Name: Optimize Cash Flow and Strengthen Profitability with Deltek ComputerEase
Uploaded: 2026-10-14T19:30:45.756Z
Duration: 53 min 48 s
Description: Optimize Cash Flow and Strengthen Profitability with Deltek ComputerEase

Transcript for "Optimize Cash Flow and Strengthen Profitability with Deltek ComputerEase": Hi. Good afternoon, good morning, depending on what time zone you're joining us from, and welcome to today's webinar. We'll get started momentarily, but a couple of quick housekeeping notes before we get started. For the best experience, we recommend using Google Chrome or Firefox. The audio for today's presentation is streamed through your computer, so there's no dial in, so please make sure you have the volume turned up. You can download the presentation slides in the... Via the resource widget up in the top or... In the top right hand corner. The widgets on your screen can be resized to fit your to fit your screen, so feel free to do that. And please note that you will receive an email with a link to the on demand recording of today's presentation within twenty four hours after it ends, so you can watch it back, share it with someone else within your organization or someone else in the industry that may benefit from today's content. So today's topic, up... Optimizing cash flow and strengthening profitability with Deltek Computorese. Quick introduction. I am your host for today's webinar. I'm John Mibers, the vice president general manager here at Deltek Computorese. Spent the last thirty five plus years working in the construction industry. Started my career in construction working for a large contractor, held various roles over my ten years there, and I've spent the last twenty five plus years, serving as the leader of the Deltek Computers team and serving the over 6,000 contractors we have nationwide as customers. You know, my role is is typically... You know, I'm focused on equipping the contractors with the tools they need to manage profitability, drive growth, and meet the ever changing complex construction requirements that we all face. Before we get started, I'm gonna launch a quick polling questionnaire. We'd like to get an idea who we have in the audience. I'm gonna ask what's your current accounting or construction ERP system. Are you using Deltek Computorees? Are you using maybe Foundation, Jonas, QuickBooks, Sage, or other? Guess it would help if I launch the right polling question there. Sorry about that. So, yes, the poll is now launched. So if you could check the appropriate box, We'll give it about twenty seconds or so. Good. About another ten seconds. Looks like we got a good mix. We got some Delta Computers customers, some on QuickBooks, some on Sage, some on others. So, good representation of all the, all the accounting systems we would expect to see. So I'm gonna go ahead and close the poll now. So thank you for thank you for sharing that, and we'll go ahead and continue on with the presentation. So let me get back to the next slide here. And as we all know in construction, you know, I think protecting our profits is challenging. You know, we're working on... We traditionally work on very thin margins to begin with. A lot of us are still, you know, especially those maybe on the call that are on QuickBooks are still using, you know, some, you know, some manual efforts, spreadsheets, what what have you to, you know, to work on job costing, work on our accounting. If you don't have a, you know, construction specific solution like Computorease, you know, we're still a lot of manual effort sometimes that goes into collecting, reviewing, and analyzing the data. You know, construction jobs, unfortunately, a lot of times run over budget. Just 31 of jobs traditionally finish within 10% of the budget. You know, ideally, we're finishing under budget if anything, but, unfortunately, the, you know, the biggest concern is when jobs are going over budget or trending to go over budget, and the the key with managing that is understanding where you're going before you get there, knowing that you're headed to be over budget before you actually go over budget. You know, I think generic tools make your job harder. There certainly isn't a knock on the generic system. You know, QuickBooks is is is fine for a lot of businesses as an example, but it's not built for construction. So it's not gonna have in-depth job costing. It's it's not going to have the right billing tools. It's not gonna, you know, handle the complexity of construction payroll. Doesn't mean that you can't get by, but you're gonna be doing a lot of manual effort to work along with the system or if you had a tool that was built specifically for construction like Computerease, it's gonna be much easier to perform those tasks. You know, a great construction accounting solution, a purposely built solution, should have built in WIP reporting, give you a clear visibility of where you're at and where you're headed based on where you're at. Should make... You know, billing your clients should be very easy. You know, we allow you to bill on time, on the right form, be it a progress bill on an AIA type invoice, a time and material invoice, a unit billing invoice, whatever the form may be, whatever their construction specific form may be should have a solution that provides that for you. You know, it's gonna have built in compliance tools that that, you know, makes payroll, you know, very pain free. You know, we handle things like union payroll, you know, prevailing wage payroll, produce certified payroll reports, hand... Handle multi state, multi local, you know, payroll tax withholding requirements, handle multiple pay rates on, you know, sometimes the same job or, you know, certainly the different jobs in the same day or the same