We’ve examined 20+ systems across 7 metrics, using our advanced review methodology to rank the top LBM software for manufacturers, distributors, and pro dealers.
- ECI Spruce: Best Overall
- Epicor BisTrack: Best ERP System
- DMSi Agility: Best for Manufacturers
- RockSolid MAX
- J3 POS
- Acctivate Inventory Management
- The General Store
- WoodPro Insight
- Accolent ERP
- Blue Link ERP
1 ECI Spruce - Best Overall
Why We Chose It: We found ECI Spruce best for the lumber and building materials sector, including dealers, distributors, retailers, and specialized showrooms.
In the building materials industry, managing inventory across multiple sites can be a logistical nightmare. That’s why we found Spruce’s multi-location support so helpful, making it easy to move and manage lumber across different branch locations. Additionally, warehouse inventory counts auto-update as items sell, and the system can even display personalized contract pricing for each customer.
Another reason we chose ECI Spruce: it has a full warehouse management system (WMS). LBM dealers handling large and heavy materials typically need specialized software like Spruce. It supports delivery scheduling, order picking, and proof of delivery. Drivers can even obtain signatures and take photos of deliveries automatically tied to the sales order.
On the other hand, we wouldn’t recommend Spruce for smaller retailers, which might have an easier time with systems like ECI’s RockSolid MAX.
2 Epicor BisTrack - Best ERP System
Why We Chose It: We added Epicor BisTrack because it’s best for hardscapes, lumberyards, pro dealers, and wholesale distributors. Overall, it’s a full ERP system with advanced automation and AI tools. For example, the Epicor Virtual Agent (EVA) can proactively deliver alerts and forecasts and adjust production or distribution levels based on data analysis.
BisTrack offers a range of features aimed at addressing industry-specific inventory needs. These include complex pricing models, unit-of-measure conversions, and serialized inventory. However, our findings suggest BisTrack can be tricky for beginners and might slow down when many users post at once, as some customer reviews have noted. Tracking specific transactions in the accounts receivable module isn’t the most intuitive either.
3 DMSi Agility - Best for Manufacturers
Why We Chose It: We picked DMSi Agility for manufacturers and wholesale distributors across the lumber, hardwood, roofing, and siding sectors. It offers supply chain and inventory management, along with millwork and production support. Agility can help streamline the full hardwood production cycle, from standing timber to the yard. It quantifies the exact equipment, labor, and materials needed for each job and even facilitates price quoting.
Agility offers customizable cut optimization formulas, particularly beneficial for manufacturers dealing with various stock sizes and cutting constraints. This feature helps optimize resource usage, minimize waste, and improve overall cost-effectiveness in production. We also like that Agility can handle bulk buying and selling, enabling manufacturers to manage large product volumes seamlessly.
Other key features of note are digital notepads for quick price checks and rebate management, especially useful for laminates. While Agility may require some initial training, DMSi offers 24/7 support to ensure smooth implementation and ongoing assistance.
4 RockSolid MAX
Why We Chose It: RockSolid MAX made our list because it’s a solid choice for small hardware stores, home centers, convenience lumberyards, plumbing and electrical suppliers, and farm and ranch supply stores. Compared to a more complex ERP like ECI Spruce, RockSolid MAX is a light POS software offering inventory control, CRM, purchasing, and receiving.
We like that RockSolid MAX is relatively easy to learn, offering an intuitive interface that simplifies employee onboarding. It’s also cloud-based, lowering initial costs with minimal hardware requirements. Businesses can rely on RockSolid MAX to directly email invoices and statements to customers, saving time for smaller teams. The system also connects purchasers to various suppliers and vendors for better inventory control and special order processing.
A word to the wise: RockSolid MAX features a variety of canned reports. But companies needing more customizable options will need some experience with Crystal Reports.
5 J3 POS
Why We Chose It: J3 POS is a top pick because it’s a user-friendly point-of-sale system for hardware and lumber stores. That is, the system is equipped to handle common hardware store needs, like inventory tracking, estimating, and lumber commodity pricing integration. We also like that J3 POS integrates with QuickBooks Online and QuickBooks Desktop, syncing sales data, inventory updates, and financial transactions.
