Insightful Accountant | Blog

Warehouse Wednesday: Acumatica In-depth - Part 3

Written by William Murphy | Aug 20, 2024 12:42:59 PM

In my previous two articles in this series on Acumatica, we discussed its potential as an ERP solution for manufacturing, retail, and e-commerce businesses.  In this week's edition, we step away from what might be called the management and sale of 'nuts and bolts' and look at how things are 'constructed' with those nuts and bolts.   The flexibility and design configurations of Acumatica also make it a great ERP for managing 'construction.' It doesn't matter if you are a residential contractor, a commercial contractor, or a subcontractor serving one or both of the major construction enterprises; Acumatica can keep all your projects on track, manage your workflows, plan your materials, staffing, and supplies, and drive your profitability that will grow your business.

With Acumatica for Construction, a homebuilder can manage their customers, subcontractors, and building processes for every single-family, duplex, townhouse, or multi-family project. Acumatica's financial management has standard processes that are simple enough for smaller contractors to build one spec or custom home at a time or sophisticated enough for major homebuilders to construct entire tracts of homes, duplexes, or apartment complexes.

 

Project management and job costing provide project details and help control cost overruns from accounts payable to customer invoicing. Your management, back-office, and field personnel will have instant access to activity, costs, changes, problems, and projections, ensuring that every project runs at the peak of performance for the maximum profit possible upon completion.

When it comes to tracking your subcontractors, your team can track and issue every third-party requisition, expense, purchase order, and payment against project commitments, budget, committed vs. actual, and actual vs. budget. Additionally, Acumatica allows you to track your subcontractors' compliance in areas like insurance certificates, lien waivers and releases, and retainage.

Acumatica lets you communicate and collaborate with your project managers in the field via mobile functionality. You will quickly see critical information like subcontractor updates, issues and problems, and even site weather and performance delays—access employee time and performance records, equipment schedules, and change requests.

 

Change orders are unavoidable in construction, yet they don't have to impact your bottom line. With Acumatica, you will control the costs of change orders by automating project commitments and managing back charges or vendor commitments. Acumatica allows you to streamline the change order process by allowing clients to view and approve changes online.

Commercial contractors will find that Acumatica provides them with all the business functionality they need to manage financials, job costing, contracts, subcontractors, purchases, and customer management. In addition, Acumatica allows these large contractors to connect with leading construction systems such as Procore, ProEst, CFMA Benchmark, and many others.

Acumatica's construction management incorporates a complete, mobile-enabled, cloud-based construction platform built on world-class cloud and mobile technology for real-time views of a general contractor's business from anywhere.

 

Contractors can manage every aspect of projects, from the most minor purchases to the most expansive sub-contracts. From job take-off and estimate building to budget formulation and contract scheduling, from the scope of changes and cost impacts to labor management and employee schedules, Acumatica makes contractor lives more manageable than ever.

Whether a home builder or general contractor, the job is where the work is. Acumatica simplifies and streamlines the mundane documentation associated with projects so that builders can focus on building, not paperwork. But at the same time, Acumatica makes all project documents easily accessible, even remotely from the job site.

 

Contractors can track submittals, establish submittal workflows, and ensure approval before any project aspect is delivered to the worksite. Acumatica's mobile app makes it possible to take photographs at the job site, link them to projects, project tasks, materials, sub-contracts, or specific documents, and upload them to a date-sensitive photo log.

 

Acumatica is great for sub-contractors as well. Whether you are site-preparation, foundation, framing, roofing, windows & doors, drywall, painting, finish carpentry, cabinetry, plumbing, electrical, HVAC, masonry, or concrete, you can seamlessly link the work in the field with your office to capture and manage labor, material costs, inventory, project scheduling and on-time delivery of your contracted work.

 

Manage your services and product orders, purchases, and materials. Dispatch your work crews, trucks, equipment, and specialized tools and supplies via Acumatica's mobile app on your phone or tablet. With this type of scheduling and demand fulfillment at your fingertips, you will never miss a beat of the workday.

We've only begun to plumb the foundation of Acumatica ERP. Still the same, Acumatica might be the ERP you've been looking for, regardless of your construction business type. In a future installment of Warehouse Wednesday, we will provide more in-depth coverage of the Construction ERP features of Acumatica. Stay tuned.