week. You know, there's a lot of complexity when it comes to payroll. It's not we pay the same person the same hourly rate on every hour they work, and they're not always working in the same location. They're moving from job to job. Each job has its own unique set of payroll tax rules that we must comply with. What the solution like computer is, and we'll see some examples of this here in a minute, you know, we're we're gonna give you all the information, gonna give you real time job cost information so you can make better intelligent day to day decisions. We're gonna give you a clear view of your of your profits, where where you're where you're at today and where you're headed, and we're not gonna wait till the till the job is over and see how we did. We're gonna tell you how you're doing along the way. You know, it... It's, you know, we... It's certainly relevant information after the fact, but it's really important to know that information as the job is in progress so that we can see and we can act before a job slips or before, you know, our profit fades. We're gonna make sure that we're billing accurately and timely. You know, we're gonna speed up the billing process, make sure we're we're, you know, billing on the right form in the right format, sending it to the right place. And then, certainly, we're gonna take the pain out of payroll. As I mentioned, you know, if you're struggling with any of those payroll things today, struggling to produce your union payer reports or your certified payer reports, struggling to manage prevailing wage rates, paying your... Making sure you're paying people the right rate, whether they're on a non prevailing wage job or or prevailing wage job? Are you struggling to withhold the proper tax withholdings as your employees move from job site to job site? You know, solution like Deltek Computer is, you know, we're certainly... You know, we're gonna power success at every stage of of the project life cycle. We We wanna give you information that you can, you know, capture the right app... Opportunities at better margins. You know, a lot of, you know, historical data that you have is very relevant to the next job you bid. You know, we're gonna help you plan the job that you are awarded and, you know, improve your delivery readiness and reduce risk before the the job even starts. Certainly gonna help execute, protect those margins, optimize performance, you know, track productivity, track, you know, track job cost against budgets all along all along the way, and then certainly give you reports to allow you to analyze and make decisions, not only when the job is over, but during the life of the job. It's really... Like I said, it... It's certainly relevant at the end of the job, but I wanna know sooner rather than later where we're at. I wanna know today that we're headed to be over budget before we actually get to be over budget. You know, intelligent platform, you know, with control that that... That's in our DNA. You know, we certainly... You know, with the with with the AI built into the solution, with our field apps, we're allowed communicating between the field and the office. You're really built for the contractor because construction is what we do. Computerease is built specifically for the construction industry, so we understand this industry. This is an industry we we we work in each and every day, and we build our solutions. We tailor our solution, the Computery solution, you know, for construction to to work specifically the way you need to work, the way the contractor needs to work. You know, it's it's at the it's at the core of the, of the the platform. We're gonna talk about job costing a little bit more here in a minute. Just like job cost is at the center of of what... Of everything we do as a contractor. You know, we're gonna help you plan, execute, and analyze. I mean, that's everything from, you know, scheduling resources, building a schedule on a project, you know, managing all of your, you know, all of your accounting, the, you you know, the purchasing, the inventory, mobile communication, time and expense coming in from the field to the office, and certainly give you real time inter... Information, interactive dashboards, and and state of the art additional reporting such as a work in progress report where you're gonna get real time information out of the system. You're gonna get a clear view of your profits. You're gonna get real time job costing. And when we talk about real time, you know, I I... To me, the definition of real time has changed in my my career in construction, certainly. You know, real time used to mean that after we collected time this week for the for the time that was worked last week, we entered into the system, and we posted it to to the general ledger and job cost, then we could get a real time job cost report because that was as real time as we could get. Where today, those hours should be coming in from the field daily because what... We we have the tools to do that, so why wouldn't we submit time on a daily basis? We've already worked those hours even though I'm not gonna pay them till next week on next week's pay run. I've already committed to pay that. That's a form of committed cost. I wanna see those hours and those committed dollars on my job cost report today. I don't wanna wait till next week when that when that information is, you know, seven to ten days old. You know, we're gonna have that that work in progress report is critical to knowing where we're headed based on where we're at. If I've spent half of the budget, I could be under the false assumption I'm okay because I still have half the budget to go. But if I've already spent half the budget, but I've only done 40% of the work, red flag. Should be should