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Siteline vs. ProjectHQ
Which is Right for Subcontractors?
If you run FOUNDATION® or QuickBooks and need project management with light AIA® billing, ProjectHQ fills that gap. If billing speed, lien waiver automation, collections, real-time A/R visibility across all projects, and getting paid faster are your priorities, then Siteline is what you need, and it integrates directly with FOUNDATION.
Siteline vs. ProjectHQ at a Glance
The Verdict
ProjectHQ and Siteline overlap in one area—AIA® billing—but they are otherwise built for different jobs. ProjectHQ is a project management tool with billing functionality. Siteline is a billing and A/R software built specifically for subcontractors—no project management capabilities. If you're a commercial sub running FOUNDATION and struggling with billing speed, lien waivers, or collections, Siteline is worth evaluating alongside ProjectHQ.
Overviews
What is Siteline?
Siteline is billing and A/R software built for commercial subcontractors. It handles the full monthly billing workflow: pay application generation, lien waiver collection and validation, compliance tracking, change order management, collections automation, A/R reporting, cash flow forecasting, and lien rights tracking.
Siteline integrates with more than ten construction accounting systems, including FOUNDATION, Sage, Vista, Spectrum, Acumatica, and QuickBooks. It also connects to GC payment portals—including Textura and Procore Pay—so subs can push finalized pay apps directly to the portal without double entry. Across its customer base, Siteline has tracked over $14 billion in receivables across 200,000-plus projects, with a 98% customer retention rate.
The core problem Siteline solves: most subcontractors manage billing through a mix of spreadsheets, email, PDFs, and manual ERP processes. That patchwork slows pay app submission, creates compliance gaps, and delays payment. Siteline centralizes the entire monthly billing workflow in one place.
ProjectHQ is a web-based project management application owned by Foundation Software, the company behind the FOUNDATION construction accounting system. It's part of the HQSuite product family, which also includes CrewHQ (crew scheduling), SafetyHQ (safety management), hrHQ (HR), and ExecutiveHQ (executive reporting).
ProjectHQ's core features include change order management, AIA® billing, and construction document management with PDF markup capabilities. With ProjectHQ's change orders, project managers can enter and approve RFCs from the field, then upload them into FOUNDATION to automatically update project budgets.
For billing, ProjectHQ supports standard AIA® workflows with automated retainage calculations, G702® and G703® generation, custom billing templates, and two-way synchronization with FOUNDATION. The important distinction is that its billing workflow is designed primarily for prime contractors. Users can generate AIA® pay applications or create their own templates, but they can't create pay apps using the custom forms each GC client requires or submit them through GC payment portals.
ProjectHQ is built first and foremost for FOUNDATION users. Cost codes, customers, vendors, jobs, and change orders sync between the two systems, reducing the double entry that often comes with separate project management and accounting software.
Beyond billing, ProjectHQ does not offer lien waiver management, lien rights tracking, forecasting, or collections automation, nor does it provide A/R reporting beyond what FOUNDATION itself has.
Siteline vs. ProjectHQ: Feature Comparison
Where Siteline Wins
Custom GC Forms and Portal Integrations Create Major Time Savings
Every GC has its own pay app format. Siteline has built out more than 24,000 of these forms, pre-fills them with accurate project data, and submits them directly to your GC portals, with zero manual re-entry.
ProjectHQ only generates standard AIA®-style G702®/G703® forms or templates you build yourself. It can't produce forms matching the specific requirements of a subcontractor's individual GC clients, and it doesn't submit through GC portals.
For a subcontractor billing across six GCs with different portal requirements every month, sealing that gap can recover several hours per billing cycle.
Automated Lien Waiver Management Eliminates Paperwork Fire Drills
ProjectHQ does not list lien waiver management as a feature. For commercial subs, that is a meaningful gap.
Missing or late lien waivers are one of the most common reasons payments get held up. Beaty Masonry, the largest masonry contractor in Albuquerque, had 75% of its payments on hold due to missing lower-tier lien waivers before implementing Siteline. The manual process consumed 20-25 hours of admin time per week. After switching to Siteline, they eliminated compliance holds entirely and reduced A/R aging by eight days.
