November 4, 2015
P & S Paving Inc. is a Florida heavy-highway contractor with over 20 years in the industry. Whether it’s asphalt, site prep, excavation, grading, milling or resurfacing, they’ve got Northeast Florida covered.
Running Short on Road
Like most contractors, P & S started small — with just a single employee and a used bulldozer in 1993. Over time they grew out of that tractor, grew into a larger staff and, not surprisingly, started growing out of their small-business accounting software as well. Off-the-shelf software worked early on, but within their first decade, its limitations started to limit P & S.
In 2002 P & S hired their accounting manager — her first assigned task: find construction accounting software, something that could grow with the company. “We were manually job costing,” Diana recalls, “doing everything on Excel spreadsheets.” That forced job cost reporting to be an afterthought. “You’d have to wait until the job was practically over, then pull up the spreadsheets, have copies of all the invoices and try to pull together the data you needed.”
Payroll also presented major problems. P & S was an asphalt contractor that had just been approved for state projects, but with a general-purpose accounting system, they had to do all of their certified payroll by hand. “We needed to be able to go after DOT jobs, but our system couldn’t handle them. It just wasn’t practical.”
Before coming to P & S, Diana’s experience of construction accounting software wasn’t much more positive. Her previous company had spent hundreds of thousands of dollars just to get trained and set up on one system. She didn’t want anyone to go through that again. As she looked at what else was available on the market, she found some options. But ultimately, she wasn’t impressed enough to believe she found a fit. Fortunately, a former co-worker had left to work for a company that ran on FOUNDATION, and she insisted that Diana check it out for herself. Once she and the owner saw how convenient it was for a real-life business like theirs, they were sold. Almost 15 years later, they’re still trucking with FOUNDATION.
Getting Mileage out of FOUNDATION
The biggest perks? Job costing, for one. Because daily transactions from invoices and inventory receipts to payroll are coded with the user’s job cost structure, there’s no need to reenter and track data separately. “Any time you want to pull anything up, it’s there. Any time someone comes to me and says, ‘I want to see this. Can you do it?’ I can.” The custom construction report designers have made FOUNDATION a solid choice as well. “Just being able to drag over what you want to see and add a few formulas — it’s incredible.” Whether it’s building job cost reports, lien waivers or import tools, P & S has come to know what they need and know how to get it, because they’re always able to. “Anything you want to do, you can figure out how to do it, quickly.”
Payroll has been another major payoff. Not only can they now generate completed DOT certified payroll reports within seconds but, from the Affordable Care Act employer mandates to the HIRE Act, P & S has been impressed with how FOUNDATION keeps up with the changes.
An additional big requirement for this heavy-highway contractor was equipment tracking. After all, they had more than just one bulldozer to look after now. Beyond just usage tracking, FOUNDATION also enables them to report profits per item, calculate depreciation and even generate work orders right from the Equipment Module.
Finally, Diana couldn’t be happier with the support. “The support is awesome. With past companies, you’d be stalled for a couple of days waiting. With FOUNDATION, you can hear back within an hour.” Even when it’s just to remind her how to perform a transaction or let her know she’s on the right track, she’s glad to know they’re a short phone call away. The support department is always happy to help, however major or minor the question. “It’s their greatest asset. They’re just wonderful.”
Even if P & S couldn’t feel the difference, anyone can see the difference over time. Since 2002, their revenues grew from $14 million to $80 million. Let’s be clear, of course: that’s the hard work that’s characterized P & S from the beginning. But as Diana reflects, “We’re able to do so much more work. We were able to increase our volume without having to increase staff.” And they still have the potential to keep growing, with Foundation Software walking right alongside them to give them the tools they need.
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