be popping up saying, well, wait a minute. You've already spent half the budget, but you've only done 40% of the work at that rate. At that pace, we're going to go over budget. And we wanna have a clear view and and accountability and track of our committed costs. When you write a purchase order or subcontract agreement or those hours of work today that will be paid next week, those are commitments. I'm I'm gonna... I I have to pay my employee next week. I've issued a subcontract, so I've contracted with a with a sub to do the work. I haven't spent the money yet, but I've committed to spend it. I've written a purchase order for material that hasn't been delivered yet. I haven't been invoiced for yet, but I've committed to spend that. That all has to be tracked against the budget in real time. We wanna make billing easy. As I said, it's really important that we're not... That we're billing to the right person on the right date on the right form. And, you know, really, really important that we do that. We need to manage retainage. We know how complicated that can be in construction. There's not only... You know, that would... We have the unbilled retainage on every job. We have to manage. Hopefully, we can get it reduced throughout the life of the job, and then, ultimately, we need to see that through till we can do the final retainage billing. We need to make sure that that is... You know, we're up to speed on that at all time because a lot of times, a lot of our bottom line profit is tied up in that final retainage payment. You know? And then we... Once again, we need to keep the field and and the office in sync. And, you know, with being able to capture receipts in the field, the, you know, real time daily time entry, we can keep the field and office in sync and keep them communicating on on a real time basis. So I mentioned we wanna we wanna be able to take the pain out of construction payroll. We know how complicated payroll can be. And, you know, we we have to make sure that we can... You know, we have a mobile workforce. We're working in multiple localities, especially if you're in a a portion of the country where you have local payroll withholding tax requirements. Could be working across state lines. So we need to make sure that we, you know, we are maintaining full local, state, and federal tax compliance. We need to manage the union payroll reporting, the certified payroll reporting, need to be able to to manage prevailing wage and wage rates. I mean, I have to pay the proper rate, and I have to know that when someone works on this job at this task, they may need... I may be required to pay them a different rate than their enrollment rate and and that... Once again, you wanna have a construction specific system that can handle that for you. So that's kind of a little bit of a high level what I what I think is very important when it comes to job costing, managing profitability, managing cash flow. So with that, I'm gonna shift gears for just a second here, and I'm gonna I'm gonna show you some examples of that in computers. Now I know from the polling question that we launched, you know, there's some existing Computerease users on the on the call today, a number of you using various other products. So I'm gonna go ahead and and use the Computerease solution for today's example, but certainly know that a lot of things we're talking about. Hopefully, you're getting that regardless of the, you know, of the the solution that you're using. So I'm gonna go ahead and share my screen here, and we will spend the next little bit looking at some of these things and some examples in ComputeRees. So, you know, really important... And, you know, one, I think it... When you talk about a system that was, you know, purposely built, you know, a lot of times the question gets asked, well, how do I prevent certain people from doing certain things? So certainly know that, you know, what what I'm... By the examples I'm using today, you know, are all based on the user access. You could certainly restrict the access to any of the things we're gonna look at based on user ID and password. So you as the, you know, as the superuser, the the master user, whoever's in charge of the system, you can grant people access to what you want them to be able to do and see. Maybe they can only see things. Maybe they can't change anything. That's all up to you. So that's all very, very configurable. But I'm gonna start with the, you know, the the job dashboards. I think this is so important. And as I said, job cost is at the center of what we do. With with those non construction specific solutions, you know, a lot of times, job cost is an afterthought. With Computerese, it's at the it's at the focus. It's at the center of what we do. And, you know, we really need to make sure that we have a place where we can go and see all that information in real time, and the job center is a great example of that. Gives me one place to go to see all the information about the job, you know, the original contract, the approved change orders to date, the current contract. If I wanna see a breakdown of the change orders, I can click on the change order tab. There's a detailed list of all my... Not only approved change orders, Certainly, that that... That's very relevant. There's a 106,000, almost 107,000 in approved change orders. What about these pending change orders that are down here or change orders that have been previously denied? I need to track the change order from the time we initiate the request and ultimately all the way through until it gets approved. At the end of the day, every change order either needs to be approved and billed for or it it will be rejected. None should be left pending. But when the job is done, one of the things