Site Pal vs Field View: which does what?

If you work for a tier-one contractor, there’s a good chance Field View is already on your phone. You didn’t choose it. Someone in head office did, and every form you fill in goes through it.

So when people ask me whether Site Pal replaces Field View, the honest answer is no. It doesn’t, and it isn’t trying to. They do different jobs. Here’s the difference, from someone who uses both.

What Field View actually is

Viewpoint Field View is a configurable forms platform. Trimble’s own documentation describes it as a data capture tool with a forms builder — you build the forms you need, or pick from pre-configured ones, and field users complete them on a phone or tablet, online or off.

The important detail most people miss: there is no standard Field View site diary. By default the platform ships with permit forms, quality check forms, and safety, health and environment forms. Everything else, including any daily diary, is a form somebody at your company built. Which is why the Field View diary on your last job looked nothing like the one on this job.

Fields can be text, numbers, dates, dropdowns, yes/no options, images or signatures, each configured with its own rules and character limits.

What it’s genuinely good at:

• One consistent record across a whole project team, visible to everyone
• Mandatory fields, so things don’t get skipped
• A full audit trail of every action and update
• Working offline and syncing later
• Permits, inspections, snagging and handover — the structured stuff

Pricing: quote only. Trimble doesn’t publish rates. It’s sold to companies, not individuals.

What Site Pal is

Site Pal is a site diary and reporting app for one person. You photograph the works and it writes the diary entry. Or you walk the job talking, take photos as you go, and it produces a client-ready PDF before you’re off site.

It’s £19 a month, flat, everything included. You pay for it yourself. Nobody has to approve anything.

What it’s genuinely good at:

• Writing the words, from a photo and your voice
• Walkthrough reports — walk, talk, snap, PDF
• On-site signature capture with name, position, timestamp and GPS
• A commercial delays register against your programme
• Getting a professional-looking record out of a five-minute walk

What it doesn’t do: structured audit forms, mandatory field validation, permits, team workflows, drawing management, or anything your company’s QA system mandates. If your job needs those, you need Field View, and Site Pal won’t change that.

The comparison

So which do you need?

Use Field View if your company mandates it. That’s not really a choice, and it does the compliance job properly.

Use Site Pal alongside it if the bit that eats your evening isn’t the form — it’s writing the words. Field View will happily hold a diary entry. It won’t write one for you.

That’s the honest gap. I’ve never met a construction manager whose company system writes his reports for him. It gives him somewhere to put them.

Can you use both?

Yes, and most people who use Site Pal on a tier-one job do exactly that. Walk the job with Site Pal, get the record written, then put what’s needed into whatever your company mandates.

The PDF is yours either way. And six months later, when someone’s arguing about who caused what, a dated, located, signed record is worth having regardless of which system it started in. If you’ve not seen what that looks like done properly, it’s worth reading what a good site diary looks like and what a delay record needs to include.

The honest bit

If your only requirement is a compliance form your company has already built and mandated, Site Pal adds nothing. Don’t pay £19 a month for something you don’t need.

If you’re a subcontractor or a self-employed manager who isn’t on anyone’s enterprise licence, Field View isn’t available to you at all — it’s sold to companies. In that case the comparison isn’t Field View against Site Pal. It’s Site Pal against typing it up yourself at nine at night.

If you’re weighing up the smaller paid apps instead, I’ve written an honest head-to-head on Site Pal vs Site Audit Pro, and there’s a free daywork sheet template on here you can use whatever you decide.