Sage Job Ready Guide

Job Ready Guide
Staff smarter
Top ten time wasters for
construction companies

2Top ten time wasters
Table of contents
Is inefficiency your norm?.......................................................................................... 3
#1 Estimators do takeoff from manual plans ............................................................ 4
#2 No one knows if the job will make a profit ........................................................... 5
#3 Reporting time from the field is a
challenge...................................................................................................................... 6
#4 Subcontractor insurance certificates and
lien waivers are processed by hand .......................................................................... 7
#5 Accounting staff fills out AIA forms
manually....................................................................................................................... 8
#6 Payroll administrator struggles with
government reporting ................................................................................................. 9
#7 Payroll administrator works overtime to
manage union payroll................................................................................................ 10
#8 Accounts payable clerk spend too much
time tracking down invoice approvals..................................................................... 11
#9 Accounts receivable clerk hand enters
customers payments................................................................................................. 12
#10 Service team deals with manual work
orders ......................................................................................................................... 13
About Sage................................................................................................................. 14
About the Job Ready Guides.................................................................................... 14
This document contains general information only. Sage Software, Inc. is are not, by means of this document,
rendering surety bond, accounting, business, financial, legal, tax, or other professional advice or services. Before
making any decision or taking any action that may affect your business, always consult a qualified professional
advisor. This document is not a substitute for such professional advice or services, nor should it be used as a basis
for any decision or action that may affect your business. Sage Software, Inc., its affiliates, and related entities shall
not be responsible for any loss sustained by any person who relies on this document.

Is inefficiency your norm?
If you are like most construction companies today, you are seeing a lot more work
coming in your door. That’s the good news! But that additional business could be putting
extra strain on your current staff. Your first reaction may be to hire more people to help—
both in the office and the field. Finding qualified staff, however, isn’t easy these days. In
fact, according to the Associated General Contractors (AGC), 25% of contractors have
had to turn down work because of today’s labor shortage.
Time to take a different approach
Another way to tackle the situation is to work with current staff to not only improve their
skills but remove tedious manual processes that could be affecting their productivity. It’s
often surprising to see how much time employees spend on inefficient processes and
activities—some which can be automated. These inefficiencies often are not readily
apparent because employees have become accustomed to challenging processes and
the tedium, waste, and rework has become the “normal” way of doing business.
This guide will help you identify the top ten time wasters often present in construction
firms and show you how the latest software technology can eliminate them. By using
information from this guide to evaluate and make changes in your business, you can:
 Streamline processes that are currently bogging down your staff.
 Allow your team to redirect their time to activities that have a greater positive
impact on your company results.
 Increase staff morale by giving them more fulfilling work.
Obviously there will always be a need for you to hire new employees. The key is to
reserve that hiring for individuals who can fill true skill gaps, not plug in process holes.
Hire people to do the thinking.
Use systems to handle the
rest.—Mary Davolt, Chief
Financial Officer for
Englewood Construction

#1
Estimators do takeoff from manual plans
Today electronic plans are commonplace. So is software that allows estimators to
electronically take off quantities and dimension directly from those plans. There is no
longer a need to print the plans to do the takeoff with a digitizer or manually with scales,
rulers, and spreadsheets.
Contractors who use electronic take off tools combined with construction estimating
software have cut their estimating time in half, giving them more time to refine their
estimates and develop a more competitive bid strategy.
Not only is electronic takeoff much faster than traditional methods, it’s more accurate
(getting down to measurements within thousandths of an inch). By using electronic
takeoff tools to highlight what they’ve already taken off, estimators also avoid potential
mistakes and unforeseen project costs due to omissions.
Linking takeoff and estimating
Additional time can be shaved off by integrating electronic take off tools with construction
estimating software. The time drain in building an estimate from scratch—one item at a
time—is significant. Even if you maintain a number of spreadsheet templates, keeping
them up-to-date with pricing and estimate details can be cumbersome.
Many contractors find it much more efficient to populate their estimates using a database
that stores all items, pricing, productivity factors, formulas, and other estimating details.
Databases that also store groups of items are an extra boost to productivity by allowing
estimators to take off all the items of a wall, concrete slab, or other building component in
one step.
“We can produce estimates in
four or five hours now, when
before they would have taken
us four or five days.” – Chris
Rowe, president, Echo Pacific
Construction

