ADU Contractor Software
By Phazahn Odom | Founder of Phixmo | Former bookkeeper for residential GCs | Former NFL tight end, Pittsburgh Steelers
ADU construction is the fastest-growing segment of residential building. California alone issued more than 25,000 ADU permits in 2023, and every one of those projects carries the same hard parts: complex permitting that drags on for months, utility surprises hiding underground, and first-time construction clients who need their hand held through the process.
Phixmo handles the whole job in one place: estimates, job costing, permit tracking, the customer portal, and change orders. Built for the way residential GCs actually run an ADU build.
An ADU is a full building on a residential timeline and budget. Four things about that combination break the generic tools most contractors reach for.
An ADU permit can take anywhere from 2 to 12 months to clear, and during that window you are juggling planning approvals, utility sign-offs, and building permits that each have their own status and expiration. Without a system tracking every one, a lapsed permit or a missed resubmittal can stall a job for weeks. You need permit tracking that holds the whole timeline in one place.
An ADU is a complete small building, which means a real estimate spans 15 to 20 cost categories: foundation, framing, roofing, all the trades, utility connections, finishes, and site work. Generic tools that lump everything into a few buckets cannot give you a true picture of where margin is going. You need cost tracking built for that level of detail.
Many ADU clients are homeowners building for the first time, often anxious and unfamiliar with how construction works. They want visibility and reassurance, and if they cannot get it from software they get it by calling you. A customer portal that shows progress, photos, and documents answers most of those questions before they become phone calls.
ADUs increasingly compete with prefab and modular options that quote fast and cheap. To win the custom build, you need to get an accurate estimate in front of the homeowner quickly, before they sign with a panelized provider. Slow, manual bidding loses jobs you should have won. Fast, accurate estimating keeps you in the running.
Six capabilities map directly to the hard parts of an ADU build, from the permit timeline to the first-time client to the constant scope changes.
ADU plans are typically clean single-story drawings, which is exactly the kind of plan the AI reads most accurately. Upload the PDF, calibrate the scale in 2 clicks, and Phixmo's AI pulls measurements in about ten minutes, each badged with how it was derived. You review, correct, and turn it into an estimate, with every number editable.
Track every permit and inspection an ADU requires, with status, expiration monitoring, inspector notes, and attached compliance documents. Phixmo flags anything approaching expiration so a lapsed permit never quietly stalls the build.
Set milestones that match the ADU build sequence (foundation, framing, dry-in, rough-ins, finish, final) and bill as each phase completes. The draw schedule and the work stay in lockstep across a project that runs for months.
ADUs see constant scope changes as homeowners react to seeing the space take shape. Every change order goes through formal approval, and it cannot be invoiced until the customer signs off, so added scope gets documented and paid instead of argued about later.
First-time ADU clients benefit most from a portal. They see progress, milestones, photos, invoices, and approve change orders themselves, which answers the anxious questions on their own time and cuts way down on status phone calls to you.
Field crews log daily progress with photos straight from their phones. On an ADU that documentation protects you: it is a dated record of conditions and work completed that prevents disputes with the homeowner and the inspector months down the line.
A typical ADU crew is five field workers. On per-user software, those five seats are a monthly bill. On Phixmo, field workers are free, so the same crew costs nothing to track.
Buildertrend
$39/user/mo
5 field workers/mo
$195
JobTread
$50/user/mo
5 field workers/mo
$250
Phixmo
$0
5 field workers/mo
$0
The free seats are the obvious savings, but they are not the biggest one. The real money is in better estimates that win the bid and in catching margin leaks (unbilled change orders, labor overruns, forgotten utility costs) while the ADU is still in progress instead of at reconciliation. On a single ADU that is often thousands of dollars, which dwarfs any per-seat fee.
Competitor pricing reflects publicly listed per-user rates and is for comparison only.
Job costing, phased invoicing, change orders, and daily logs are on every plan, including Free. AI takeoffs, permit tracking, and the customer portal come with Pro and Growth. The tier you pick depends on the number of office seats (owners, PMs, supervisors, admins) you need. Field workers are always free.
Free
$0/mo
Free forever. Unlimited projects, field workers free.
2 office seats
+ unlimited free field workers
Pro
$169/mo
Growing GCs with active teams.
5 office seats
+ unlimited free field workers
Growth
$299/mo
Larger operations.
10 office seats + $25/extra
+ unlimited free field workers
Yes. Every plan, including Free, has unlimited projects, so you can run as many ADU builds in parallel as you can staff. Each project keeps its own budget, milestones, and photos (plus permit tracking and its own portal on Pro and Growth), and the dashboard rolls them all up so you can see margin and status across every job at a glance.
Yes. The permit and inspection tracking is flexible rather than tied to one permit type, so you track whatever your jurisdiction requires for an ADU: the building permit, separate utility or sewer permits, planning approvals, and each inspection along the way. You log the permit number, status, expiration, and inspector notes, and Phixmo flags anything approaching expiration.
Yes, and ADU plans are a good fit for it. ADUs are usually clean single-story drawings without the complexity of a large custom home, which is exactly the kind of plan the AI reads most accurately. You upload the PDF, the AI pulls measurements in about ten minutes, you review and correct, and it becomes a first-pass estimate.
Yes. You set milestones that map to your payment schedule (foundation, framing, dry-in, rough-ins, finish, final) and generate an invoice as each phase completes. The billing keeps pace with the work, which matters on an ADU where a single draw schedule runs for months.
Direct subcontractor logins are on the roadmap. Today you track all of your subcontractor costs, contracts, and compliance documents inside Phixmo on the office side, so sub spend flows into job costing accurately even though the subs are not logging in yet.