Frequently Asked Questions

Cornerstone PM starts at $149/mo (Starter), $299/mo (Builder, adds purchasing/sales/design center), $499/mo (Pro, adds Foreman AI + Blueprint AI), and $599/mo (Pro+, adds REST API, BYOA, and Bid Import AI). Every plan includes unlimited users with no per-seat fees. See full plan details on /pricing.

Yes — the 2-year free beta is open to the first 100 production builders, no credit card and no contract. Beta includes every feature on the Pro plan including Foreman AI (47 skills) and Blueprint AI takeoffs. Request access at /beta.

No. Every Cornerstone PM plan includes unlimited users, unlimited subcontractors, and unlimited buyers at no additional charge — add your whole team, every vendor, and every homeowner without per-seat math.

Zero. Cornerstone PM has no setup fees, no required consultants, and no separate onboarding contract — most builders are operational in hours. Compare to NEWSTAR or BuildPro which typically require $25,000 to $100,000+ implementation budgets.

Cornerstone PM ships 5 native AI agents. AI Support Agent is on every plan from Starter ($149/mo). AI MLS Listing Generator is on Builder ($299/mo) and above. Foreman AI (47 skills) and Blueprint AI are on Pro ($499/mo). Bid Import AI and BYOA are on Pro+ ($599/mo).

Beta access for two years is free for the first 100 home builders. It includes every Pro plan feature: scheduling, sales pipeline, purchasing, design center, options engine, Foreman AI (47 skills), Blueprint AI takeoffs, and the homeowner portal. After beta, plans start at $149/mo. Apply at /beta.

Yes. Annual billing is available for Builder, Pro, and Pro+ plans at a discount vs monthly. Contact us for annual quotes and custom pricing for production builders running more than 1,000 active homes.

Yes. Cornerstone PM Starter is $149/mo with unlimited users; Buildertrend starts at $499/mo. The full Cornerstone Pro plan is $499/mo — same as Buildertrend's entry tier — and includes Foreman AI and Blueprint AI that Buildertrend doesn't offer at any price.

NEWSTAR pricing is enterprise-quoted, but typical implementations run $25,000 to $100,000+ in setup plus $15,000-$40,000/year in per-seat licensing. Cornerstone PM Pro+ is $599/mo flat with REST API and BYOA included — no implementation fee, no per-seat charges. See /newstar-alternative.

Pro+ ($599/mo) adds the full REST API (59 endpoints), 30 webhook event types, Bring Your Own Agent (BYOA) so you can plug Claude or ChatGPT into live builder data, Bid Import AI (drag any vendor PDF/Excel/photo and AI extracts every line), the 7-wave automated bidding pipeline, and uncapped active home count.

Most builders self-serve migrate in hours to a day using the AI Migration Wizard (Live in Beta). White-glove migrations on Pro and Pro+ plans typically wrap in under a week. Compare to NEWSTAR (3-12 months with consultants) or Buildertrend onboarding (4-8 weeks).

The AI Migration Wizard (Live in Beta) is the AI-powered front door to Cornerstone PM data import. Drop your Buildertrend/JobTread/CoConstruct/NEWSTAR/BuildPro export files in, the wizard reads them with GPT-4o-mini, maps the columns, runs the imports, and tells you what it skipped. Find it at /admin/migrate inside the app.

Buildertrend, JobTread, and CoConstruct are auto-detected today. The wizard also handles NEWSTAR, BuildPro, MarkSystems, and any Excel- or CSV-based system using a smart column mapper. AI bid import handles any free-form vendor file (PDF, scan, even a phone photo of a handwritten quote) the CSVs can't.

Seven data types come over in the AI wizard's one-click flow: vendors, homes, communities, users, leads, tasks, and purchase orders. Behind the scenes, 23 dedicated CSV import endpoints cover 17 core data types — vendors, homes, communities, schedule templates, master tasks, scopes, takeoffs, parts catalog, budgets, design categories, floorplans, warranties, and more.

Vendors are deduped by email, then by name when email is missing. Homes are deduped by address + lot + community. Users are deduped by email. The wizard surfaces every duplicate in the preview so you can decide whether to skip, update, or import as new before committing.