I gotta do is make sure I reconcile all the change order requests. Did we do the work? Did it get approved? Did we bill for it? Did we get paid for it? And if you're only recording change orders after the fact when you actually get the signed change order, what's gonna happen when the job is over and you realize we still have half a dozen or so pending change orders that never got signed off on? Maybe we did that we did some of the work or all of the work already on those. So start tracking those from the time you initiate it. Don't don't treat it as an after the fact recording of the signed change order. We have our estimated cost. We have our projected cost. We'll talk about cost projections when we talk about work in progress here in just a minute. But the estimate is a breakdown of what we initially said it was gonna cost us to do every component on this job. And this will all be based on the type of contractor you are. You know, in in my example here, we're doing, both mechanical and electrical work, and I have it broken down into different subactivities. And I'm tracking actual versus estimated dollars, hours on each on each one of these on each one of these items. So I'm able to see that. I'm able to go down here if I wanna see the detail. You know, once again, not only the actual at the at the activity level versus the budget, but I can drill down and see the detail where I'll see every detailed labor, material, subcontract, equipment charge that went against that particular cost code on that job. So able to see it at a detail level, summary level by activity, back up to the overall job summary. Billings to date. I wanna see the list of all the pay applications. If I need to see one of the pay applications, maybe I need to see what was on pay app 21. I'm gonna drill right down, and I'm gonna see that pay app. In this example, this particular job requires us to bill on the AIA g 702G703 format. I can see that right here all in all in real time. Committed costs, we talked about how important those commitments are. When... Once I write those purchase orders or subcontracts, I have committed to spend that money on that job. So I can now... You know, I got 38,000 and some change here in commitments. I can drill down and see the status of all my purchase orders. Here's a list of all my open POs. I can drill down and see the status of all my subcontracts, original contract, change orders, build to date, invoice to date, paid to date. And, you know, what's remaining to be billed on the purchase order amount or the subcontract amount is open committed cost. When invoice comes in, the committed gets reduced, and the actual gets increased. But if I'm looking at a detailed job cost report, I can see in total, you know, I have either spent and or committed to spend, you know, this... The total amount, which includes this amount of committed. Now I can certainly run the same report and exclude the commitment. If I didn't wanna see the commitment, show me just the actual... The date. Okay. Show me just what's actual. But, you know, I... It also gives me the opportunity to look at it and say, well, I wanna include the committed because I've already committed to spend that because I wanna see where I stand against the budget. So these are just a couple examples of things I think that are really important and you should be able to very easily get to. We wanna track the cash flow on the job, and don't confuse that with what we build or what we've been billed. The the true cash flow is cash in, cash out. What have I actually collected of what I've billed and what have I actually paid out of what of what I've been billed? And, you know, I wanna track I wanna track the cash flow. I wanna track here. I can see that my projected profit is less than what it originally anticipated. We were supposed to make $52, and now we're down to 38 because I have cost projections that are showing... In this example, we're projecting an overrun because we've only... We've already done 75% of the work, and we've spent 173,000. So it projects that at that pace, we're gonna spend another 57 k to finish that, and I will end up being $14,000 over budget. I'm not over budget yet, but I'm headed there. And wouldn't you like to know that sooner rather than later? I think that's the that's the key key component here. Once again, I'm looking at this information here. And whether I'm on the accounting team, the ownership team, the project management team, this is all relevant. Once again, you can control who can do and see what. But I wanna go ahead and... From here, let's let's... I'll put my project manager hat on for a minute. I also have access to all the all the other relevant information about this job. I wanna go over and I wanna manage all of my, you know, submittals, my RFIs. Well, I can do that right from the job dashboard. There's a list of all my submittal items, where we're at in the process. I've requested the data from my sub or supplier. I've received it. I've submitted it. It's come back approved or revised and resubmit or rejected. I have all that information, you know, tracked here, and I'm able to I'm able to manage that. I wanna manage all the correspondence on the correspondence on the on the job. I wanna see... Or maybe I wanna see just all of my RFIs. I can filter that down. I can see that. We can attach documents. I had a question on the drawing here. Well, I wanna actually wanna drill down, and I wanna see the actual drawing that we get attached here along with that RFI. So I can I can see that? And whether I'm bringing it up for internal viewing purposes or I sent that attachment along with the RFI, I have I have access to that, you know, from from the dashboard here. So I think that makes it, you know, real