#2
No one knows if the job will make a profit
Nothing is a bigger time waster than focusing employees on a project that ends up barely
covering costs, or worst yet, puts you in the red.
Ask yourself these key questions about your current jobs:
 Are you able to view at a glance which projects you are making and losing
money on based on current billings and costs?
 Do you know how changes on a project are impacting your overall profitability?
 Can you tell exactly which parts of the project you are under or over budget?
 Do you know all your committed costs by job?
 When you close out a job are you confident you won’t receive a late invoice that
you had forgotten about?
If you answered “no” to any of these questions, you don’t have the daily visibility you
need to control project costs and ensure your team will reach profit goals.
Tracking job cost efficiently
Your construction business has unique needs when it comes to managing job costs. Most
accounting software is not set up to track costs by project, requiring many contractors to
handle it separately using spreadsheets. This process is doable when you have only a
few projects to keep track of. But as more business comes in your door the process of
tracking job costs can become a huge time drain on employees doing the work.
Construction specific accounting systems can track job costs as part of your normal
accounting and project management processes to give you the insight you need. On a
daily basis, you can see at a detailed level where a job is at cost-wise and whether you
are on track to meet profit goals. And if you see an overrun you can take action to
proactively prevent profit erosion before it’s too late.
Process tips
 Brian Garcea, CFO at RG Construction has set up an automatic alert that notifies his
team of jobs that haven’t been billed, or when the current profit is less than a certain
percent.
 Determine the type of jobs that are most profitable and focus on going after them to
make the best use of your employee’s time and effort.
“The biggest thing that helped
our bottom line was knowing
what a job really costs—how
much labor was involved and
how much material. That was
mystical in the past.”—Steve
Getzin, Vice President, J.F.
Cook Company

#3
Reporting accurate hours from the field is a
challenge
When your field team is reporting hours worked using paper timecards, email, or by
phone it often takes too much time to do it on a daily basis. To deal with a cumbersome
manual time reporting process, field managers opt to submit labor hours weekly. But by
then it can be difficult to piece together what happed during the week, causing potential
inaccuracies.
Even if your company’s superintendents are good at submitting manual timecards on
most days, there are often other process challenges. Handoffs of the timecards to project
managers for review and approval, for example, may result in extra time spent tracking
down missing or incorrect information. Plus payroll administrators still have to reenter the
information once they receive it in order to process payroll.
Mobile technology can help
Today, mobile devices along with cloud-based time capture apps are making it much
more convenient to capture, approve, and submit labor hours from the field on a daily
basis. And if the time capture application is integrated with your company’s payroll
software, your accounting staff do not have to reenter the information.

#4
Subcontractor insurance certificates and lien
waivers are processed by hand
The rules and regulations are becoming stricter and the financial impact greater if you
don’t pay enough attention to compliance issues such as assuring your subcontractors
are fully insured and have provided signed lien waivers.
Compliance paperwork, however, can be an administration nightmare if done by hand. In
addition to insurance certificates and lien waiver, there are other key documents that
need to be tracked, including weekly certified reports, permits, licenses, W-9s, drug test
results, notice to owners, close-out documents, and punch lists.
The result is many companies can’t keep up with all the details, putting their businesses
at risk. One Georgia contractor found out the hard way when an uninsured worker was
injured on one of its jobs. The incident drove up the general contractor’s premiums for the
next five years, costing the company hundreds of thousands of dollars and impacting the
GC’s bidding competitiveness due to higher costs.
Streamlining compliance
Construction software technology can address subcontractor and vendor compliance
concerns, shaving off hours of work for employees. Before automating their subcontractor
compliance management, Pinnacle Construction Support Group had two to three people
handling their risk management. Now only one person is needed to do the job.
To reduce work in this area for your company, look to improve processes and implement
software that will allow you to:
 Easily set up the compliance items you want to track at the beginning of each job.
 Electronically store, track, and manage compliance documents for quick reference—
including the ability to collect and scan documents in the field.
 Give project managers mobile access to view compliance information so they know
who is cleared to work on the job site.
 Automatically block invoice payment if a subcontractor or vendor is in non-compliance.
 Automate emails to subcontractors, notifying them, for example, that their insurance is
about to expire.
 Creates reports to let your owners and other clients know that you are staying in
compliance and the job is moving smoothly.
 Notifies you when insurance, a license, or other compliance items are about to expire.
“It (automated compliance
tracking) has made a huge
difference by saving us 20 to
30 hours of work a month.”—
Andrea Mosher, Risk
Manager, Pinnacle
Construction Support Group
View video

#5
Accounting staff fills out AIA forms manually
Your accounting team has to keep track of a lot of numbers to properly complete an AIA
billing form. For each billing period they have to fill out the original contract amount, what
has been previously billed, work completed during the current billing period, change
orders that need to be taken into account, and retainage—just as a starting point. To
create even more work the information has to be broken down by cost code or phase of
work.
Doing all if this work manually takes a considerable amount of time. That was the case
for Ecker Enterprises when they used to keep track of AIA billing information using
Microsoft Excel. Now the drywall and framing contractor uses software that can handle
construction-related billing. When they need to produce an AIA G703 form they can
prepopulate it with most of the required information needed right from within their
software system.