Siteline handles the full lien waiver lifecycle: generating the correct waiver type (conditional or unconditional, progress or final), sending bulk requests to all vendors, tracking outstanding signatures, auto-validating returned waivers with AI to catch wrong amounts or mismatched details, and bundling everything into the billing package with one click.
Lien Rights Tracking Across Projects Reduces Risk
Lien waiver management and lien rights management are related but distinct problems. Siteline addresses both, whereas ProjectHQ is not designed for either workflow.
Lien rights are your legal leverage to place a lien on a property if payment doesn't come through. On commercial projects, maintaining those rights requires hitting specific deadlines for preliminary notices and other filings that vary by state. Miss one, and your leverage disappears. Most subcontractors track this in spreadsheets, or rely on whoever in the office has memorized the rules for each state they work in.
Siteline's Lien Rights Tracker gives subcontractors a centralized view of lien status across every commercial project. Each project shows whether you're protected, at risk, or exposed, with state-specific guidance and deadline alerts before rights are lost. When a notice needs to go out, Siteline handles notice creation and certified mail delivery from the same system.
The key differentiator here isn't just that Siteline tracks lien rights; it's that the tracking lives inside the same software as billing and collections. When a pay app is late, and collections follow-up isn't moving a GC, the lien rights status for that project is already visible in the same workflow. Teams don't have to check a separate tool or piece together information from different places to decide on next steps.
Automated Collections Enables Faster Payments
ProjectHQ doesn't offer collections functionality. Siteline automates the entire process.
Siteline's collections module sends automated payment reminders to GCs on overdue invoices, tracks payment timing by GC, and gives controllers real-time visibility into what's aging, what's at risk, and what cash is coming in. Customers who turn on automated collections see a median reduction of 11.2 days in time to payment—without anyone on the team manually chasing invoices. Across all Siteline customers, the average DSO is 52.6 days, well below the construction industry average of more than 90 days.
Siteline Isn’t Limited to Its FOUNDATION Integration
ProjectHQ is designed to work with FOUNDATION. If you use a different accounting system, ProjectHQ's integration story is limited. (Its website also lists QuickBooks, but that covers a narrow range of sub tech stacks.)
Siteline also integrates with FOUNDATION and is part of their partner network. Beyond that, though, Siteline integrates with all the major construction ERPs and accounting systems. If your team switches accounting systems down the line, Siteline moves with you—without any disruption to your billing.
Where ProjectHQ Has an Edge
Project Management Is ProjectHQ's Core Strength
If you need full project management alongside billing, ProjectHQ has a clear advantage. It includes change order management, budget tracking, project dashboards, document markup, and field-to-office workflows in a single platform. For teams that want project management alongside standard AIA® billing—and don't need to generate custom pay apps for different GC clients—ProjectHQ is well worth considering.
Siteline, by contrast, is purpose-built for billing and A/R. Project managers can use it to enter billing data, track change orders, and review project financials, but scheduling, RFI management, submittal tracking, and document markup are intentionally outside its scope.
ProjectHQ Has a Native Integration with FOUNDATION
If your firm already runs FOUNDATION for accounting, ProjectHQ's native integration is a clear advantage. Change orders, purchase orders, and project costs flow automatically between the two systems, keeping project management and accounting in sync without manual re-entry or additional connectors.
Siteline also integrates with FOUNDATION through its own custom-built integration, syncing job information, contracts (SOVs), change orders, vendors, and invoices bidirectionally. That integration, though, is squarely focused on the billing workflow. So, ProjectHQ and FOUNDATION may have more information flowing back and forth that pertains to workflows outside of billing.
A Broader Software Ecosystem Gives More Tooling Options
While a standalone product, ProjectHQ can be used within a larger ecosystem. A tool in the HQSuite, ProjectHQ can be paired with crew scheduling (CrewHQ), safety management (SafetyHQ), HR (hrHQ), and/or executive reporting (ExecutiveHQ). If your team wants a broader operational platform layered on top of FOUNDATION accounting, the full HQSuite suite will cover more ground than a specialized billing tool like Siteline.
Pricing
Neither Siteline nor ProjectHQ publishes pricing online.
Siteline prices on annual contracts based on billing volume (pay apps per month). The system includes unlimited users and offices, unlimited custom forms, dedicated onboarding and support, any GC portal integrations, and one ERP integration. There's a one-time implementation cost, and their Lien Rights Tracker is a paid add-on.