easy to manage all the correspondence, make sure that as a project manager, I'm on top of that. When we talk about managing, you know, the documents, I wanna be able to, you know, look at all the information on this job. I wanna be able to store it in the job file folder right here from the dashboard. Maybe I wanna see a copy of our signed contract with the owner or the general contractor. I've... I can scan that in, and I have access to that right here from right here from my dashboard. So it really gives you the ability to see all the things you need in one easy to access convenient location. We wanna be able to, you know, to troubleshoot. As I said, it's really important to see where we're headed and where we're going. I wanna see... You know, I wanna run the field troubleshoot as an example and have it show me about change orders, how long they've been pending, where... You know, I wanted to to find activities where we're projected to go over budget. I wanna see just the the things that are over budget. Show me just the areas where we're currently trending to be over budget. And there's that one area where right now we're projecting an over budget situation. So I can very quickly and easily analyze the data and drill down to what I wanna be able to to to do and see very, very quickly. You know, the one... We talked about the work in progress and how important that is in... As a contractor. And I think a lot of times for... Especially for those that are, you know, not using a construction specific solution, you know, those using QuickBooks as an example. If you're preparing a work in progress schedule, which certainly, I, you know, I would I would hope that you are doing that in a timely fashion, but you're you're gonna be doing this manually because it's not built into your system. Where in a system like Computease, you know, we've got the work in progress built in. I can drill down, see my work in progress schedule. I can go and manage it on each individual job. I can manage my projections if I wanna go in here and do updated estimates on the job. For instance, we... Let's take a look at that job here where we had previously said we were 75% done with the interior rough. Maybe I'm gonna update that to 80% today because I now... We've we've gone out and... Or talked to our site superintendent or we made a site visit, and I wanna put in some updated notes on on why we... On why I feel we're now 80% done. And when I do that, you know, that will that will then real time update the forecast for that particular job. So when I go look at that job now, you know, our revised estimate, I'm now, you know, projecting, okay, if we're 80% done, we're actually projecting to be back on track and actually a slight savings, albeit a whopping $53. But if we if we are 80% done, we actually now are projected to come in $50 under budget. And that... And that... But, once again, that is updated real time, and now our, you know, all of our projected profitability reports are updated in real time. So that's the that's the importance of being able to do that and being able to do the forecasting and being able to see, you know, where we're going. So if we, you know, if we're looking at that or we look at that job now, know, we can now see that our projected profit has improved, and it's now back, you know, very close to where we had originally started the job. We're still not there yet. We're still not... We're not complete with the job, but based on current forecasting, that's where we expect to be. And then, you know, we also wanna be able to track the forecast on that job and say, okay. Well, how how did that vary from month to month or reporting period to reporting reporting period? So for instance, if I wanna look at that report, I wanna say, well, show me today and compare it to where we were at the end of last month, and it's gonna say, okay. Well, here's all the jobs ahead of change. And, you know, to, you know, to the good here, we're actually now reporting that our estimated profit has ticked up by over $14,000 based on that most current forecast. So you're able to track all that and monitor that. I can get reports that'll show me, you know, every updated projection entry that we made, including the one we made today and what that, you know, what that did and how that updated the forecast. So these are just some of the things that I think you're, you know, really critical that we're that we're tracking and managing when it comes to real time job costing. You know, we talked about the, you know, the the cash flow. Certainly, we all know what a challenge cash flow can be. And we looked at that work in progress dashboard, that work in progress report, and here's another, you know, version of that that also is tracking the true cash in and cash out. I can see which jobs we're funding, basically, because, you know, if if we're negative cash flow means we have more money has gone out than has come in. Now every job's gonna start in that position. You're making payroll on a weekly basis. You have you have expenses that that you incur, and before you even generate the first bill, much much less collect the first payment. But, you know, as soon as I can, I wanna get those jobs into a positive cash position? And and certainly with the, you know, with the work in progress, you know, dashboard, one of the things, certainly, we we we wanna keep an eye on as we go from job to job is I'm looking for those jobs that are over or under billed. If a job is under billed, good chance it's gonna have negative cash flow. But why why would I not bill for at least the percent of work that I've completed? And the under billing is gonna pick that up. And then, certainly, we need to record all the over under billing, not only the WIP