Established in 1999, 2K General Company, Inc. is one of the leading general building construction firms in central Ohio and provides preconstruction, construction management, and design-build services. The company’s growing project portfolio consists of quality building and renovation projects in many key sectors of the construction industry, including commercial, retail, and masonry, as well as public works, which since its founding is the majority of the work they do.

The contractor has grown steadily over 15 years and now employs 30 field employees and 11 office employees, producing $14.5 million in annual revenue. There was a problem encountered with that growth, however, according to Clayton Morgan, CFO at 2K General, who explains: “As we grew to work on multimillion dollar projects with 200 change orders, our system that included using QuickBooks simply couldn’t handle it. Nothing in that software could handle our project management requirements, so we were juggling additional spreadsheets and paper to manage projects. It wasn’t efficient. It was impossible to properly build budgets. It was a nightmare to figure out work in progress and run reports. I’d spend hours to figure out if we were even making money on a job.”

Centralized Saves Time & Money

Requiring a solution that integrated construction accounting and project management, 2K General implemented ProContractor by Viewpoint. ProContractor is comprehensive construction project management software, allowing construction businesses to streamline business processes in the office and in the field.

With centralized, real-time project information, contractors have insight for informed decisions to efficiently bring in every project on schedule and within budget, while minimizing risk and improving control.

“ProContractor is an ideal fit for handling our many change orders – the revenue side and expense side,” says Morgan. He’s right; project managers find it very easy to use this solution to efficiently identify change requests and track and manage pending, internal, and contract change orders

“With ProContractor, our project engineers can set up change order records and automatically update budgets,” he explains. “It’s great for checks and balances. Plus, WIPs are quick to pull together and it’s easy to bill.”

Creating change orders with ProContractor is easy, plus the solution allows users to access real-time information, print change order documents and proposals, and compare costs to the original estimate. This helps construction businesses to drive timely approvals; capitalize on opportunities for every job, and save money on potentially costly mistakes.

Morgan explains why the solution is especially useful to 2K General for change orders, reports, and tracking: “Using ProContractor, we save time because it links change orders with the budget so we clearly see revenue and expense. Reports are complete and show everything I need, so I don’t have to waste time hunting down answers and looking for files and seeking explanations. I especially like the reports on tracking submittals and change orders – I can print out a tracking list and the WIP report is really nice and done automatically, whereas before I’d have to use Excel only. It’s a big improvement over QuickBooks where you’re just randomly putting numbers in. The tracking with ProContractor is so valuable.”

Reporting to Stay a Step Ahead

Because ProContractor by Viewpoint combines robust cost management with a complete line of construction financial management reporting options, contractors gain strict control and flexible processing of financial obligations with superior accuracy and data integrity for peace of mind. Plus, businesses can use the solution to easily create WIP and Bonding reports, whether operating on a work-in-progress or direct cost accounting basis, as well as automatically deliver information, like daily financials, to the owner.

According to Morgan, “It’s much smoother and quicker to prepare quarterly financials for bonding and banks when using ProContractor. This puts us way ahead in the process where we used to linger behind deadlines; and it saves us more time in the project management phase, too.”

In closing, Morgan added that he is excited about what’s yet to come with ProContractor: “The software is so comprehensive yet it’s also nice to have updates, which always offer us something new and makes the solution even more user-friendly.”