3 Signs That You've Outgrown QuickBooks®

Overview

Many contractors start with QuickBooks® as it is easy and affordable. QuickBooks® automates a handful of core accounting tasks making the contractor’s life easy initially. However, as the contractor’s business grows, QuickBooks® becomes limited in how it can support a construction business. Read on to learn about 3 signs that indicate whether a contractor has outgrown QuickBooks®.

Sign #1 – There Isn’t Clear Visibility into the Business

Are you losing sleep because you aren’t fully aware of what tomorrow will bring to jobs or your business overall? Are you constantly reacting to information vs. using information to make informed decisions proactively? Constantly playing catch up can put a contractor at risk of narrow profit margins, poor cash positions, and more. Below are a few examples of where a contractor can benefit from real-time visibility:

• True cash flow on each job
• Outstanding committed costs for materials or subcontracts
• Retention on each job as well as the total retention for the company by customer 

Sign #2 – Several Hours Are Spent Maintaining and Creating Reports

Are the reports you need taking hours or even days to produce instead of minutes? Are you spending more time tracking data in spreadsheets than within QuickBooks®?  Are you ever waiting on spreadsheets to be updated by others before working within them? Not only is this time consuming, but it can lead to inaccurate reporting if the numbers are not entered correctly. Here are a few reports you should be able to generate with a click of a button:

• Work-In-Progress
• Job cost productivity
• Hourly cost per employee (Including all taxes and benefits)

Sign #3 – Key Functions are Performed Outside of QuickBooks®

Are you increasingly spending more time managing and performing key business functions outside of QuickBooks®? All of your business processes and the information you use to make daily business decisions should be in one place. Not having these key functions in one place can lead to redundant tasks and, more importantly, disruptive inefficiencies. Below are a few examples of construction business functions that many growing contractors eventually find themselves managing outside of QuickBooks®:

• Change Orders
• Field logs
• AIA billing

How Deltek + ComputerEase Can Help

While QuickBooks® is perfectly adequate for many contractors, it is limited in its ability to accommodate construction-specific business needs at scale. Deltek + ComputerEase was built specifically for the construction industry and is supported by construction accounting experts to help contractors every step of the way. Below are examples of how Deltek + ComputerEase empowers emerging contractors, all in one solution:

• Proactively manages job profitability with job costing and WIP reports
• Keeps key stakeholders informed with real-time analytics dashboards
• Manages the workflow of change orders
• Establishes user access permissions and approval roles
• Bills customers through a variety of methods (AIA, unit, T&M) and easily tracks retainage
• Automatically applies invoices to a job and manages lien waivers and two-party checks
• Catalogs, tracks, and transfers inventory to jobs and back to the warehouse
• Handles multiple departments and consolidated financials with a flexible General Ledger
• Job costs equipment, fleet, and assets
• Streamlines the flow of field information such as time entry and expenses
• Manages subcontracts and subcontractor relationships
• Controls the workflow of project documents such as RFIs, submittals, and more
• Manages the allocation of skilled labor and equipment to meet timelines
• Dispatches and manages work orders between the office and the field
• Manages sales activity, customer relationships, and sales pipeline

Next Steps

If you are a contractor that is currently using QuickBooks® and you can relate to any of the signs identified in this article, we suggest exploring a purpose-built solution such as Deltek + ComputerEase. Deltek + ComputerEase has successfully upgraded thousands of contractors from QuickBooks® to Deltek + ComputerEase to enable them to meet unique construction requirements while contributing to the growth of their businesses.