process and run the WIP report, but then we need to record the over under billing in the financial in the financial statements. And we have to we have to adjust revenue and increase our, you know, our liability if we're, you know, if we're overbilled in our in our... In an... In our assets if we're underbilled. And, you know, overbilling is being a liability, underbilling being an asset. And, you know, revenue needs to be adjusted, so we have to have an... So we have an accurate p and l, which is why when you're asked to produce a financial statement for for a contractor, the the first thing anybody wants, whether it's the banker, the the surety underwriter, the bonding agent, they wanna see the WIP schedule goes along with the financial to make sure you've done that. Make sure you have the appropriate adjustments for over under billing in your financials and on your balance sheet. So we're gonna make sure that you do that. And with a system like Computorease, that makes that process very, very easy to do. When we're talking about, you know, protecting profitability, accurate job costing, one of the things I think is important to call out certainly is, you know, for... Especially for those of you on the call today that may own your own equipment and use your own equipment on the job is we need to make sure we allocate cost to the job for using our own equipment. And too many times, we don't see this happen, you know, where... You know, if you, the best example, you know, that I can give is you have two jobs very similar in nature, and they both need, they both need a backhoe, and you own one backhoe. And they both need a backhoe at the same time. You go rent one. When the invoice comes in for the one you rent it, you're very likely, most likely gonna charge that job for the cost of renting that backhoe. But what about the job that you use the backhoe you own? Well, if you don't charge that job in a similar fashion and then you go compare those two jobs, which one do you think is gonna look better? If the if the job where you used your own backhoe doesn't get charged for the use of that backhoe, it's gonna look a lot better than the one that had to pay to rent the backhoe. So treat your your internal equipment as as its own internal rental center, and you're basically renting it to yourself. But make sure the job is charged for the use of your equipment, whether you're renting it from a third party or it's something that you already own. And with the, you know, with Computerease, with, you know, with the tool and equipment tracking component, we can not only track the location of all of our tools and equipment, everything from small hand tools to large equipment, but we can assign it to a job and then charge the job, you know, the the corresponding appropriate, you know, daily rate, typically, you know, the same rate as as what you would pay if you rented it. And then, internally, you're... You know, you have a... You know, you have your allocation of cost that's going to account for that. So something that you wanna that you wanna think about, if you own large assets, you certainly also need to be able to, you know, manage all the maintenance and repair costs down to the individual asset. I don't wanna just dump it all into one bucket equipment repair or, you know, pickup truck repair. I wanna get it down to the specific vehicle. If I have two pickup trucks bought at the same time and one is costing me significantly more than the other to maintain, don't I wanna know that? I don't wanna just dump it into, you know, into the... Into truck maintenance. I wanna I wanna have it down to truck one, truck two, etcetera. So really important that we that we do a good job of managing those costs. We talked about the, you know, the the committed cost. I think that's certainly very, very important. We wanna be able to manage material that comes back from a job. Too many times, I, you know, I think this goes this goes unmanaged as well. We have excess material on a job that we're gonna bring back into the warehouse to use on another job, but we need to track that. We need to manage that. We need to be able to bring material back from a job into the into the warehouse and then later take it from the warehouse back out to another job. So we need to make sure that we have a solution that can that can manage all that for us. We need to be able to manage all the jobs before they become jobs. So, you know, we we have jobs that we're bidding on. I wanna be able to manage all of the opportunities that I have, where they're at in in the... In process, and, you know, you you define the stages. But in this case, new, working, quoted, won, lost. I wanna know, well, what opportunities are we currently working on? I wanna be able to see the opportunities. I wanna be able to drill down into the detail and see, you know, all the correspondence that's gone on, all the meetings, the notes, the phone calls. All of that is very relevant as far as the, you know, on the on the business development side of things. And then once it becomes a job, go back to our job dashboard for a minute. Remember, that's gonna be the center of of our of our universe, so to speak. That's where everything, you know, everything is centered around the job, including... I wanna be able to very quickly and easily get back to all the pre bid, pre job information. I might have, you know, pre bid meetings, any any notes from our estimating team. I wanna have, you know, site visits, whatever whatever may have occurred pre awarding of the contract. I wanna have access to that from my job dashboard. So now as the project manager, I can see not not only what's going on today, where we're headed in the future, but what went on in the past as far as us getting