Success Stories
Team Ghilotti Teams Up With Maxwell Systems
Glen and Kevin Ghilotti come from a long line of construction workers. In April 2007, the father-son pair branched off from the family business, Maggiora-Ghilotti Construction, to form Team Ghilotti, Inc., based in Petaluma, Calif.
Challenges
Business start-up Team Ghilotti was successful from the beginning but had difficulty manually managing its tremendous workload.
Solution
Team Ghilotti chose Maxwell Systems American Contractor to manage its project and accounting information.
Results
Team Ghilotti achieved gross margins in line with the rest of the Northern California market in under a year—a remarkable accomplishment for a start-up. Father and son credit Maxwell Systems American Contractor for streamlining their business operations and boosting the bottom line.
This general engineering contractor specializes in paving, underground pipe work, grading, concrete, and site work for public work agencies and commercial developers in Northern California.
The new company immediately took off. For two months, the 11-member office staff tried to manually manage the large volume of work they had won, but with little success.
To help streamline their expanding project and accounting information, Team Ghilotti brought in Maxwell Systems™ American Contractor™, an integrated business management software solution designed for the construction industry.
Within three months, the staff was trained, and the system was up and running. At first, Team Ghilotti implemented only the basic features, such as Accounts Payable and Accounts Receivable.
These two functions seamlessly linked general ledger, job costing, service management, materials handling, equipment costing, and subcontractor information. In turn, Team Ghilotti could create invoices, track receivables, and post debits and credits with greater accuracy and efficiency.
In addition, the company used the payroll feature to automatically produce prevailing wage reports while calculating earnings, benefits, taxes, and insurance liabilities. It also tracked hours worked, paid time off, workers’ compensation, 401(k) contributions, and other data sets for faster payroll turnaround.
As the year progressed, the company added more American Contractor components, such as Job Cost Accounting, to its system. The owners expect to incorporate Purchase Orders and Document Control in 2008.
“American Contractor was a great tool for us to get started with,” says Paul Donaldson, general manager of Team Ghilotti. “We needed help dealing with the money entering and leaving our company, and it did so easily and efficiently.”
Thanks in part to its transition to business automation, Team Ghilotti achieved gross margins in line with the rest of the Northern California market in under a year—a remarkable accomplishment for a start-up. Father and son credit Maxwell Systems American Contractor for streamlining their business operations, and boosting the bottom line.

