A blank grid.Or a construction read.
Smartsheet is a work-management grid, and a well-liked one: a spreadsheet anyone who knows Excel can pick up, with Gantt, Card, and Calendar views, shared sheets, comments, alerts, and no-code automation on top. It gives you a blank grid and lets you build any tracker you can design. POD arrives already knowing construction. It reads the pay apps, budgets, schedules, logs, and photos you already produce and builds the trackers for you: earned value, retainage, project health, a chaos score, and a morning brief before the huddle.
Smartsheet gives you a flexible grid: rows, columns, formulas, views, and automation you design yourself, for any kind of work. POD is the construction read that arrives already built: CPI and SPI, pay apps reconciled against the confirmed budget, project health across five dimensions, a chaos score with its drivers named, predictive safety, and an AI-written morning brief, all computed from the files you upload. Keep the grid if it works for you. Add the read. No sales call, no tracker to build.
A Blank Grid vs a Construction Read.
Smartsheet publishes its plans, and so does POD. Drag the slider to see POD’s cost, then compare what each hands you on day one.
The grid. Then the read.
A grid holds whatever someone types into it. This is what the same project says once POD reads the files the rows were summarizing.
Same project, same documents. On the left, a tracker someone has to design, fill, and keep current. On the right, what POD computed from the pay app, the schedule, the RFI log, and the photos, with nothing typed in.
Which one earns its place with you?
No spin. If the left describes you, a flexible work-management grid is the right buy and Smartsheet is a good one. If the right does, the files exist and what you are missing is the read.
Smartsheet fits when…
A flexible, shared grid earns its place here
- Your team already lives in a spreadsheet and wants a shared one with alerts
- The work you track is not only construction: marketing, IT, and ops in the same tool
- Someone on the team enjoys designing the tracker and maintaining the formulas
- Portfolio roll-ups of hand-built sheets are the reporting you need
POD fits when…
You need the construction read, not another tracker to build
- You produce pay apps, budgets, and schedules and want them read, not retyped
- You need CPI, SPI, retainage, and safety signals without writing a formula
- The field will speak a 60-second report but will not fill in a row
- You want a morning brief that says what changed, and why
What No Row in the Grid Could Tell You
What POD’s read of a project like this looks like: health across schedule, budget, safety, quality, and risk, and the chaos score with its drivers named. A grid holds the rows; this is what they add up to.
Illustrative project in execution: health 76, chaos 44 against a target of 30; the RFI backlog is the largest contributor.
What each has. You decide.
On everything you both do, POD does more or better. Where Smartsheet hands you the grid, POD hands you the read. Its rating links to its third-party source.
| Capability | SmartsheetWork-management grid platform | Plan of DayConstruction project-intelligence platform |
|---|---|---|
What you both do — POD does it better | ||
| Tracking views | Grid, Gantt, Card & Calendar views; familiar to anyone who knows Excel | ▲ MORE Budget, schedule, Gantt & pay-app views generated from your files; nothing to lay out Keep the grid for the work that is not construction; POD reads its export. |
| Collaboration | Shared sheets, comments, attachments & alerts; strong general-purpose collaboration | ▲ BETTER Files & comments, AND every attachment is read: pay apps, schedules & photos become KPIs |
| Dashboards & reporting | Dashboards & reports assembled from sheet data with widgets | ▲ BETTER Hundreds auto-generated + AI insight & a morning brief, no widget to configure |
| Automation & alerts | No-code automation: alerts, approvals, update requests | ▲ MORE Alerts on what the read finds: CPI slipping, RFIs aging, a safety finding in a photo; nothing to author |
| Field input | Forms & mobile app for row entry | ▲ BETTER 60-second voice reports, offline, AI-structured in ten languages |
| Portfolio roll-ups | Cross-sheet roll-ups & portfolio views | ▲ MORE Portfolio health map across every project, computed from the same reads; API for integrations |
| Ease of adoption | Low learning curve for Excel users Capterra 4.5/5 (3,545 reviews)(source) | ▲ MATCH Nothing to learn to build; upload a file and the dashboard exists |
| Ask POD & Tell POD | — | ▲ BETTER Ask POD any question about your project; Tell POD an update by voice |
Where POD Goes Further Smartsheet is a flexible grid, and a genuinely good one. It will hold any tracker you can design. POD arrives already knowing construction: it reads the files you produce and builds the trackers, the math, and the warnings for you. None of this requires giving up the sheets. | ||
| Construction KPIs out of the box | Hand-built per sheet; formulas are yours to write & maintain | ▲ MORE Hundreds of construction KPIs auto-generated: CPI / SPI, EAC, retainage, first-pass rate, TRIR |
| Earned value & pay-app intelligence | — | ▲ MORE CPI / SPI, EAC, SOV lines & retainage reconciled against the confirmed budget & change orders |
