Based in Hainesport, New Jersey, Ferrell Concrete, LLC is a woman-owned business started by owner Noel Ferrell who brings years of experience from her family’s construction business, J.W. Ferrell Concrete Co., Inc., which has served the tri-state region for more than 80 years.
Branching off into a new company, she takes the knowledge of concrete construction and a passion to grow and diversify. To do that, she started with a keen look at the bottom line and investigated where the money was going. But the business was using a generic accounting package to manage financials, and that’s where she acknowledged the company was suffering.
Challenges
The contractor was using multiple systems for estimating, accounting, and payroll, and lacked tools tailored for construction, which resulted in costly mistakes and lack of accurate information when it was most needed. Plus the company lost money in unidentified change orders, overbidding or underbidding jobs, and redundant processes.
Solution
Ferrell Concrete uses Maxwell Systems ProContractorMX as a complete solution for all its business management operations – from estimating, to job cost accounting, to financial management, for comprehensive reporting, and more.
Results
With ProContractorMX, Ferrell Concrete can streamline processes, reduce data entry, and improve accuracy. Project managers can maintain better control over their jobs and uncover true project profitability. The company can also now bill equipment usage costs to projects, creating a new profit center for the company. And ultimately, they save money in office time, are much more effective, have greater insight into business activities, and can increase profitability.
“We were making costly mistakes,” explained Ferrell. “Using QuickBooks, we had no control of job costing, lacked detailed reporting capabilities, and couldn’t track our wins or losses, labor, materials, change orders, or any other important business data. To keep at pace with the hustle and bustle of activity in the field and managing a busy office, we often overlooked issues or the problems were reported too late to do anything about it. We were underbidding and overbidding and had no real-time, accurate data to help us figure out why or how to fix it. Sure QuickBooks is easy to use, but the numbers are meaningless. I knew we couldn’t drive our business intelligently with that software.”
The staff was also “screaming for details.” The project team needed to know how much material to purchase, how much time they have for certain tasks, and their budget. The project managers needed to know where the company stood on a job and where they might be losing money. “It was very frustrating; we need information to be accurate and readily available. With QuickBooks, it was a guessing game,” added Ferrell.
Endless Possibilities
Ferrell was familiar with Maxwell Systems and really liked the comprehensive construction-focused solutions the company offered. Upon learning about ProContractorMX™, she was very excited about what the complete solution could do for her new concrete construction business.
Maxwell Systems ProContractorMX is an all-in-one software solution that allows end-to-end control of critical business operations. Companies can use ProContractorMX to manage from takeoff and estimating through job cost accounting and project management, and ultimately for critical reporting and analysis.
“The ways we can use ProContractorMX to help improve our processes and productivity are limitless,” commented Ferrell. “We can hop on quickly and immediately begin to use the product and reap its benefits, but we don’t have to use all the features right away. We know the capabilities are there and we have the ability to grow with the product. It is so comprehensive; we will never have to learn another software product again.”
Accurate Takeoffs & Estimates
With ProContractorMX, Ferrell Concrete is able to quickly and accurately takeoff a project and then use the detailed information from the takeoff to create estimates, reduce data entry, and improve accuracy.
“I can recall a job where we had 800 tons of stone delivered to a job site, but only bid with 500 tons,” explained Ferrell. “Because we were using a combination of QuickBooks and other tools, we weren’t able to catch this mistake before the delivery. If we had been using ProContractorMX at the time, all the estimating details would have been available for the team in the field and project manager to see. I believe we would have saved thousands of dollars just on that one task on that one job! It’s scary to think back on losses like that, but exciting to think ahead of the savings and gains we can better capture using ProContractorMX.”
Gaining Control
Ferrell Concrete also believes it has lost quite a bit of money in unidentified change orders. With ProContractorMX, Ferrell Concrete is able to identify, create, track, and manage change orders and gain better insight into their change order process. By easily monitoring the project budgets, costs, billing, and accounting data, project managers can maintain better control over their jobs and uncover true project profitability.
Automating Processes
The accounting staff also reaps the benefits of an end-to-end solution. ProContractorMX includes financial management capabilities that synchronize project costing and ongoing changes with hard financial data. It provides a wide range of reports, such as work-in-progress and bonding reports, to help Ferrell Concrete maintain control of its financial data.
“It was so time consuming and frustrating to use multiple programs to obtain even the smallest bits of information,” said Ferrell. “QuickBooks did offer us some automated reports, but we didn’t trust it and had to create our own spreadsheet reports to ensure accuracy.”
Ferrell explained that although the generic accounting program was easy to use, it was difficult to set up and couldn’t handle the complex payroll scenarios of the construction industry, such as the Davis-Bacon and workers compensation. The payroll process required a significant amount of redundant data entry and lacked in integrity of the data.
“With our previous methods we always had to double or triple check the calculations,” Ferrell said. “For example, every week the program incorrectly calculated the residence wage tax for one of our employees. It was never accurate and created so much extra work. It took us hours to do certified payroll for just 25-30 guys. Now, with ProContractorMX, it will be so nice having the ability to generate AIA billing and certified payroll – all in one product. The time savings and improved accuracy are immeasurable.”
Ferrell also finds that investing in software in this economic climate is a worthwhile and responsible use of funds. “In this tight economy, we’ve had to downsize our staff and diligently watch our budgets, so there is not much left for administrative costs,” said Ferrell. “ProContractorMX helps us eliminate many hours of redundant work. I can’t even imagine how much time we’ll be saving with the new all-in-one solution.”
A New Profit Center
In addition to saving time, ProContractorMX will also provide Ferrell Concrete with a way to increase its profits on projects. Currently, the contractor’s equipment is considered an overhead expense because the contractor has had no way to track the use of its equipment. With ProContractorMX, Ferrell Concrete will be able to capture usage costs and bill them directly to appropriate projects, creating a new profit center for the company.
Knowledge at our Fingertips
With an eye on the future, Ferrell Concrete is beginning to diversify its business. It has opened an equipment rental company and is looking at a new venture in property management. “What I like about ProContractorMX is that it’s easy to manage all of our business ventures in one place. There are no different passwords, and we don’t have to leave the software to obtain information for one of our other companies. It is great to have information about our multiple companies right at my fingertips.”
“ProContractorMX is a very comprehensive, robust tool,” explained Ferrell. “Everything I need is in there and I never doubt a number. And, with the same information available to everyone who needs it (as we set with security features), there is no passing the buck. We have a detailed trail of job activity and that improves accountability and best practices.”
Ferrell Concrete has had to manually create most of the reports that it has needed over the past five years. “We don’t have the time to create reports, so we’ve had to run our business without key data,” said Ferrell. “With ProContractorMX, the reports are amazing. Now we can easily create powerful reports with real-time information and have the confidence in the data. The solution enables us to understand win, loss, profit, project status, where to get more work, what we do best, and much more. With valuable knowledge a click away, we will be able to make much better business decisions.”
“There has been so much room for error in recent years that we don’t know how much time or money we have lost,” said Ferrell. “Now using Maxwell Systems ProContractorMX as our complete business management solution, we will save money in office time, be much more effective, have greater insight into our business to increase profitability, and be able to focus more on our core business.”