Users can customize J3 with capabilities like mobile checkout, fast cash count, rewards programs, and estimator tools. Ultimately, we found it best fits businesses looking to grow, offering features for multiple store management. However, we wouldn’t recommend it for distributors or manufacturers because it doesn’t have the in-depth functionality required for complex, large-scale operations.
6 Acctivate Inventory Management
Why We Chose It: We picked Acctivate for building material distributors using QuickBooks as an accounting tool. Acctivate is designed for small to mid-sized businesses, delivering enhanced inventory control.
We like the software’s strong traceability tools, helping track the movement and history of materials. This is complemented by Acctivate’s advanced barcoding system and ability to manage multiple storage locations. We also found it adept at handling complex manufacturing tasks like bills of materials management, assembly processes, and kitting.
The software’s bidirectional integration with QuickBooks improves ordering and purchasing workflows. We did find Acctivate’s reporting capabilities limited, with users usually resorting to QuickBooks to run more advanced reports. This may not be a dealbreaker for firms okay with using different systems for various tasks.
7 The General Store
Why We Chose It: We chose The General Store because it’s an affordable POS system for hardware retailers. We found it best for small to mid-sized businesses requiring stronger CRM and inventory management. We particularly liked that The General Store includes hardware for mobile POS, like the Zebra CC600 Customer Concierge Kit and the Unitech EA520 Kit.
The software features inventory management with up to 10 price levels, multi-unit pricing, and mill pricing support with fractional cents. The General Store also covers sales tracking for cash and charge customers, plus employee management with a built-in time clock. Managers can even dig into their number of sales for each period and track commissions.
The General Store can be purchased outright at $695 for one user, with a separate technical support fee of $600 annually. This is a point of contention for many users, with most finding support expensive and not always helpful in resolving complaints.
8 WoodPro Insight
Why We Chose It: We found WoodPro InSight best for distributors, sawmills, and other wood product manufacturers. One of our top reasons for picking WoodPro is its added functionality beyond financials and inventory control, like transportation management and cash flow forecasting.
WoodPro supports multiple units of measure, package sizes, and inventory classifications specific to lumber. The remanufacturing module caters to hardwood and softwood lumber and engineered wood products. Overall, we found WoodPro Insight does a good job at optimizing the remanufacturing process through templates, work-in-progress tracking, and cost management.
However, we did think the system was challenging to navigate at times. The design is not always intuitive, and implementation can be a complicated process.
9 Accolent ERP
Why We Chose It: We picked Accolent ERP for its ability to tackle the challenges faced by LBM distributors. Its cloud-based access allows them to manage deliveries from anywhere, catering to the dynamic nature of construction sites. We particularly liked its just-in-time scheduling, which conserves limited site storage space and reduces unnecessary stockpiling.
We also appreciate how Accolent ERP smoothes operations with agile pricing and quick product searches. It lets users quickly adapt to market demands and customer needs and automates key processes like purchase ordering and e-invoicing.
Though Accolent starts at $200 a year without a free version, we find its intuitive interface and multi-warehouse support worth it. Plus, the free demo allows users to try before they buy.
10 Blue Link ERP
Why We Chose It: Blue Link ERP is our top pick for mid-sized wholesalers, distributors, and eCommerce businesses. It streamlines stock management, backorder handling, and traceability across the supply chain, bettering product integrity and compliance.
Blue Link simplifies order processing, billing, and sales tracking, directly supporting customer satisfaction. We also like its flexibility in pricing, discounts, and promotions, ideal for dynamic sales strategies. Blue Link even tackles order fulfillment with features covering warehouse transfers, shipping, and receiving.
In other words, this ERP software handles the complex workflows of wholesalers and distributors, from order entry to logistics. However, our research showed that Blue Link’s built-in reports are quite basic. Like RockSolid MAX, users will need some understanding of Crystal Reports to get more customized views.
What Is Building Materials Software?
Building materials software helps synchronize supply, demand, and fulfillment of your building supply orders. Explicitly used in the building materials industry, these solutions give your business a single and unified platform. These solutions integrate CRM/opportunity tracking, sales orders, pricing, procurement, inventory control, kitting, product configuration, manufacturing work orders, dispatch, delivery, and reporting.