Yes — and we strongly recommend it. Dry-run mode runs the full pipeline against your data without writing anything to your tenant, showing exactly what would import, what would dedupe, and what would fail. Re-run the real import only after the dry-run looks right.

Essentially nothing — about $0.002 per file in AI inference cost (via GPT-4o-mini), which Cornerstone absorbs. We do not charge for data migration, ever. White-glove migration with hands-on assistance is included on Pro and Pro+.

Yes — Buildertrend is auto-detected by the AI Migration Wizard. Drop your Buildertrend exports in and the wizard maps columns, dedupes against your existing Cornerstone data, and runs the imports. Most Buildertrend migrations complete self-serve in under a day. See /buildertrend-alternative.

Yes. The AI Migration Wizard ingests NEWSTAR, BuildPro, and MarkSystems exports through the same 23 CSV endpoints. AI bid import handles any free-form vendor pricing files those legacy systems can't cleanly export. White-glove migration is included on Pro and Pro+ plans. See /newstar-alternative and /buildpro-alternative.

NEWSTAR implementations run 3-12 months from contract to go-live, typically 4-8 months for builders doing 5-200 homes/year. Cornerstone PM is operational in hours via the AI Migration Wizard, no consultants required.

No. Cornerstone PM is fully cloud-hosted with no on-premise software to install — no Citrix, no Windows server, no IT infrastructure. Most builders go live without a single consultant call. White-glove migration assistance is bundled into Pro and Pro+ plans if you want hands-on help.

Five native AI agents: Foreman AI (47 skills across scheduling, sales, purchasing, design center, bids, vendors, reporting), Blueprint AI (PDF floor plan reader extracting 130+ material scopes per plan), Bid Import AI (extracts line items from any vendor PDF/Excel/photo), AI MLS Listing Generator, and AI Support Agent. Full overview at /ai-agents.

Foreman AI is Cornerstone PM's natural-language AI agent with 47 skills across 7 domains: Schedule (8 skills), Sales (6), Purchasing/Bid Pipeline (4), Design Center (8), Parts Catalog (5), Vendor Management (8), and Reporting (8). Tell it "reschedule framing across all active homes by 2 days and notify vendors" in plain English and it executes against live data.

Blueprint AI is the floor-plan-PDF-to-material-takeoff agent. Upload a plan PDF and it extracts 130+ material scopes per floorplan — quantities, locations, and rough sizing — pre-populating your takeoff records and parts catalog. Saves the multi-day manual takeoff cycle every time you launch a new plan.

Bid Import AI ingests any vendor bid format — Excel (.xlsx/.xls/.csv), PDF, JPG/PNG/HEIC, even a phone photo of a handwritten quote — and extracts every line item with confidence scores. 90%+ accuracy on filled bid templates, 75-90% on free-form vendor docs. Each line is fuzzy-matched to your parts catalog before import.

Yes — three options. Import as a Bid (creates BidLineItems, ready for side-by-side comparison and award). Import as Vendor Pricing (updates the vendor's standing pricing catalog by scope). Import as Takeoffs (creates floorplan-linked Takeoff records). Same parsed file, three possible destinations.

AI Support Agent is the always-on, in-app help desk grounded in Cornerstone's actual feature documentation, workflow guides, and your tenant's permission matrix. It picks up page context, answers buyers as well as builders, and beta builders saw 60-80% deflectionon routine "how do I…" tickets. Included on every plan.

The AI MLS Listing Generator drafts MLS-ready listing copy from live home data — floorplan name, square footage, locked structural options, design selections, community amenities, and pricing — in seconds. Generates compliant, agent-style descriptions without copy/paste from spec sheets. Included on Builder ($299/mo) and above.

BYOA lets you connect Claude, ChatGPT, or any custom AI agent to live Cornerstone data via the REST API (59 endpoints) and 30 webhook event types. Build your own scheduling automations, run your own bid analyses, or wire Cornerstone into an internal workflow. Included on Pro+ ($599/mo).