#6
Payroll administrator struggles with
government reporting
The U.S. Department of Labor estimates it takes 55 minutes to complete the certified
payroll form WH-347 for eight employees on a single job each week. And that’s one of
the easier government forms to complete!
Payroll reporting in general is a key area where you can increase efficiencies. In addition
to certified payroll reports on any government work you do, there are W-2s, 1099s, and
other payroll tax reports that need to be filed each pay period. The hours to prepare these
reports manually can add up quickly.
Remove the tedious work
Construction payroll is already complex compared to many other businesses. Why make
it more complicated with manual processes. To reduce work in this area, look to improve
processes and implement software and services that will allow you to:
 Generate your government forms automatically with much of the information prefilled.
That way all you have to do is review the information and add adjustments as needed.
 Electronically file your forms to the government. Services such as Aatrix can be
integrated with your accounting software to file hundreds of government reports and
forms right from the software.
 Automatically mail employees copies of their W-2s. Even better, some e-filing services
provide W-2s to employees through a secure website so they can access the
information 24-7.
And, of course, anything you can do to make it easier for payroll staff to get time
information from the field will make their jobs a lot easier. Mobile time entry and approval
(see page 6) is one way contractors are reducing the hassle of getting payrolls
processed and government reports out the door.
“Previously, we were
completing this form (State of
Connecticut certified payroll)
manually. Now it is produced
by the software, and all we do
is sign and submit it.” Mike
Zagorski, President, Dyna
Electric Company, Inc.
“(We’ve) cut our state and
federal reporting and filing
from a full day down to one
hour.”—Nick Andreolas, CFO,
Ecker Enterprises

#7
Payroll administrator works overtime to
manage union payroll
If you hire union workers your payroll takes on yet another layer of complexity. Just one
job could have workers from several different unions and locals, each group with its own
reporting forms and requirements. And depending on the type of job, a worker can fall
into different union classes, with different pay rates and fringes.
Can your payroll software or service handle multiple union requirements? If it doesn’t,
your payroll staff is forced to do lots of manual calculations and manipulate data for each
union and local you work with. That’s a lot of work.
Assistance with union requirements
Automating your union payroll process will go a long way to reduce your payroll staff’s
workload. An effective payroll system will allow you to:
 Track union contract details so you know exactly what you are required to do.
 Define guidelines for the automatic calculation of union pays, deductions such as union
dues, and fringe benefits for any combination of union, class, and local.
 Quickly enter time, including automatically switching union locals based on job location.
 Run a union summary and other required union reports.
Of course, there will always be times when someone leaves and you need to hire a
replacement. Finding someone with union payroll experience may be preferable but not
always possible. By automating your union payroll processes it will be easier to onboard
a new payroll employee because the guidelines, calculations, and processes are already
built into the software.

#8
Accounts payable clerk spends too much
time tracking down invoice approvals
In many construction companies it’s not unusual for a coffee-stained copy of an invoice to
get lost somewhere in the job site trailer or the backseat of a pickup truck. Even if the bill
was sent through email, it could easily get buried among the whirlwind of submittals,
drawings, RFIs, meeting minutes, and other job correspondence project managers deal
with every day. Consequently AP clerks spend a lot of time trying to track down who has
what invoice so they can get it approved and paid on time.
Time efficient invoice approval
Many contractors are taking another approach to streamline the invoice approval
process: They are integrating document management software with their accounting and
project management systems. This allows them to set up customized routing rules to
make the invoice approval process as efficient as possible. As a result, AP clerks can
track invoices electronically while they route from person to person to see exactly who’s
sitting on them. It also makes it easier for project managers who can see each day the list
of invoices they need to approve.
More than just invoices
The construction process is traditionally paper intensive. But it doesn’t have to be. In
addition to invoices, you can also electronically store, retrieve, and route lien waivers, AIA
payment applications, and other construction documents. For added time savings, look
for document management software that will:
 Automatically notify reviewers, via email, that a document has been sent to them for
approval or other action.
 Let you “digitally staple” related emails, delivery tickets, POs, subcontracts, change
orders, and other documents to invoices.
 Create and deploy electronic forms such as daily reports, punch lists, purchase
requisitions, and expense reports.
 Easily find documents associated with an invoice, vendor, job, or other criteria.
 Maintain a history of any revisions made to documents or action taken such as
approvals.

