Challenge

Time and materials for work performed was captured in spreadsheets and transmitted to the office where the information was entered into the accounting ERP. A heavily manual process, the consolidation of T&M data into field tickets for owner submission took around 30 days. Complexity, the sheer volume of tickets and spreadsheet-based tracking meant there were many dollars of T&M billing that was going unbilled. Cash flow was impacted as work-to-billed-to-paid time stretched out to 50 days or more. Billing consumed an outsized proportion of the accounting team’s time and resources and project managers lacked daily cost data to ensure that projects stayed on budget.

Solution

Vista, Viewpoint’s construction accounting ERP and Viewpoint Field Management, a Vista integrated field ticketing solution, replaced those costly manual processes. A mobile app to capture labor and equipment time as well as materials and production replaced spreadsheets in the field. Real-time integration made field data immediately available to the back office and the automated production of field tickets replaced manual entry and manual T&M consolidation. Additionally, daily cost data was made available for project managers to compare against the estimate to keep projects on budget and field supervisors got real-time over/under productivity data to keep projects on schedule.

Results

By replacing spreadsheets with software automation, field ticketing was accelerated and simplified. “Viewpoint enables us to account for a lot of T&M dollars that would otherwise not have been identified, let alone billed,” said Craig Lundskog, finance director at Great Basin Industrial.

Real-time data flow and automated consolidation of tickets for billing drastically reduced cycle times, “Because of Viewpoint Field Management’s T&M ticketing capabilities, the number of heads we have dedicated to billing has halved, while the volume of projects we bill doubled,” Lundskog said. In additional to streamlined data capture, field supervisors are able to present tickets on a tablet, in the field, to which the owner’s representative’s signature can be applied. “Instead of 30 days to produce a field ticket, Viewpoint has reduced it to one day. This efficiency was rewarded with preferred vendor status which we expect will double our business in the next 12 months,” Lundskog said.

Less manual and accelerated processes have positively impacted cash flow. “Viewpoint has improved our cash flow dramatically — we’re seeing a 50% reduction in work-to-billed-to-paid time.” Great Basin Industrial have also benefited from Viewpoint Field Management’s other capabilities, which include safety huddles, equipment management and much more.