CBRE CostLab vs IRIS Star Practice Management

CBRE CostLab is a web-based application for estimating and comparing facility operating costs across more than 400 locations and 75+ asset types worldwide. It provides equipment-level estimates for maintenance and repair, custodial work, energy, grounds management, and pest control. Its Cost Library includes labor, utility, and inflation rates, maintenance tasks, operating details, recapitalization assumptions, and national indexes. The Building Wizard uses seven questions to create a component-level estimate; Project Builder groups maintenance and repair work into projects and estimates material, labor, and equipment needs. For capital planning, CostLab estimates equipment failure probability and helps prioritize replacements by portfolio risk and budget. Users can customize building models and adjust rates and task assumptions. It also identifies deferred maintenance by equipment and provides deferred-cost reports and Facility Condition Index estimates. Mass Data Export sends annual and average asset costs, yearly task costs, deferred costs, and inventory to Excel. Access is through a browser on a laptop, tablet, or smartphone. Paid plans include a 7-day trial; there is no free plan.

IRIS Star Practice Management is a modular practice-management system for large, multi-office accounting firms. It brings clients, staff, jobs, work in progress and accounts receivable into view, with customizable forms, fields and reports. Teams can record time and client or non-client expenses, route them for approval and reimbursement, allocate work in progress for billing, set fee targets and issue recurring invoices across entities and currencies. Scheduling can take staff availability, skills, rank, location and experience into account, and firms can create staff and job budgets. Reporting includes web-based business intelligence and standard reports through Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services; an optional Dashboard BI module is available. Named integrations include iChannel by IRIS, Beeye, Power BI, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central and Apxium Collect. Deployment options include on-premise, cloud and managed cloud. The managed instance includes updates and backups. IRIS describes an open SQL database, API connections and financial-ledger links. Pricing is on request. The web app is optimized for a large desktop browser window and is not recommended for mobile devices.