Features To Look For When Selecting A Construction Management Software For Your Small Home Building Business
A construction management software creates a single, real-time visibility window for all stakeholders, from construction sites to your back-office. An automated Enterprise Resource Platform (ERP) built for the industry creates positive experiences for all collaborating parties at every stage of the building process. But smaller Home Builders, Remodelers, Contractors and Trades require different software than a company that builds thousands of homes a year. If you’re a small Builder and considering small business software solutions, it pays to do research and look for software features that deliver a streamlined, cost effective option — and ultimately — the healthiest ROI for your business.
Estimating Features
Estimating is one of the most difficult and important front-end aspects of Home Building that can negatively impact your bottom line. Are you confident in the accuracy of your estimates or have you experienced problems? A recent QuickBooks survey showed nearly one-third of construction companies made less profit than expected based on their estimates. Furthermore, 54% tracked project costs without software1. Software that provides template-driven estimating, a simplified job scoping process, a checklist and full documentation will help to ensure you don’t overlook anything in your estimates.
Accounting Features
Residential construction accounting is more complex than many other industries because every project involves indirect and direct costs. Overhead costs can fluctuate from season to season and from job to job — making it difficult to get a clear picture of your costs. In addition to complicated job costing, Builders typically deal with specialized billing and payroll with multiple pay rates. Cloud-based project accounting software that is accessible via mobile is an effective way to manage vendor transactions, minimize non-billable work, eliminate mistakes common to manual bookkeeping methods and improve on-time completion records.
Vendor Bidding Features
It takes a lot of time and effort to prepare bids that accurately reflect labor costs, materials and equipment. Although accurate estimates for materials, equipment and labor are part of the equation, the bidding process differs from estimating. Common problems that can derail bids include partial bid forms and documents, incomplete analysis of plans and construction takeoffs and errors caused by manual calculations. The right bid management software automates and streamlines the manual process of creating and submitting construction project bids. It will enable you to quickly send and respond to invites, easily update bids and track changes, input bid reminders within your job templates, involve clients in the process and track the history of your subcontractor and Supplier bids.
Budget Management Features
Supply chain issues with basic materials such as lumber and steel, coupled with the highest U.S. inflation rates in 40 years2, continue to impact many aspects of the Home Building industry in 2022, including budgeting. Although some building material costs moderately decreased in December 2021 from the highest cost spike since 1970, shortages and delays are still negatively impacting construction budgets3. Using construction budgeting software to track your real-time status and projections goes a long way to being prepared for the unexpected and protecting your profits. As with vendor bidding, creating accurate estimates is essential to the budgeting process. Construction software eliminates the issues associated with cumbersome paperwork and ensures project data is automatically synced to prevent using outdated information.
Explore Residential Construction Management Software for Small Businesses with Hyphen Solutions
BuilderGM offers Small Builders, Remodelers and General Contractors the ability to work anywhere with an intuitive mobile app that provides collaborative full-team communication and increased productivity. BuilderGM offers integration with QuickBooks to simplify accounting, as well as scheduling and vendor management, CRM, sales along with photo and video documentation. The simple, user-friendly interface will allow your team to get up to speed with little training.
Learn more about BuilderGM, an innovative construction ERP specifically created for small Builders that encompasses all of the above features and more, or schedule a personal demo.
1 Source: https://quickbooks.intuit.com/industry/construction/#industry-survey
3 Source: https://www.ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/news/2022/01/26/home-builders-supply-chain