Also known as lumber and building materials software (LBM software), pro dealers and distributors will use these systems to track lumber, millwork, building materials, and construction supplies. Whether you are a distributor, manufacturer, or warehousing business, building materials software helps accommodate your needs. The improvements to your processes will give you enhanced visibility into your production and distribution, streamline your supply chain, and get real-time insights into your operations.
A strong inventory management functionality is at the core of building materials software. This is to record details about the construction supplies being sold. LBM and hardware businesses need to receive inventory quickly and accurately. When shipments come in, you can scan the PO and be done instead of checking products off on the packing slip. It will also automatically add items to your inventory or help reconcile orders if items are on backorder. This will free up your time to focus on other areas.
Features of LBM Software
- Inventory Management: Manages stock counts of LBM-specific products your company builds, buys, stores, and sells. Monitors inventory costs and item locations to aid in picking, packing, and shipping. Reports seasonal purchasing trends to anticipate upcoming inventory fluctuations. Provide customers with available inventory to ensure prompt delivery.
- Purchasing: Creates vendor purchase orders when buying supplies or services. Includes information such as product type, quantity, and pricing. Links to inventory control to access exact stock quantities, movement history, seasonal trends, and supplier lead times.
- Accounting: Includes a general ledger (GL) with accounts payable (AP) and accounts receivable (AR). Provides a summary of financial activities and drill-down capabilities into details. Includes invoicing, budgeting, and reporting.
- Manufacturing: Automates your manufacturing and millwork processes, tracks job costs, and creates work orders. Produces bill of materials, monitors material availability, costs, substitutes, or change orders based on your capacity.
- Point of Sale: Handles customer order management and the customer check-out process. Allows users to scan items and enter SKUs; handles item look-up, returns management, customer lookup, transaction history, loyalty rewards, discounts, and custom orders design work.
- Customer Relationship Management (CRM): Includes contact management, email integration, opportunity tracking, follow-up scheduling, and cross-selling.
Benefits of Building Materials Software
Real-time sales order processing, integrated CRM for prospect tracking, and improved supply chain logistics are just a few of the benefits available. To determine which building materials supply software is right for you, you’ll need to ensure the software properly supports your sales cycle from quote to order to delivery.
Grow Your Business
Lumber and building material software can grow your business by providing top-of-the-line customer service to builders, contractors, and retail clients. It can also help simplify your employees’ everyday processes, such as inventory management, dispatching, and contract billing.
With a fully integrated system, you can rely on one solution for order fulfillment, sales, delivery, inventory, and accounting. This seamless transition from one functionality to the next will ensure your employees are more productive and spend less time re-keying data into multiple systems. Mobile apps will let your employees access data from any location using a variety of devices.
Have The Products Your Customers Want
Stocking the right products starts with strong purchasing and inventory management functionality. The procurement tool within building materials software can easily streamline communications with your vendors. This can lead to an automated ordering process, establishing special requests and stock level thresholds (so goods are automatically reordered when you hit a certain quantity).
From writing purchase orders to the receiving process to finally storing the product, your purchasing team can use the inventory functionality to ensure they purchase the right products. This helps improve the distribution flow through your warehouses.
Inventory management will also let you monitor adjustments to purchase orders and receipts, track open work orders and WIP, and perform any necessary kitting. For larger companies, inter-warehouse and intercompany transfers are commonplace. You’ll want to track lots and shelf life dates to ensure goods are being used or sent to other areas of need in your business.
Enhance Customer Service and Increase Sales
Providing customers with a fast and convenient way to purchase your goods is the first step towards better service and increasing sales. This can be accomplished by providing no roadblocks to customers throughout the check-out process.
Whether through an eCommerce platform, an order management system, or an integrated point of sale, order entry functionality will let your staff look at customer invoices, review previous purchase history, or place an order all from one system. A POS system helps your staff quickly answer questions about previous orders and handle simple reorders for repeat customers.
Invoices can easily be printed, emailed, or faxed directly from the POS as part of the sales transaction. Mobile functionality will let your employees create a sales order no matter where they may be; whether on the sales floor, on the road, or taking an order over the phone, your staff will be able to exceed your customers’ expectations by meeting their needs immediately and not requiring them to hang up and call later.
