Mark it done.
The PO sends itself.

Home builder purchasing software manages the bid-to-purchase-order flow: vendor bids, parts catalogs, purchase orders, payment scheduling, and budget tracking. Cornerstone PM™'s purchasing module connects directly to your sales pipeline and design center so structural options and design selections automatically feed the budget — no double entry, no spreadsheets.

AI construction purchasing uses agents to handle bid generation, vendor outreach, bid comparison, and PO creation. Cornerstone PM™'s Foreman AI includes a 4-skill Bid Pipeline domain plus a 7-wave automated bidding pipeline that contacts vendors, collects bids, normalizes pricing, and recommends an award — all inside one platform.

Auto-Quantity lets you set a quantity source on any scope item — Under Air Sqft, Total Sqft (Under Roof), Exterior Perimeter, or Roof Squares. Set it once on the scope item and the quantity auto-calculates from floorplan dimensions for every floorplan in your portfolio. POs intelligently combine base house + structural option quantities (e.g., 2,400 sqft base + 800 sqft finished basement = 3,200 sqft on one PO). No manual entry per floorplan, no stale numbers, ANSI Z765 compliant.

Yes — mark a structural option as global. A global option keeps identical takeoffs (parts and scope items) and a single retail price across every floorplan, so options like Finished Basement or Garage Extension that don't vary by plan only need to be set up once. Edit the takeoffs in one place and the change automatically syncs to every floorplan. When takeoffs differ between floorplans, a source picker lets you choose which floorplan's takeoffs to standardize on, and the retail price is editable inline. It eliminates hours of duplicate data entry and the errors that come with it.

Cornerstone PM™ has a dedicated Elevations Manager — a card-based page for managing every exterior style (Elevation A — Colonial, B — Craftsman, C — Modern Farmhouse, etc.) per floorplan. Each elevation has an inline-editable retail price adder that flows into the base home price, plus a code, description, and optional sqft override. Expand any card to manage its material takeoffs — add parts and scope items and edit quantities — while the cost is computed automatically from vendor pricing instead of being typed in. Foreman, the built-in AI assistant, can also create elevations, add parts, and set pricing entirely through natural conversation.

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

Yes. Cornerstone PM™ was built as a modern, affordable alternative to NEWSTAR and BuildPro for small-to-mid home builders. It covers the same core purchasing functionality — parts catalog, budget hierarchy, bid management, POs, payments — without the 6-figure implementation cost. Starts at $299/mo on the Builder plan.

Yes. Cornerstone PM™ tracks retainage on payments, classifies cost types, manages payment schedules, and surfaces variance reports against the budget. Vendor 1099 totals are exportable.

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

Yes. The Pro+ plan ($599/mo) includes Bring Your Own Agent (BYOA) and full REST API access. You can connect Claude, ChatGPT, or any custom agent to live purchasing, bid, vendor, and budget data through 150+ API endpoints with scoped Bearer-token auth.

Cornerstone PM™'s bid review uses a 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 inside their vendor portal; you review and approve.

Three tabs: (1) Base — floorplan-location-scope rows for the vendor's trade with option pricing; (2) Structural — takeoff-driven structural options for that scope; (3) Designer — design center option classes the vendor is responsible for. Everything is scope-filtered — your electrician doesn't see plumbing rows. The template is auto-attached to the vendor invite email and downloadable from the portal.

No login, no training. Vendors get a token-protected URL when invited. They download the auto-generated, scope-filtered Excel template (Base / Structural / Designer tabs), fill in their numbers in their own workflow, then upload PDF/Excel/CSV files back to the portal — up to 10 files, 10 MB each. Two clicks to submit. Builders don't end up doing data entry on behalf of subs who hate logins.

Every bid request flows through Invited → Viewed → Submitted → Declined, with timestamps. You can see at a glance who opened the link, who's working on it, and who never showed up — so you know who to chase before the bid window closes.

Yes. Take all your data with you anytime, no strings attached. Settings > Backups lets you download a full org export (91 tables) as CSV or JSON in one click, with sensitive fields automatically excluded. Every vendor, every home, every schedule, every option, every budget line. Nightly auto-backups run with 7-day retention for instant rollback. Your data is always yours — no vendor lock-in, no exit fees, no support ticket.

Cornerstone PM™ uses a lock-after-acceptance flow. The moment you award a vendor bid, the scope items, pricing, and terms lock down — no surprise edits, no scope drift, no last-minute pricing changes. The locked bid feeds directly into the home's budget and PO pipeline.

All three, plus a fourth. Cornerstone gives you four PO patterns and lets you mix them on the same job: (1) generate every PO across the entire build the moment the home is approved (locks in budget exposure on day one), (2) generate a partial deposit PO from any earlier pipeline task — permit pull, contract sign, foundation pour — then top it up later, (3) auto-generate a PO when a construction task is marked complete — choose draft-first (the PM reviews before sending) or auto-send (the PO is emailed straight to the vendor's scheduling email with the PDF attached, hands-free), or (4) configurable per task / scope / community so different trades follow different rules on the same home. Most platforms hard-code one PO model. Cornerstone lets your cash flow rules drive the system, not the other way around.

