Costing
Accurate job costing is vital in the construction industry, and striking the right balance between offering competitive rates and guaranteeing your own expenses and profits are covered isn’t always easy. Ensuring that you cost your jobs appropriately can reduce needless expenditure, maximise profits and help to cement your place at the head of the industry table. It may seem a small task, but if you use a generic accounting solution and rely on manual spreadsheets to track profit/loss on individual contracts, the margin for error is high.
Time management
The adage that ‘time is money’ is one that is frequently uttered and reiterated. However, one could certainly argue that where construction is concerned, truer words have never been spoken. Every wasted hour that could have been better spent elsewhere eats into profits and reduces the cost-effectiveness of your firm, so it’s vital that every aspect of your business is as efficient and swift as possible.
Compliance
Workplace non-compliance can cost your company financially as well as damaging reputations, making it harder to win new trade in future. Legislature can sometimes seem to change on a weekly basis in our sector; subcontractor verification and CIS submissions when managed in generic systems can be two time-consuming but necessary aspects of construction accounting and management.
Employee skillsets
Naturally, the construction industry is hugely reliant upon subcontractors, but ensuring that these employees are up to speed with your existing working practices can be an expensive and time-consuming process. Beyond the construction site itself, behind-the-scenes staff must ensure their skills grow as quickly as the sector does, particularly as they adapt to new technology and solutions. Adequate training will help to ensure the cost-effective integration of both new technology and employees in the future.
Technology
Of course, switching to a new construction accounting software program can cost time and money in itself. Transferring your valuable data from one system to another can take up time that you simply do not have, so many firms choose to stick with the imperfect software they have rather than investing in a new solution. Whilst switching existing technologies may seem long-winded and expensive, in actual fact it can be a straightforward process if you choose the right solution.
Here at Integrity Software, we appreciate the myriad expenses that construction firms must necessarily negotiate each year – that’s why our construction accounting software is designed exclusively with your industry in mind. Our software can help to tackle many of the aforementioned expenses and can even help with the data migration from your old system – ensuring that your firm is more cost-effective and profitable this year than ever before.
View our 7 step guide to switching to construction specific financial software.