#9
Accounts receivable clerk hand enters
customer payments
You know the importance of cash flow to your business. Finding ways to streamline your
payment process will not only save time for employees but keep your cash flow healthy.
To eliminate time-consuming double data entry and reduce payment cycles, contractors
are using electronic payment systems that automatically enter payments into their
accounts receivable software. These payments can come from:
The job site. Mobile devices have made it much easier for service technicians and
authorized field staff to take debit or credit payments at the project site as soon as they
complete the work or need a deposit. Customers also like the convenience of using their
credit cards on the spot, rather than waiting for an invoice and having to send in a check.
Direct from the clients account. With your customer’s permission, you can store bank
routing numbers and other information for quick payments against invoices.
As an electronic check. Some of your customers may still prefer to send a check.
Those checks can be scanned for direct deposit into your bank and then electronically
accessed for invoice payment.
In any of these scenarios, the added time-saving bonus is your employees no longer will
have to wait in long lines at the bank to make deposits.
Are you PCI compliant?
Another advantage of using a reputable payments service is the security and compliance
benefits it offers. Payment Card Industry (PCI) compliance is a requirement of all
businesses that interact with credit or debit cards. If you aren’t PCI compliant you open
yourself up to legal liability and fines. Using a PCI compliant payments system ensures
you are up-to-date on the latest best practices to protect your business and customers
from payment fraud.
Processing payments directly
through a business
accounting system can save
up to five minutes per
transaction—Sage Integrated
Payments Study

#10
Service team deals with manual work orders
If you are a service oriented business such as an electrical, plumbing, or HVAC
contractor, a manual work order process can mean wasted time both in the office and for
technicians in the field. These inefficiencies can also keep you from providing the level of
service your customers expect.
Today’s mobile and cloud-based software technology is opening up new ways to get
work orders processed more quickly. Here’s how:
Empowered customers. We are a self-service society, from do-it-yourself grocery
checkouts to online banking. So why not give your customers the control to look up their
own account information, schedule a service call, or pay their bills online. Leading cloud-
based service management applications allow you to provide this option to your
customers.
One-step work orders. Armed with mobile devices, technicians can submit work
requests as well as document work order details from the field. The information is logged
automatically into your systems, eliminating the need for service managers, dispatchers,
and other office staff to rekey it.
Additional time savers
Think of how much time could be saved by getting jobs done on the first call.
Unfortunately, too many jobs come to a halt while technicians wait to get needed parts
and tools. To address this, give your technicians the ability to create purchase orders
(within company guidelines) from the field so they can get the parts to complete the job.
And finally, give your technicians mobile access to site history, equipment details, work
orders, and other key information, so they can complete the job more quickly and
effectively. It will also leave a good impression with your customers.

About The Sage Group plc
We provide small and medium-sized organizations with a range of easy-to-use, secure,
and efficient business management software and services—from accounting and payroll
to enterprise resource planning, customer relationship management, and payments. Our
customers receive continuous advice and support through our global network of local
experts to help them solve their business problems, giving them the confidence to
achieve their business ambitions. Formed in 1981, Sage was floated on the London
Stock Exchange in 1989 and entered the FTSE 100 in 1999. Sage has over 6 million
customers and more than 12,700 employees in 24 countries covering the UK & Ireland,
mainland Europe, North America, South Africa, Australia, Asia, and Brazil. For further
information please visit: www.sage.com
For more information about Sage in North America, please visit the company website at
NA.sage.com or SageCRE.com for construction and real estate solutions and
information. Follow Sage North America on Facebook, Facebook.com/Sage, and Twitter,
Twitter.com/SageNAmerica or Twitter.com/SageConstruct.
About the Job Ready Guides
Sage keeps projects moving with the most job-ready, people-connected solutions for
construction and real estate. Our Job Ready Guides are designed to help you tackle your
business challenges with practical, actionable information, tools, and resources to meet
those challenges. For more tips and best practices visit our Job Ready website.
Sage Construction and Real Estate
15195 NW Greenbrier Parkway
Beaverton, OR 97006
www.sagecre.com
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