No. Cornerstone can auto-generate a PO the moment a construction task is marked complete — auto-populated with the right parts, scope items, quantities, vendor, and pricing for that home's floorplan (line items grouped by cost code). You choose the behavior per task: draft-first (the PO is created as a draft and the PM reviews it before sending) or auto-send (flag the task and the PO is generated and emailed to the vendor's scheduling email with the PDF attached, the instant the task is done — zero manual steps). The mapping is explicit (Construction Task → Cost Code → Takeoff Items → PO → Vendor Email), so there's zero manual data entry and nothing gets forgotten when a phase wraps. You can also download any PO as a PDF to email the vendor yourself. BuilderTrend, CoConstruct, and spreadsheets require fully manual PO creation and vendor email; Cornerstone fires the whole loop off a single 'task complete.'

Every purchase order moves through a status lifecycle: Draft → Sent → Acknowledged → Invoiced → Approved → Paid (or Void). When a vendor invoice comes in, the PO lands at Invoiced and effectively sits on hold — it doesn't get paid until someone with authority reviews it against the PO, the budget, and the work, then moves it to Approved. That Approved gate is your approve-to-pay checkpoint. Once approved, you record the payment (check, ACH, wire, card, or cash) with a reference number and date, and the PO flips to Paid. Retainage is withheld automatically at your configured percentage until project completion. Nothing pays a vendor without passing the approval gate.

Yes — Cornerstone PM™ has a live QuickBooks Online integration. Connect in one click (no developer setup), then Purchase Orders, Bills, sales tax, vendors, and homes push one direction from Cornerstone into QuickBooks — Cornerstone stays your source of truth, and changes made in QuickBooks never overwrite it. It auto-builds a construction-ready Chart of Accounts from your scopes and cost codes, and syncs each Community as a QuickBooks Customer with each Home nested under it as a Project so you get true per-home and per-community P&L in QuickBooks. You can also turn on auto-Bill: when you mark a PO received/complete, Cornerstone creates the matching Bill in QuickBooks linked to that PO (so the PO closes with no duplicate) — payment itself always stays a manual approval in QuickBooks, we never auto-pay a vendor. Set AP payment terms per bill — Net-X days, weekly on any weekday, monthly on the Nth (or last) weekday, or bi-weekly anchored to a payday — and Cornerstone computes the due date and carries it into QuickBooks so you can batch-pay everyone on a single payday. And when you actually pay a Bill in QuickBooks, that paid status flows back: Cornerstone marks the linked PO Paid automatically, with the QuickBooks payment date and amount (partial payments are handled — the PO only flips to Paid once the bill balance hits $0). That inbound paid status is a read-only reflection, not two-way sync — Cornerstone reads the payment result but never pushes edits or money into QuickBooks, and never auto-pays. It adapts to your QuickBooks plan (POs need Plus or Advanced) and can pull your existing accounts, items, and vendors so it matches your books. Prefer to build your own sync instead? The REST API and Zapier webhooks (qboId fields, po.created, payment.created events) are available too.

Yes — and not just flat cost codes like BuilderTrend or CoConstruct. Cornerstone supports a full hierarchy: trade scopes (your vendor relationship level) with cost codes beneath them for phase-level detail. The Plumbing scope, for example, breaks into PLM-001 Underground, PLM-002 Rough, and PLM-003 Trim. This unlocks per-phase PO generation — a separate purchase order with exactly the right materials for each vendor visit, instead of one giant PO per trade. Cost codes explicitly connect tasks → takeoff items → POs with zero fuzzy matching, and the same part can land on multiple POs at different quantities. It's enterprise-grade cost tracking (the kind you'd find in Procore or Sage 300) without the enterprise complexity — and it's fully optional, so builders who don't need the granularity can ignore it. Your master budget is unaffected; cost codes only drive home-level PO generation.

Cornerstone PM™ ships per-user notification preferences plus role-level subscriptions for admins. Admins can subscribe to bid events — new bids submitted, vendor scope edits, awards, lock events — and choose email, in-app, or both. Each user controls their own notification toggles independently.

No — and that's intentional. Home builders rely on long-term community vendor relationships, not lowest-bid auctions. Cornerstone PM™ supports community-assigned vendor awards: you choose who you want to win based on scope coverage, relationship, and quality — with the bid comparison data to back the decision. Lowest-bid auctioning destroys vendor relationships in residential homebuilding.

Cornerstone PM™'s purchasing module is included in the Builder plan at $299/mo with up to 30 users (60 on Pro+). The Pro plan at $499/mo adds Foreman AI's Bid Pipeline and Parts Catalog skills. Pro+ at $599/mo adds the REST API and BYOA. NEWSTAR and BuildPro typically require $25,000+ implementation budgets before monthly licensing.