this job. All that information is here. I can see what today's information, what went into getting us to today, and where we're headed based on today's information, all at a very, you know, at a very quick glance. So I think that's, that's real important. A couple of things I wanna I wanna touch on before we, you know, go back, and we'll certainly open up some questions here in just a little bit. But I wanna talk a little bit about the the field to office communication. So I think that's so critical, especially today, and there's no reason today we shouldn't be communicating in real time between field and the office. And we have a number of great tools here at the Deltek ComputerEase that allow us to communicate between the the the field and the office. I'm gonna focus on our, our field e solution today so we can look at time. But certainly, no. We can we can capture expense receipts and, you know, we can fill out daily field reports, etcetera. But I wanna do, you know, kind of what is probably the, you know, the most common is I'm gonna go ahead and, you know, fill out or approve, and I'm gonna go ahead and fill out time for my crew. But each individual could, you know, could fill out their own time, and I could approve that or I could fill out the time for the entire crew. But I wanna go ahead and I'm gonna enter the time. I'm gonna go ahead and and enter a daily field report, you know, know that I could approve invoices out in the field. I can view live job cost reports real time. I could make the, you know, purchase order request from additional material request. If we have a service component to our business, I can communicate between my service techs, between office and the field. But I wanna focus today on what's... On what probably, you know, is common across all of us no matter what type of contractor we are is we gotta get time in from the field. And in most cases, you know, it's certainly... Especially if it's a bigger job, we're gonna have our site superintendents filling out a daily field report. So as I mentioned, each individual could enter their own time. It could come to me for approval. I'm gonna take the role as a site superintendent who's entering time for my entire crew. So I'm gonna go ahead... Just for the sake of time here today, I'm gonna go ahead and put in time for my crew. We're working on job three fifty one. We're working on the mechanical phase, and we're working on the interior plumbing roof. And we all... We had eight hours today. So I'm gonna enter that. There's my crew's time, my five crew members. Now if each individual member could just have easily have entered their own time on their on their phone, it would come to me like this so I could approve it. So this case, I entered it, so I'm going to approve it. I'm gonna send it to the office. We'll see what happens back in the office in a minute. And then as the site superintendent, I'm gonna go ahead and create my field report for today. And we can have different log types. This is gonna be my general daily field report for job three 51, my daily log for today. I can add the weather conditions. I'm gonna go ahead. I already entered the time for my crew, so I'm gonna drop that right in there. You know, did we u... Did we use it... Utilize any equipment out here? Do we have, any material? Maybe I had a subcontractor on-site today. So I had our grading contractor out here today, and they had three workers, and they worked all day. And I wanna put some notes about what they did. Maybe we had an inspector out here. I could add information about that. I'm gonna give you my story as the site superintendent so you can refer back to this, or you're gonna get this reported in real time. I could upload any photos, any other documents that are relevant. Maybe I had to have, you know, the owner or GC rep sign off on something out in the field. You know, I could open that up and capture signature if need be. I can track productivity if I'm tracking a measurable unit. If I wanna track, you know, how many, how many feet of pipe we ran today, how many yards of dirt removed, how many outlets we installed, I could track that as well. I'm gonna go ahead and save that field report. I'm gonna go ahead and send that back to the office. So, you know, very quickly, I I did the the time for my crew. I did a field report, and, you know, we talked a little bit about the other things. I won't spend a lot of time there, but know that I can, you know, also approve invoices out here, view live reports, make material requests, and then certainly, complete service work orders if I have a service component to my business. But now I'm gonna go ahead and go back into the office. We've we've done those two things. I'm gonna come back into the office, and let's start with the time. I'm gonna go ahead and bring that time in from the field. There's those forty hours that were worked today. I'm gonna go ahead and import that. So there's the time. No one has to rekey that. I imported the time. I'm gonna go ahead and... If I need to make any modifications, certainly, the payroll manager certainly has ability to do that, but I'm gonna go ahead and save that. And now when we were talking earlier about real time... So I had time come in today, and we're not going to pay that till next week. Right? But those hours have been worked today. Payroll won't be run till next week. But if I go down and look at the job cost report, if I drill down to the detail there on that particular job and that particular activity, what am I gonna see? I'm gonna see those hours that were worked today and that and that committed cost already recorded on my job report. Now I can certainly filter that out if I wanna turn off or exclude the pending payroll. I certainly have an option