| Reads construction files | Attachments stored, not read | ▲ MORE Pay apps (including scanned), budgets, P6 (XER) & MS Project (XML) schedules, daily logs & photos read into KPIs automatically |
| Project DNA & Chaos Index | — | ▲ MORE Health across schedule, budget, safety, quality & risk; the chaos score with its top contributors named (the two cards above) |
| Predictive safety | — | ▲ MORE Fatigue index, new-worker risk window, schedule-pressure safety index; photos analyzed for findings |
| AI morning brief | — | ▲ MORE Every file read by AI; a morning brief that says what changed, and why |
| Timeline playback | Cell history & activity log | ▲ MORE Scrub any day of the project and watch the KPIs move |
The facts | ||
| Pricing model | Published per-seat (Pro, Business); Enterprise by quote | Public — $299 → $2,499/mo, self-serve |
| Free to start | See vendor site for current trial terms | Free trial, no credit card |
| Speed to value | Self-serve; the tracker is yours to design & populate | Minutes — you just upload POD files every document, then reads each one — pay apps, budgets, schedules, daily logs, photos — to build your budget, schedule, EVM, reports and safety picture automatically. No configuration, no data entry. |
| Deployment | Cloud SaaS, web + mobile | SaaS, self-serve |
| User rating | Capterra 4.5/5 3,545 reviews(source) | — |
Smartsheet publishes its own per-seat pricing on its website; this page states none of its prices. The user rating is from the linked third-party review site (Capterra) as of the date below. Comparison based on publicly available information. Smartsheet is a trademark of its respective owner; this page is not affiliated with or endorsed by Smartsheet.
What POD Adds On Top
The read your rows were missing, without giving up the grid that holds them
Minutes, Not a Tracker Build
Upload a file and see a dashboard today. No sheet to design, no columns to name, no formulas to write, no sales call.
Reads the Files You Already Produce
Pay apps, budgets, P6 (XER) and MS Project (XML) schedules, daily logs, RFI logs, photos. POD reads them and maps the data to KPIs automatically.
Hundreds of KPIs, Auto-Generated
Earned value, retainage, first-pass rate, project health and chaos score. Animated dashboards with no widget to configure and no cell to maintain.
Keep the Sheets You Have
POD is not a general work-management grid and does not need to be. Export what lives in your sheets; POD reads it next to the pay apps and the schedule.
Voice-First Field Reporting
60-second voice reports the field will actually file, structured by AI in ten languages. No row to fill in from a truck.
Public Pricing, Free Sub Access
Every price is published, like theirs. Subcontractors submit through Upload Links at no seat cost, so the read grows without the seat count growing.
The Honest Take
If a shared, flexible grid that any Excel user can pick up is the job, Smartsheet is a good one, and its reviews say so. This page is for the moment after that: the tracker is built, the rows are filled, and it still cannot tell you whether the job is making money, why the RFI backlog is driving the chaos, or when it will finish. That is the read POD arrives with.
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. If a shared, flexible grid for work that is not only construction is the job, Smartsheet is built for exactly that and POD is not a general work-management tool. Keep it, export what lives there, and let POD read it next to the pay apps, budgets, schedules, and photos. Many teams run both. Others find that once POD builds the budget, schedule, and safety picture from the files, the hand-built construction tracker has nothing left to track, and consolidate. Neither path needs a migration project.
The tracker holds what someone typed into it. POD reads the source documents. It computes CPI and SPI, an estimate at completion, and reconciles pay-app lines and retainage against the confirmed budget and change orders. It also scores the project the way the two cards on this page do: health across schedule, budget, safety, quality, and risk, and a chaos score with its contributors named. In the example here, health is 76, chaos is 44 against a target of 30, and the RFI backlog is the largest driver and rising. Nobody wrote a formula for any of it.
Because it does a different job. Smartsheet is priced per seat to give you a grid you build trackers in, and its pricing is public. POD is priced to read the project: every pay app, budget, schedule, log, and photo turned into KPIs and a morning brief automatically. POD publishes its prices too, starting at $299 a month with a free trial and no credit card, and subcontractors submit through Upload Links at no seat cost.
Yes. Export a sheet to Excel or CSV and upload it; POD maps the columns to construction fields and treats it like any other project file. The bigger win is usually the documents the sheet was summarizing. Upload the pay app, the P6 (XER) or MS Project (XML) schedule, the RFI log, and the photos, and POD reads those directly, so the numbers come from the source instead of from the last time someone updated the row.
Keep the grid. Add the read.
If a flexible grid is all you need, keep it. If you want to know whether the project is on track without building the tracker, start a free trial and upload one file.
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.