No. All Cornerstone AI agents (Foreman, Blueprint, Bid Import, Support, MLS) run on models with training disabled. Your parts catalog, vendor quotes, conversations, and tenant data never leave your tenant for training purposes. Each session is isolated and not retained beyond the active call.

ChatGPT is a general LLM with no knowledge of your homes, vendors, or build pipeline. Foreman AI is grounded in your live Cornerstone data and your role permissions, with 47 purpose-built skills that execute real actions — rescheduling tasks, notifying vendors, generating MLS listings, drafting bid requests. ChatGPT can describe what to do; Foreman AI does it.

Buildertrend has added some AI-assisted helpers over time, but does not ship purpose-built AI agents for material takeoff (Blueprint AI), bid extraction (Bid Import AI), schedule automation (Foreman AI), or natural-language workflow control. Cornerstone PM is built around AI as a first-class feature, not a layered add-on. Compare on /compare.

Cornerstone PM ships Gantt-style schedules with 3-tier auto-cascading dependencies (hard, soft, vendor-driven), 17 pre-built schedule templates, 7 foundation templates, weekday-only logic, and one-click vendor email confirmations. Designed specifically for production builders managing 10-200+ homes per year — not general contractors. See /construction.

When one task moves — say framing slips three days — every downstream task automatically shifts to match, vendors get re-notified, and the homeowner portal updates. Cornerstone uses a 3-tier dependency model (hard, soft, vendor-driven) so the cascade respects which tasks can run in parallel vs which must wait.

Vendors receive automated emails when tasks are ready, when timelines shift, and when permits clear. They confirm or decline in one click — no app login required. Daily and weekly digest emails keep vendors and PMs aligned without dashboard checks.

Yes. The AI Migration Wizard handles Buildertrend, CoConstruct, JobTread, NEWSTAR, BuildPro, and any Excel-based schedule using a smart column mapper. Single-community schedule imports typically complete in under an hour.

A permit gate is an automated rule that blocks downstream construction tasks until a specific permit is approved. Framing won't be scheduled until the building permit clears, slab pours wait for foundation permits, and final inspections wait for required preceding work — preventing rework from building ahead of permits. See /permitting.

Yes — every permit type a home needs: building, electrical, plumbing, mechanical, septic, well, driveway, and any jurisdiction-specific permits. Each permit has its own status, expiry tracking, gate logic, and document attachments.

Cornerstone PM alerts the PM in advance of permit expiration, automatically blocks dependent tasks if a permit lapses, and tracks the renewal workflow. Expired permits show as a hard block in the dashboard until renewal is filed and approved.

Cornerstone PM tracks the full inspection pipeline per home: scheduled, in-progress, passed, failed-with-rework. Inspectors are notified, PMs see status across every active home, and failed inspections automatically generate correction tasks and reschedule downstream work.

Yes, on every plan starting at Starter ($149/mo). The homeowner portal shows construction milestones, photo updates, schedule progress, design selections, and warranty information — included with no per-buyer fees.

Yes. Foreman AI's 8-skill Schedule domain handles bulk rescheduling, anomaly detection, vendor no-show alerts, weather-blocked task moves, and downstream cascade. Tell it "push framing two days across all active homes and notify vendors" and it executes — respecting your role permissions and notification preferences.

A production-builder-specific CRM and sale workflow. Track buyers from first contact through contract with built-in floorplan selection, structural options, lot inventory, and incentives. A counselor can build a contract-ready new home sale in under 60 seconds — including auto-generated 9-step sales checklist and auto-budget creation. See /sales.

Generic CRMs track leads but don't understand homebuilding workflows: floorplan pricing matrix, options engine, lot status, design center allowances, or auto-budget generation when buyers lock structurals. Cornerstone PM's sales module is wired to live build data so buyers, lots, plans, and budgets stay in sync automatically.

Yes. Pick a buyer, choose a lot and floorplan, lock structural options, apply incentives, and the system generates a contract-ready sale plus the buyer's design center allowance, the 9-step sales checklist, and the initial construction budget — all in under a minute. See the demo on /blog/60-second-home-sale.

