Cheops and Jobpac built their reputations in the Australian construction market over decades. If your business runs on one of them, your finance and project teams likely know the system well, your data is structured, and the processes work, even if they feel dated.
So why are mid-size contractors moving away from them? And what do you actually get from Sage Intacct that Cheops or Jobpac cannot deliver? This article is written for the CFO or MD evaluating that question.
What Cheops and Jobpac do well
Both platforms were purpose-built for the Australian construction industry. They understand construction contracts, progress claims, retention schedules, and job cost structures. The workflows are familiar to Australian construction accountants. Data integrity is generally strong, which matters when you consider migration.
If your business is under $20M turnover, operates from a single entity, and does not need real-time financial reporting or cloud access, either platform can still work. The transition cost and disruption of moving may not be justified at that scale.
Where legacy systems hit the ceiling
The problems appear when the business grows beyond what the platform was designed for. Common trigger points include adding a second entity, needing real-time project margin visibility, requiring cloud access for remote finance teams, or facing an audit that requires reporting capabilities the system cannot produce cleanly.
Cheops and Jobpac are fundamentally on-premise systems. Even cloud-hosted versions are built on legacy architecture. That means browser-based access that feels like a remote desktop, limited API connectivity to modern construction tools like Procore or Kynection, and reporting that requires exports to Excel for anything beyond standard outputs.
Month-end close on a legacy system with $30M+ in revenue, multiple entities, and subcontractor complexity routinely takes 10-15 working days. That is not a people problem. It is a systems problem.
Feature comparison
| Feature | Sage Intacct | Cheops / Jobpac |
|---|---|---|
| Cloud-native | Yes | No: on-premise or hosted legacy |
| Real-time project dashboards | Native | Limited; export-dependent |
| Multi-entity consolidation | Native, real-time | Manual or complex workarounds |
| Construction-specific modules | Cloud-native WIP, retentions, progress claims - real-time dashboards, no Excel exports | WIP, retentions, and claims supported; reporting requires manual extraction and Excel reformatting |
| Modern API connectivity | REST API, certified Procore and Kynection connectors | Select integrations available with AU construction tools; modern REST API connectivity limited |
| AI and automation capabilities | Built-in Copilot, automation tools | Not a current feature of the platform |
| Month-end close speed | Targets 5 working days | Typically 10-15 days |
| Platform investment roadmap | Active Sage investment globally | Active development focused on AU construction functionality; cloud and AI capabilities not on the current roadmap |
The migration is more feasible than most assume
One of the most common reasons businesses stay on Cheops or Jobpac is migration fear: the belief that moving years of construction data to a new system will be costly, risky, and disruptive. That fear is understandable but often overstated.
Because Cheops and Jobpac have well-structured data, the extraction and migration process is predictable. LimeLedger has developed migration tooling specifically for these platforms. We extract, clean, and map your historical data (job costs, retention schedules, chart of accounts, opening balances) before loading into Sage Intacct. The process runs in parallel with your live system so your finance team is never in a blackout period.
Most clients are surprised by how much cleaner their data looks on the other side of a migration. It is an opportunity to rationalise chart of accounts, consolidate entities, and remove legacy complexity that has accumulated over years.
When does the move make sense?
The move from Cheops or Jobpac to Sage Intacct typically makes sense when two or more of these apply: turnover above $20M, two or more entities, finance team spending more than a week on month-end close, project margin reporting done outside the system, or a growth trajectory that will stress the current system within 18 months.
If only one applies, the calculus is closer and a conversation is worth having before committing.
Cheops and Jobpac served the Australian construction industry well. But the gap between what they offer and what a modern cloud platform like Sage Intacct delivers has widened significantly, including in real-time visibility, multi-entity capability, API connectivity, and automation. For a mid-market construction business planning for the next decade, the move is not a question of if, but when. The businesses that move now build a platform advantage. The businesses that wait inherit a larger migration problem later.
See also: How LimeLedger manages the migration process and Sage Intacct for construction businesses.
Total cost of ownership: on-premise vs cloud
Cheops and Jobpac Connect are on-premise or hosted systems with a different cost structure to cloud-native platforms. Software licence fees are typically paid upfront or annually. Hardware, server maintenance, and IT support are your responsibility. Upgrades require planned maintenance windows and often significant consulting hours to deploy.
Sage Intacct is cloud-native: there is no server to maintain, upgrades happen automatically (four times per year, with no downtime), and the infrastructure is managed by Sage. The total cost of ownership comparison over five years typically favours cloud-native systems once IT overhead and upgrade costs are factored in, even though the annual subscription fee appears higher than a legacy licence.
For a business with an IT function, the infrastructure savings are real. For a business where the CFO or finance manager doubles as IT decision-maker, the time and risk savings of a cloud-native system are the more compelling argument.
Data and reporting: where the gap is largest
Cheops and Jobpac produce strong construction-specific reports within their own modules - job cost reports, contract schedules, subcontractor comparisons. Where they fall short is in the broader financial reporting picture and in the real-time accessibility of data.
Reports in legacy systems require a specialist to build, are refreshed on a scheduled basis rather than in real time, and are difficult to access from outside the office environment. Board packs and executive dashboards require manual export and reformatting in Excel. Data that should be available on Monday morning is compiled by a finance team member on Friday afternoon.
Sage Intacct's reporting engine produces live reports accessible from any browser. The CFO's dashboard shows current job margin, WIP position, and cash position without anyone needing to pull data. Velixo, a reporting tool that connects Excel to Sage Intacct live data, is available for finance teams that need board-level Excel modelling with live data feeds.
The migration from Cheops or Jobpac
The migration path from Cheops and Jobpac is well-understood. The data model is structured, so chart of accounts, project codes, customer and supplier records, and open transaction balances can be extracted and mapped cleanly.
The typical migration takes 14 weeks. The configuration work for a legacy system migration is more involved, but the result is a system configured correctly for how the business operates from day one.
The businesses that struggle most in migrations from legacy construction systems are those that replicate the old system's workarounds in the new one. A well-structured implementation uses the migration as an opportunity to redesign processes, clean up the chart of accounts, and establish reporting that the legacy system could never produce.
For a broader view of the Australian construction ERP landscape and how Cheops, Jobpac, and Sage Intacct compare across cost, capability, and implementation risk, see our construction ERP comparison guide.