Set it up once, properly.
Do it once, and every project begins the same way as the last. The Setup takes Procore from empty to yours.
Your team builds. Holland Mazo builds the system underneath them.
The position
Procore is a blessing and a curse
The blessing
Almost nothing in Procore is fixed. Tools turn on and off, fields rename, workflows redirect, permissions cut to the individual, templates rebuild from scratch. For a contractor that knows how it wants to run a job, that flexibility is the whole point.
The curse
A platform with this many decisions in it has no correct default. It has yours, and someone has to sit down and set them. Left alone, Procore does not fail loudly. It just becomes the tool your team works around instead of the tool they work in.
The honest position is that the setup is the hard part, and it is front loaded. It takes technical understanding of the platform and it takes time. But it is finite. Once the foundation is right, the rest is tweaking, and tweaking is cheap.
Almost every company that finds Procore frustrating is living with a decision made in the first weeks and never revisited.
Scope
What The Setup covers
Four kinds of work, priced separately. Take one or take all of them.
A full company build for a contractor going live for the first time, done in a strict order because the order is what makes it hold.
Project tool configuration
Every licensed tool set to the way you actually work. The test applied to each setting is simple: does this make the tool work for the company, or the company work for the tool.
Permission templates
Built role by role, before anybody is invited in. Subcontractor rates, variation margins and head contract values do not belong in a collaborator’s view, and unpicking that afterwards is far more work than setting it correctly once.
Standard project template
One master template, configured once, applied to every project opened from that day forward. Folder structure, tool configuration, naming conventions, response sets, register structures. Get this right and everything after it is easy. Get it wrong and every project inherits the mistake.
Directory and project loading
Staff, subcontractors, consultants and clients, with insurance expiry tracked if you want it visible rather than chased. Then projects: template applied, current drawings and specifications loaded and registered, superseded revisions handled properly, existing registers brought across.
Most enquiries are not from zero. They are from a company that has outgrown its original configuration, or bought a tool it has never switched on. The commonest case is Quality and Safety: the tools are licensed, the company has a folder of its own inspection templates, and none of them exist in Procore yet.
Be clear on what that work is. Importing existing templates is a line by line rebuild. Every item, response set and condition entered and tested individually. There is no bulk shortcut that survives contact with a real template. Twenty templates is twenty rebuilds.
All templates are reviewed, corrected and signed off by the client before any build work commences. A template reviewed afterwards has to be built twice, and the second build is charged.
Connecting Procore to Xero, QuickBooks or Sage. Mechanically the simplest of the four, and the one that breaks fastest when the groundwork is skipped, because an integration does not create data discipline. It exposes the absence of it.
A data review before anything is connected
Cost codes, cost types, chart of accounts, contacts, project numbering and tax treatment, reconciled on paper before a single authorisation is issued.
New projects only
Switch the integration on, then create the project, so the financial record is complete from the first transaction. Retro fitting to a job already in flight produces partial and duplicated financials. Existing projects finish the way they started.
Cost coding your commercial team already reads
Procore ships with a default list aligned to CSI MasterFormat. That is the right starting point in the United States and the wrong one in most other markets. Align first to the standard your commercial team already reads, then extend it with the bespoke trades no standard names.
Written procedure, produced to a fixed scope. A Standard Operating Procedure is not a manual for Procore. It is a manual for your Procore, which has to be discovered before it can be written.
Discovery establishes how the platform is used today, role by role, and where the intended process and the real one have drifted apart. Authoring writes it for two audiences at once: the people who already do it, and the person starting on Monday. Review and handover marks it up, corrects it and issues it.
Other authoring on request.
Price
How The Setup is priced
All four kinds of work are priced against scope, and scope is not visible from outside. Two contractors of identical size can be a fortnight apart or two months apart depending on how many projects need loading, how far through they are, how many templates exist and whether cost coding is settled.
So the work starts with a scoping interview: a conversation with the people who will use the system, and a look at your templates, cost codes and project list. There is no charge for it. A written quotation follows, fixed price against every component.
Nothing is charged by the hour. If the work takes longer than expected, that is Holland Mazo’s problem, not yours.
Questions
Questions
How long does a Procore implementation take?
The company foundation, meaning the standard project template, tool configuration, permission templates and directory, typically takes three to five weeks. Project loading runs on top of that and scales with how many projects there are and how far through they are.
How much does a Procore implementation cost?
It depends on scale, and any consultant giving you a number before seeing your project list and template library is guessing. Holland Mazo scopes it first, in a conversation and a look at what you already have, at no charge, then quotes a fixed price against every component.
Can we implement Procore ourselves?
Yes, and some companies should. If you have a Procore literate administrator with genuine time set aside and a low project count, an internal implementation is realistic. Bring someone in when the administrator role is a fourth job for somebody who already has three.
Our Procore is already set up and it is a mess. Can that be fixed?
Yes, and it is the most common enquiry. Reconfiguration is implementation with an existing dataset attached. The extra work is deciding what to keep, what to correct and what to retire without disrupting live projects.
Why are permission templates built before the directory is populated?
Because Procore assigns permissions at the point of invitation, and there is no useful blank state. Defer the template and the user lands on None, which means they log in and find nothing they can do. Build the templates first and every person invited arrives with access matched to their role. Skip it and you are revisiting every user individually afterwards.
Can our existing live projects be loaded into Procore?
Yes. Current drawings and specifications, superseded revisions with version history preserved, existing registers, correspondence and contract documentation. The cost scales with how far through the project is, because a job eighteen months in carries eighteen months of history that has to be sorted before it can be loaded.
Should we connect Procore to Xero or Sage on our existing projects?
No. Connect the integration first, then create new projects under it, so the financial record is complete from the first transaction. Retro fitting to a job in flight produces partial and duplicated financials, and the reconciliation usually costs more than the connection is worth.
Should we use Procore's default cost codes?
Only if your commercial team already works to them. The default list aligns to CSI MasterFormat, which is standard practice in the United States and a poor fit almost anywhere else. Start from whatever your quantity surveyors already read, CSI MasterFormat, ANZSMM 2022 or RICS NRM, then extend it with the bespoke trades your business carries.
Why must our HSEQ templates be finalised before you build them?
Because building a template is a line by line rebuild of every item, response and condition, and no bulk import survives a real template. A template reviewed after it is built has to be built twice. Reviewing first costs you nothing and saves a rebuild.
Do you work outside New Zealand?
Yes. Contractors across New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States. Delivered remotely, run domestically: hours set against your time zone, local phone number, invoicing in your currency through local bank details. Payment is a domestic transfer, not an international one.
What happens after the setup is finished?
Nothing, if you want nothing. The point of a correct setup is that it runs without a consultant attached. Where a company wants the administration handled on an ongoing basis, that is The Daily, sold separately on a day rate.
Where to start
Tell me how many projects you run, what you already have configured, and where it is costing you time. Book the scoping interview.
Direct
NZ
UK
US