When a sale locks, Cornerstone PM auto-generates the construction budget, attaches the correct schedule template, sets up the design center allowance, and notifies the PM. No double entry, no handoff meeting — sales, purchasing, design, and construction share one source of truth.

Yes. Sales counselors get role-scoped access to manage prospects, build sales packages, and present floorplans without seeing construction or financial detail outside their scope. Permissions are tenant-configurable.

Cornerstone PM's sales pipeline is included in the Builder plan at $299/mo with unlimited sales counselors and no per-seat fees. Pro at $499/mo adds Foreman AI sales analytics and AI MLS Listing Generator drafting from live home data.

Yes — the AI MLS Listing Generator drafts compliant MLS copy from live home data: floorplan, square footage, locked structurals, design selections, community amenities, and pricing. Included on Builder ($299/mo) and above. No more copy/paste from spec sheets.

A first-class module that lets buyers select finishes, fixtures, and upgrades while builders track allowances, upgrade pricing, and per-home margin. Every selection updates pricing, PO line items, and the construction budget automatically — no separate spec sheet to reconcile. See /design.

The rules system that prices structural and design options per floorplan and per community. Cornerstone PM's options engine handles dependencies, incompatibilities, allowance overages, per-community pricing, and real-time price rollup as buyers select.

64 curated Designer Packages across 7 categories. Buyer picks a package and all category options auto-lock to that package; à la carte unlocks if the package is removed. Strong differentiator vs spreadsheet-style design centers — and built so a buyer can complete selections in one sitting instead of three.

When a buyer locks structural options on a sale, Cornerstone auto-generates a per-room allowance schedule based on community spec levels (Standard, Premium, Luxury). Buyer selections debit the allowance, overages flow to a change order, and savings can be applied as buyer credits — all tracked in real time.

Yes. The moment a design selection is locked, Cornerstone updates the purchasing line items and the construction budget. There's no separate spec sheet to reconcile — design, purchasing, and the budget share one data source.

Yes. The homeowner portal shows every selection, allowance status, and upgrade pricing in real time. Buyers review, approve, and digitally sign-off on selections before construction begins.

Cornerstone PM matches NEWSTAR and BuildPro on the core options engine — structural and design options, dependencies, allowances, spec levels, change orders — without their 6-figure implementation cost. Foreman AI's 8-skill Design Center domain adds plain-English option configuration NEWSTAR and BuildPro don't offer.

No. Filler and default pricing has been removed app-wide — every dollar shown to a buyer or builder traces back to actual vendor pricing or a real takeoff line. Material breakdown comes from real takeoff parts; labor from vendor pricing. No synthetic splits, no estimator fudging.

Included in the Builder plan at $299/mo with unlimited users — no per-seat fees, no implementation cost. Foreman AI's 8-skill Design Center domain (plain-English option configuration, allowance tracking, selection package generation) is on Pro at $499/mo.

Send bid requests to multiple vendors at once. Auto-generated, scope-filtered Excel templates (3 tabs: Base/Structural/Designer) attach to the vendor invite email. Bids flow Invited → Viewed → Submitted → Declined with timestamps. Side-by-side comparison kicks in once 2+ vendors submit. See /purchasing.

No login, no training. Vendors get a token-protected URL when invited. They download the auto-generated Excel template, fill in their numbers, and upload PDF/Excel/CSV files back to the portal — up to 10 files, 10 MB each. Two clicks to submit.

Three tabs: Base (floorplan-location-scope rows for the vendor's trade with option pricing), Structural (takeoff-driven structural options for that scope), Designer (design center option classes the vendor is responsible for). Scope-filtered — your electrician doesn't see plumbing rows.

Side-by-side comparison view with scope-item drill-down. You see every bid against every scope item simultaneously — not just total price, but full scope coverage so you can spot gaps, exclusions, or scope creep before awarding. Vendors edit their own scope items in the portal; you review and approve.

No — and that's intentional. Production home builders rely on long-term community vendor relationships, not lowest-bid auctions. Cornerstone supports community-assigned vendor awards: pick who you want to win based on scope coverage, relationship, and quality, with bid comparison data backing the decision.

