They cost the hours.POD reads the job.
HeavyJob, from HCSS, is a field time and job-cost tool for heavy civil: crews clock hours and quantities against cost codes, and the office sees cost-to-date the same day. It costs the labor in the field, and does it well. POD reads the whole job, the timecard exports along with the pay apps, budgets, and schedules, and tells you where it is heading: labor at completion, overhead burn, earned value, and a morning brief before the huddle.
HeavyJob is a heavy-civil field time and job-cost product from HCSS: fast timecards, daily production quantities, and cost-to-date by cost code. POD is the intelligence layer that reads those costed hours together with your pay apps, budgets, and schedules and computes what comes next: the labor forecast to completion, overhead burn against target, CPI and SPI, predictive safety, and an AI-written morning brief. Keep the timecard tool if your crews like it. Add the read. No sales call, no rollout.
Transparent vs. Hidden Pricing
Drag the slider to see POD’s cost for your team size. No sales call needed.
The timecards stop at today. The read goes to completion.
A job-cost tool tells you what the hours have cost so far. This is what those same four months say once POD reads the job.
Same costed hours, same cost codes. POD adds the forecast: labor lands at $2.47M against a $2.40M budget, overhead is running 13.0% of work in place, and the huddle knows before the month closes.
Which one earns its place with you?
No spin. If the left describes you, a dedicated field job-cost tool is the right buy. If the right does, the hours are already costed and what you are missing is the read.
HeavyJob fits when…
A dedicated field time and job-cost tool earns its place here
- Your crews need fast, accurate timecards and daily quantities by cost code
- Cost-to-date against the estimate, field to office, is the whole question
- You already run the HCSS suite and want the pieces to talk to each other
- You want a vendor-led setup with a support desk you can call
POD fits when…
You need the job read, not just the hours costed
- You already produce pay apps, budgets, and schedules and want them read
- You need the forecast at completion, overhead burn, and CPI without building it
- The field will speak a report but will not type one
- You want a morning brief that says where the job is heading, and why
What the Costed Hours Were Trying to Tell You
Computed from the same job-cost data a timecard tool stores. The labor forecast from four months of costed hours; overhead burn from the budget and pay apps.
What each has. You decide.
On everything you both do, POD does more or better. Where HeavyJob stops at cost-to-date, POD adds the forecast and the read. Every HeavyJob figure links to its third-party source.
| Capability | HeavyJobHeavy-civil field time & job costing (HCSS) | Plan of DayConstruction project-intelligence platform |
|---|---|---|
Everything you both do — POD does it better | ||
| Field time & production entry | Fast crew timecards & daily quantities, coded to cost codes reviewers rate ease of use highly(source) | ▲ BETTER 60-second voice reports, offline, AI-structured; hours, quantities, weather & safety in one pass |
| Job-cost visibility | Daily cost vs. estimate by cost code, field to office | ▲ MORE Cost vs. budget AND forecast at completion, CPI, and the overrun by cause |
| Dashboards & reporting | Production & cost reports | ▲ BETTER Hundreds auto-generated + AI insight & a morning brief, no report builder |
| Daily record & photos | Daily production & field notes | ▲ BETTER Stores every daily AND reads it; photos analyzed for safety findings |
| Ask POD & Tell POD | — | ▲ BETTER Ask POD any question about your project; Tell POD an update by voice |
| Support & onboarding | Vendor-led setup; strong support a consistent reviewer theme(source) | ▲ MATCH Self-serve in minutes, with a human when you want one |
Where POD Goes Further HeavyJob is a field time and job-cost tool from HCSS, and a well-reviewed one. It costs the hours accurately and gets them to the office fast. POD reads the whole job, the pay apps, budgets, and schedules as well as the timecards, and tells you where it is heading. None of this requires leaving the tool your crews clock in on. | ||
| AI project analysis & narrative insight | — | ▲ MORE Every file read by AI; a morning brief that says what changed, and why |
| Labor cost forecast to completion | Cost to date vs. estimate | ▲ MORE Month-by-month forecast with confidence bands; estimate at completion against budget |
| Earned value & pay-app reconciliation | — | ▲ MORE CPI / SPI, EAC, pay-app lines reconciled against budget & change orders |
| Overhead burn rate | — | ▲ MORE Overhead as a share of work in place, tracked monthly against target |
| Schedule intelligence | — | ▲ MORE Reads your P6 (XER) and MS Project (XML) schedule; SPI, float & delay attribution |
| Predictive safety | — | ▲ MORE Fatigue index, new-worker risk window, schedule-pressure safety index |
| Timeline playback | — | ▲ MORE Scrub any day of the project and watch the KPIs move |
| Access & seat model | Per-user licensing; some reviewers note all-or-nothing access levels | ▲ BETTER Role-based access; billed to the company; subs submit free through Upload Links |
The facts | ||
| Pricing model | Quote-only; contact vendor | Public — $299 → $2,499/mo, self-serve |
| Free trial | Not published; contact vendor | Yes |
| Speed to value | Vendor-led setup; reviewers call it easy to install | Minutes — you just upload POD files every document, then reads each one — job-cost exports, pay apps, budgets, schedules, dailies, photos — to build your budget, forecast, EVM, reports and safety picture automatically. No cost-code setup, no data entry. |
| Deployment | Mobile field app; one product in the HCSS suite | SaaS, self-serve |
| User rating | Capterra 4.5/5 96 reviews(source) | — |
HeavyJob does not publish list pricing; this page states none of it. The user rating and reviewer themes are from the linked third-party review site (Capterra) as of the date below and are not vendor-confirmed. Comparison based on publicly available information. HeavyJob and HCSS are trademarks of their respective owners; this page is not affiliated with or endorsed by HCSS. Evaluating the full HCSS suite? See the separate HCSS comparison.
