On a lot of jobs the subcontractor didn't choose Procore. The general contractor chose it, and an invitation showed up.
So the question I'd ask isn't whether it's good software. Your submittals run through it either way. What I'd want to know is which part of the work it took off your desk, and which part it just put on a screen where everybody can see it isn't finished yet.
I should say where I stand. I've been in the construction industry for more than 20 years and I'm building SubPro now, which makes submittal packages, so I'm not a neutral party. Procore does what it says it does. It just covers a different part of submittals from the part that eats up a subcontractor's week.
What the Submittals tool does
Procore's documentation describes a tool for organizing and managing the submittal workflow:
- Create submittal items manually, or bring them in through Procore Imports
- AI Submittal Builder, which generates submittal items from the specifications
- Organize by division, add shop drawings, or pages from product catalogs
- Group items into submittal packages for bulk processing
- Assign submitter and approver roles, with sequential or parallel review
- Track status per item with configurable response types
- Attach documents directly or pull them from the project Documents tool
- Mark up PDFs with a personal stamp
- Filter, report and export, with QR codes for field access
Read down that list and almost all of it is about moving the submittal: where it is, who has it, how long they've had it and what came back. On a job with hundreds of submittal items and several reviewers, that matters more than people who've never run one realize. Before tools like this, finding any one item meant bugging whoever touched it last, and a lot of the time whoever touched it before them too.
Submittal Builder is the one item on the list that reads the project manual. It generates the items, which is the register, and that's the hardest thing on the list to build well.
Where the tool ends
Here's where the tool stops.
The system will tell you 08 71 00 door hardware owes product data and that it is due on the fourteenth. It routes the item to the architect. It shows you the architect has been holding it nine days. It lets you stamp the PDF and it keeps the response attached to the record forever.
What it won't do is open the project manual, read sixty pages of Division 08, work out which of the eleven listed manufacturers your supplier actually stocks, pull the cut sheets, check the finish and the ANSI grade against what the section demands, put the whole thing in order behind a cover sheet, and hand you one PDF.
That's the actual work. On a spec heavy job those hours add up across the project, and most of them go to reading, matching, downloading and putting things together, and none of that needs your most experienced people.
A lot of the confusion comes from the word. To a general contractor, a submittal is a record that moves through a process. To a subcontractor, it's a document somebody has to build from scratch.
Ninety rows with your name on them
Here's how it plays out.
The general contractor issues the log and ninety of those rows have your name on them. Each one becomes an item with a due date and a status, which is a lot better than a spreadsheet emailed over on a Friday afternoon.
Then a project engineer opens item one and needs a PDF to attach to it, and from there it's all done by hand. Find the section, read it, match the product, get the sheet, check the sheet against the section, attach, next. Eighty nine more times, while the system displays your progress to the general contractor, the architect and anyone else with a login.
Being able to see everything helps the general contractor run the job, and it also puts your backlog of submittals that aren't built yet in front of everybody. That's probably good for the project overall. It also explains why plenty of subs feel more exposed after a platform rollout instead of more productive, and why "we have Procore now" doesn't mean "submittals are handled."
What goes with it
If your hours go to chasing status, Procore already fixed your problem and you can stop reading. If they don't, the comparison page lays out which products cover which part of the job.
If your hours go to building what goes inside the submittal, you want something that produces the thing you attach to the item. There are a few of those.
Submittal.com is a library and assembly tool from BuildSite. They describe their approach to the register as semi automated, which is a fair statement of the tradeoff. They add a closeout assembler for operation and maintenance manuals and warranty books.
BuildSync does both: it builds submittal packages for mechanical, electrical and plumbing equipment out of its own product database, and it checks a package you already have against the project manual. Outside those three trades, the checking half is what you get. Their published cost of a rejected submittal is worth reading in the category comparison, with the caveat noted there.
SubPro is my company. It reads the project manual, finds the manufacturer documents out of a library of more than 500 manufacturers and over 25,000 documents, and puts the submittal package together behind your transmittal. Every row shows the spec page it came from, so the reviewer can check the page instead of trusting a machine, and rows it couldn't resolve come back flagged. On a pilot, a construction PM works the flagged rows before delivery, and your team reviews the log before it goes out. You attach the result to the Procore item and route it exactly as the general contractor requires. The spec book you upload is deleted when processing finishes, and nothing you send is used to train an AI model. Since I wrote this from the sub's side, I should also say general contractors use it too, for the register off the project manual and the record through closeout. A self performing general contractor owes both the list and what goes inside each submittal.
None of those replace Procore as the job's system of record, and if somebody tells you otherwise they're trying to sell you something. Where the general contractor runs Procore, the submittal goes into Procore. What a sub gets out of a tool like SubPro is their own copy of the history: what went out, on what date, what came back, which rows are still waiting and for how long, and what the addendum changed. I think that record is worth keeping on your own side, because the general contractor's platform isn't going to rebuild it for you at closeout, and it isn't yours to keep when the job ends.
Check this yourself
Don't just take my word for it, because your jobs aren't my jobs. Take one submittal from last month and time it in two halves.
First, building it: from opening the spec section to holding a finished PDF with a cover sheet on it.
Then the admin side: logging it, routing it, chasing it and filing the response.
Multiply both across a project and buy for whichever number is bigger. I'd find that out before anybody signs anything.