The moment you award a vendor bid, the scope items, pricing, and terms lock down — neither builder nor vendor can edit. Protects awarded pricing from drift, prevents scope creep, and feeds the locked bid directly into the home's budget and PO pipeline.

Yes. Cornerstone PM supports multiple ACCEPTED bids per scope — one vendor in Community A, a different vendor in Community B. Each award is community-scoped so you can respect existing builder-vendor relationships without flattening them into a single SKU.

Maintains SKUs, vendor pricing, and unit costs that sync across every job. Foreman AI's Parts Catalog domain (5 skills) handles SKU lookups, vendor price comparisons, material substitutions, catalog updates, and inventory alerts via plain-English requests.

Flexible buckets of work assigned to a vendor — labor, material, lump sum, or mixed. Not strictly labor-only or material-only. Scope items are the unit vendors bid on, the unit your budget tracks, and the unit lock-after-acceptance protects.

Community-level extras (e.g. site-prep, common-area finishes) priced separately from per-home costs but fully integrated with takeoff. Lets you bill builder-pays-builder costs cleanly without inflating per-home line items.

Yes. Retainage on payments, cost-type classification, payment schedules, and variance reports vs the budget are all tracked. Vendor 1099 totals are exportable.

When a sales counselor locks structural options on a new home sale, Cornerstone auto-generates the construction budget from the floorplan's base costs plus option deltas. Design selections, change orders, and bid awards continue to flow into the same budget number throughout the build.

On Pro+ ($599/mo), Foreman AI runs an automated 7-wave bidding pipeline: contacts vendors, collects bids, normalizes pricing, fuzzy-matches line items to your catalog, and recommends an award based on scope coverage and relationships — all inside one platform.

Yes — a public REST API with 59 endpoints, scoped Bearer-token authentication, and full documentation at app.cornerstonepm.ai/developers. All core data (schedules, vendors, lots, options, bids, budgets, takeoffs) is accessible. Included on Pro+ ($599/mo). See /api-access.

Yes. 30 webhook event types fire on key state changes — bid submitted, bid awarded, schedule task moved, permit approved, sale locked, vendor invited, and more. Use them to wire Cornerstone into Slack, accounting systems, your own AI agent, or any internal workflow.

BYOA lets you connect Claude, ChatGPT, or any custom AI agent to live Cornerstone data via the REST API. The Foreman skill pack endpoint exposes Foreman's 47 native skills so your own agent can call them directly. Included on Pro+ ($599/mo).

Yes. Pro+ ($599/mo) includes BYOA + full REST API access. Connect Claude, ChatGPT, or any custom agent to live purchasing, bid, vendor, and budget data through 59 endpoints with scoped Bearer-token auth.

REST API + 30 webhook event types make Cornerstone integrate with anything — Slack, QuickBooks, Sage 300, custom CRMs, and AI workflows via Twilio/Bland/Retell for voice and SMS. We focus on a clean public API rather than a long list of brittle direct integrations. Connect what you need at /api-access.

Public API documentation lives at app.cornerstonepm.ai/developers — full endpoint reference, webhook event schemas, authentication details, and code examples. Marketing overview at /api-docs.

Buildertrend has limited integration capabilities and historically required enterprise contracts for API access. Cornerstone PM ships a public, documented REST API with 59 endpoints on Pro+ ($599/mo)— no separate contract, no enterprise gating.

Cornerstone PM is purpose-built for production home builders (5-200+ homes/year, plan repeats, multi-community, lot inventory). Buildertrend was built for custom builders and remodelers. If you're running production tract or spec, Cornerstone fits better; if you're a one-off custom builder, Buildertrend may still be the right fit. Full breakdown at /buildertrend-alternative.

Native AI agents (Foreman AI's 47 skills, Blueprint AI takeoffs, Bid Import AI), a structural options engine, floorplan pricing matrix, multi-community pipelines, and a public REST API on Pro+ ($599/mo). Buildertrend's price floor is $499/mo — the same as Cornerstone Pro — and includes none of these.

Cornerstone covers the same core functions: scheduling, homeowner portal, purchasing, bid management, document storage, change orders, time tracking. The one Buildertrend feature Cornerstone doesn't ship is custom-builder client invoicing — because Cornerstone is built for production builders who use draw schedules, not progress invoicing.