What POD Adds On Top
The read your costed hours were missing, without giving up the tool your crews clock in on
Minutes, Not a Rollout
Upload a file and see a dashboard today. No cost-code setup project, no device provisioning, no training program, no sales call.
Reads the Files You Already Produce
Pay apps, budgets, job-cost exports, P6 (XER) and MS Project (XML) schedules, daily reports, photos. POD reads them and maps the data to KPIs automatically.
Hundreds of KPIs, Auto-Generated
Labor cost forecast, overhead burn, earned value, CPI and SPI, predictive safety. Animated dashboards with no report builder to configure.
Keep the Timecards You Have
POD does not need to replace the app your crews clock in on. Export the job-cost report you already run; POD reads it and forecasts from it.
Voice-First Field Reporting
60-second voice reports the field will actually file, structured by AI in ten languages. Quantities, weather, crews, and safety in one breath.
Public Pricing, Free Sub Access
Every price is published, billed to the company, not the headcount. Subcontractors submit through Upload Links at no seat cost.
The Honest Take
If what you need is fast, accurate timecards and cost-to-date by cost code on heavy-civil work, HeavyJob is a fair buy, and its reviews say so. This page is for the moment after that: the hours are costed, the quantities are in, and nobody can tell you where the job will land or why overhead keeps creeping. That is the read POD adds.
Is POD your best match?
A short, honest self-check that scores your fit and tells you straight if a different kind of tool would serve you better. No sales pitch, no names, just an honest answer.
Frequently Asked Questions
Either. HeavyJob is a field time and job-cost tool: crews clock hours and quantities against cost codes, and the office sees cost-to-date fast. POD is a project intelligence layer that reads the files you already produce, job-cost exports, pay apps, budgets, and schedules, and turns them into a labor cost forecast, overhead burn, earned value, predictive safety, and an AI morning brief. Many teams keep HeavyJob for the clock-in and let POD read its output. Others find POD’s voice daily reports, pay-app form, and change-order log cover what they used, and consolidate. Neither path needs a migration project.
Cost-to-date tells you where you are. POD tells you where you will land. From the same four months of costed hours, POD forecasts the remaining months with confidence bands, lands the labor estimate at completion of $2.47M against a $2.40M budget, and flags the $73K overrun before it happens. It also tracks overhead as a share of work in place against target, something a timecard tool does not compute. That read comes from AI reading the files, not from a report you build.
No. HeavyJob is one product from HCSS, the field time and job-cost piece. This page compares that product specifically. If you are evaluating the whole HCSS suite, estimating through dispatch, the separate HCSS comparison covers it. Both pages are based on publicly available information.
POD publishes every price, starting at $299 a month with a free trial, and bills the company rather than the headcount. Subcontractors submit through Upload Links at no seat cost, so the read grows with the job without the invoice growing with the crew. There is no quote to request and no annual contract to sign first.
Keep the timecards. Add the forecast.
If costing the hours is all you need, keep the tool that does it. If you want to know where the job lands, start a free trial and upload one job-cost export.
Why Teams Switch to POD
What You Get With POD
Feature and cost comparisons are based on publicly available information and each vendor’s own published materials, and may change over time. Product names and trademarks are the property of their respective owners. POD pricing is published at planofday.com/pricing.