and California compliance.
We bundle Hammr with Sage Intacct Construction because it handles the construction payroll requirements our customers need.
We're bundling it, and we have a preferred provider that does a really good job.
Troy Guevara · Construction TechnologistThis fits the way most contractors now want payroll to work. Labor cost goes into the accounting system, while a service handles the filings and related compliance work.
Here's the crux. Most companies these days want to have a payroll service provider. They don't want to have to file their own taxes, they don't want to do their own tax reports, they don't want to take any responsibility for that.
Monica Delisle · Solutions ConsultantIf you already run ADP, you can keep it under three conditions: it has to be the Workforce Now edition, you need the Sage Intacct connector, and ADP has to implement that connector. Monica’s caution is that ADP’s implementation teams do not always know construction payroll, so her customers have had trouble with the setup, not the product. Two other providers are worth considering. Miter is another payroll service that handles union and prevailing-wage work. Sage HCM is Sage’s newer direction, with a switcher between Sage products, and Monica has not yet seen it fully tested for construction payroll. Hammr remains what we recommend.
When Monica implemented Acumatica, it already had embedded payroll, and it offered that capability before Sage Intacct Construction had an answer. She found its multi-locality tax handling genuinely good. A contractor using embedded payroll still had to manage payroll in-house.
it's still up to your payroll department to take the responsibility — W-2s, tax reports, all those things a payroll service takes off the plate.
Monica Delisle · Solutions ConsultantIt was also still working through workers’ compensation and certified payroll when she left. Ask for a live demonstration using your states, your unions, your prevailing-wage rules, and your certified-payroll forms.
Whichever system you pick, decide whether your payroll department or a service will own payroll compliance after go-live.
Questions to ask before signing
Start with Sage Intacct Construction when job costing, WIP, consolidations, and reporting drive the decision. Give Acumatica the closer look when you run a genuine manufacturing operation, or when having one product cover CRM and payroll is especially important to you. Then ask both sales teams to demonstrate how their products handle your work.
Ask both sales teams:
- What will data migration involve, including history, open jobs, WIP, and validation?
- Which third-party platforms can connect, and who is responsible for implementing and supporting each connection?
- What must we change about our processes, data, or staffing to make this system work?
- Can you demonstrate our construction use cases with our own job setup?
- What is your AI investment and strategy, which construction use cases are available, and what evidence can you demonstrate today?
- Which capabilities require a partner, consultant, custom report, or separate product after go-live?
Brady believes Sage Intacct has the stronger AI strategy. Ask both teams how much they have invested, which construction capabilities are available today, and what they can show in a working system.
Partner selection matters for both products. For Sage, confirm the firm has implemented Sage Intacct Construction itself, and look for one that works mostly with contractors.
Troy advises buyers to look for a sales team that will explain what the company needs to improve, even when that answer is not what the buyer expected.
There are a lot of companies that will tell you what you want to hear. We don't tell you what you want to hear. We tell you what's going to make you better.
Troy Guevara · Construction Technologist
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