For small-to-mid production builders (5-200 homes/year), Cornerstone PM matches NEWSTAR's core capabilities (options engine, floorplan pricing, multi-community, design center, draws) without the $25,000-$100,000+ implementation cost or 3-12 month rollout. For top-100 enterprise builders with deep custom ERP integrations, NEWSTAR may still be the right fit. See /newstar-alternative.

Cornerstone PM is a modern, web-based, mobile-friendly platform; BuildPro's UI is dated and Windows/Citrix-centric. Cornerstone ships native AI agents BuildPro doesn't offer at any tier, and is operational in hours at $149/mo with unlimited users vs BuildPro's $25k-$75k+ implementation budgets. See /buildpro-alternative.

JobTread is built for general contractors and custom builders. Cornerstone PM is purpose-built for production home builders with native lot management, options engine, design center, and multi-community pipelines JobTread doesn't ship. JobTread starts around $179/mo with per-user limits; Cornerstone is $149/mo with unlimited users. See /blog/jobtread-alternative.

CoConstruct (now part of Buildertrend) is optimized for custom builders and remodelers. Cornerstone PM is for production builders running plan repeats, lot inventory, and design centers. Migration from CoConstruct is auto-detected by the AI Migration Wizard.

MarkSystems is a long-running enterprise platform for production builders, similar in scope to NEWSTAR. Cornerstone PM offers comparable core capabilities (options engine, draws, communities, design center) on a modern web stack with native AI agents and a public REST API — at $149-$599/mo flat instead of MarkSystems' enterprise quote-and-implement model.

Cornerstone PM is purpose-built for this segment. Production-builder workflows (communities, floor plan libraries, schedule templates, AI takeoff, vendor bidding, design center options) are first-class. Buildertrend works but adds complexity overhead; NEWSTAR/BuildPro are over-built and over-priced for this volume.

Probably not. Cornerstone PM is optimized for production home builders. If you're running one-off jobs without floorplan repeats, lot management, or pre-sale design centers, Buildertrend remains a better fit. Cornerstone's value compounds when you're running multi-community production with plan repeats.

Yes. Pro supports up to 1,000 active homes; Pro+ has no home cap. The REST API and webhook system on Pro+ enable custom integrations to accounting (Sage 300, QuickBooks Enterprise), warranty platforms, and CRM tools as you grow past 200+ homes/year.

Yes — every plan. Settings → Backups lets you download a full org export (91 tables) as CSV or JSON anytime, with sensitive fields automatically excluded. Nightly auto-backups run with 7-day retention. Your data is always yours, no exit fees.

Nightly automatic backups, 7-day retention. You can also trigger manual backups on demand at any time from Settings → Backups (Admin only). Both CSV and JSON formats are available for full-database exports.

You do.Cornerstone PM operates on a "your data is always yours" principle: full database export in CSV or JSON anytime, no exit fees, no data hostage situation. The REST API on Pro+ also gives you full programmatic access to every record.

Yes. Each builder runs in an isolated tenant — your homes, vendors, pricing, AI conversations, and permission matrix never cross tenant boundaries. AI agents (Foreman, Blueprint, Bid Import, Support) operate strictly within your tenant scope.

No. All Cornerstone AI agents run on models with training disabled. Vendor pricing, parts catalog, conversations, and tenant data never leave your tenant for training. Each AI session is isolated and not retained beyond the active call.

Yes. Tenant-configurable role permissions control who can view/edit options pricing, schedule tasks, vendor data, financial details, and bid awards. Sales counselors, PMs, admins, designers, and vendors all see different scopes of the same platform.

Yes. Per-user notification preferences plus role-level subscriptions. Admins can subscribe to bid events (new bids, vendor scope edits, awards, lock events) and choose email, in-app, or both. Each user controls their own toggles independently.

No. Full database export in CSV or JSON anytime, no exit fees. The REST API gives you full programmatic access. You can re-import to whatever platform you choose. We win by being the best fit, not by holding data hostage.