ProjectHQ is part of the HQSuite product family and is priced separately from FOUNDATION. FOUNDATION reviewers note that the software and its many add-ons can cause prices to escalate, a challenge for small businesses upgrading from QuickBooks. Research could not confirm how that cost dynamic impacts ProjectHQ's pricing, so request a quote directly.
Both tools require a demo to get pricing specific to your company. You can schedule a Siteline demo at siteline.com/demo.
Customer Proof
Acme Erectors
Acme Erectors, a structural steel subcontractor, runs FOUNDATION for accounting and Siteline for billing. The result: a 19-day reduction in DSO (from 77 days to 58 days), a 10% increase in monthly billing volume, and 5 days saved per month on pay app processing for the A/R manager. The team also saved 16 hours per month on change order management.
Vallencourt Construction
Vallencourt Construction, a FOUNDATION customer, achieved a 3-week improvement in speed to payment, saved 2–3 hours per project manager each month, and increased billing volume without adding back-office headcount after implementing Siteline.
VanKirk Electric
VanKirk Electric, also a FOUNDATION customer, reduced DSO by 12 days, cut pay app revisions by 20%, and saved 32 hours per month on pay application and A/R work after adopting Siteline.
Who Should Choose Siteline vs. ProjectHQ?
Siteline is the right fit if:
- Your primary pain is billing speed, pay app accuracy, vendor waivers, or slow collections.
- You bill across multiple GCs with different portal and form requirements.
- Lien waivers, lower-tier compliance, or vendor management are eating team hours.
- You want to reduce DSO and improve cash flow visibility.
- Your accounting system is anything other than FOUNDATION.
- You want unlimited users and offices without per-seat pricing.
ProjectHQ may be the better fit if:
- You're a Foundation Software shop that wants project management and AIA® billing in the same tightly integrated tool.
- Field-to-office workflows, document management, or project dashboards are your priority.
- Lien waivers, GC portal submission, and collections automation are not current priorities.
Consider both if:
- You run FOUNDATION, and your accounting team needs Siteline-level billing workflows while your PMs need proper project management tools. The two products are complementary, not mutually exclusive.
Frequently Asked Questions
Yes. Siteline has a direct integration with FOUNDATION. Job information, contracts (SOVs), change orders, and vendors sync from FOUNDATION into Siteline. Invoice amounts sync back from Siteline into FOUNDATION’s A/R module. The integration is set up during onboarding and keeps FOUNDATION as the accounting system of record while Siteline manages the billing workflow.
ProjectHQ also integrates with QuickBooks Online, so FOUNDATION is not strictly required. However, ProjectHQ's core design and marketing position it as a companion to FOUNDATION. Its integration depth with QuickBooks is not documented publicly, and it does not integrate with any other accounting systems.
No. The two tools address different problems. ProjectHQ handles project management and standard AIA® billing from a prime contractor perspective. Siteline handles the full billing workflow—custom GC forms, lien waiver automation, lien rights tracking, GC portal submission, collections, and A/R reporting—specifically from the subcontractor perspective. Subs using FOUNDATION may leverage ProjectHQ for project management and Siteline for billing and collections.
Siteline prices are based on annual contracts based on billing volume. All plans include unlimited users and offices, unlimited custom forms, dedicated onboarding, GC portal integrations (GCPay, Textura, Procore Pay), and one ERP integration. Request a quote at siteline.com/demo.
ProjectHQ markets broadly to contractors, including general contractors and self-performing subs. Siteline is predominant for subcontractors and trade contractors. (GCs can use Siteline specifically for vendor waivers.)
Most Siteline customers are up and running within a few weeks, depending on billing complexity, ERP setup, and the number of active projects and GC forms that need to be configured. Siteline’s onboarding team helps connect your ERP or accounting system, load your GC-specific billing forms, configure active projects, and train your team on the workflow. For bulk setup, Siteline can also support project imports using structured templates when needed.
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This page reflects Siteline's understanding of ProjectHQ's features and pricing as of July 2026, based on publicly available information. Features and pricing may have changed. All third-party trademarks referenced are the property of their respective owners. Siteline has no affiliation with ProjectHQ.
AIA® is a registered trademark of the American Institute of Architects. Siteline is not affiliated with or endorsed by the AIA.