to do that, but that that is there. That, to me, is what real time means today as I can see those hours at work today on my job cost report today even though payroll won't be till the middle of next week. So I think that's that's something really important to be able to to do. Then I wanna be able to... You know, as the time is is accumulated throughout the week, you know, I'm gonna go ahead. I'll have all the time. I wanna go ahead and run the report at the end of the end of the pay period. It'll have all the hours. And then once I go... I'm gonna go from there. I'm gonna go right into payroll processing, you know, print the payroll register, either process payroll in Computerease. We also have a a payroll service. We can act as your outside payroll, processor similar to what an ADP or Paychex would do or some of the other local or regional payroll providers. I'm gonna automatically generate certified payroll reports. All that information is handled very quickly, very easily. I put time into a job. It knows what rate to pay. It knows which taxes to withhold. Everything is managed within the system. Then as the project manager, I wanna come in. I'm... Maybe I've got a couple different jobs going on. I wanna go ahead and bring in the field logs from my site superintendent. So here's the one that came in today from my site superintendent. I can bring that log entry in. I can go down. I can drill down and, you know, see the notes, the detail, who worked out there today, what was the weather conditions, and what were the notes about the sub that was on-site today. Here's the notes from my site super. I can see any other additional information, you know, any of the... Any attachments, pictures, etcetera, but I have all that information now recorded in the system. Now maybe I wanna look at all the field logs across that job. Maybe I wanna see all the log entries for that job for a given a given date range. Maybe I wanna see everything that happened on that job this year. So, you know, I have the ability to search, sort, filter, to be able to see everything that went on on, you know, all jobs, one job. I'm able to see all the information, you know, throughout the, you know, throughout the life of those jobs, and then I can drill down on any one entry and get into all the details. So really good way to be able to not only gather all that information, but be able to then historically go back and look up that information, you know, that is now stored in the system. So I think those are a couple things that are that are really key. You know, last but not least, I know I mentioned service. I don't wanna spend a lot of time here, but for those of you that have a service component, we have a full service dispatching system where you can you can, you know, take calls on demand as they come in. You can, you know, set up preventative maintenance contracts and and do prescheduled calls, but we we have all the tools to manage the service component, of your of your of your company as well. And then last but not least, you know, certainly, we have, you know, high level financial reporting, you know, the financial dashboard, you know, which can... From there, I can drill down into all the financial reports via the, you know, trial balance, pro... Profit and loss balance sheet, all that contained within within the solution. So I think we covered, you know, a lot of what we... You know, what I think is important to managing cash flow, managing profitability, it's all centered around, you know, I think good reporting, good good analysis, being able to, you know, be on top of your of your over under billing, producing, a work in progress schedule, being able to forecast, being able to troubleshoot, that's what a good purposely built solution should be able to do for you as as a contractor. So with that, I'm gonna come back and then gonna wrap up. I got a few more, slides we'll go through, and then we'll certainly open it up to some questions. Alright. So, you know, as I mentioned before, this is this is all that we do here at the Deltek ComputerEase. The ComputerEase team, we we were built for construction. We are in construction. We live and breathe construction every day. You know, which is why we do things like provide our construction accounting university. You know, what... You can learn the ins and outs of construction accounting and and all the things that can be somewhat challenging in this business. And, you know, and and I think that's a great, you know... So not only will you get a link to today's recording, but you can go to our Construction Accounting University site, and we have many, many topics out there that I think are are really relevant. How to, you know, how to manage a work in progress report, how to build a good whip process. So it'd just be a couple examples. Yeah. We do a lot of continuing education. We wanna help you as a contractor stay, you know, stay up to date on on what's going on in the industry and stay stay sharp on all the skills that we need to, you know, to be able to be successful contractors. And a lot of that comes through thought leadership. You know, we do a lot of we do a lot of sessions where we bring in industry leaders that can talk about the importance of certain topics and how... And and how that benefits us as a contractor. So, you know, we... Like I said, I gave my background in almost forty years now of of experience, and I've got many people on the team that have very similar backgrounds. But we we have thousands of combined years of construction experience. And when you combine that with the, you know, with the feedback we get from all of our, you know, 6,000 contractors across the country, there's a lot of a lot of construction expertise that goes into our solution, the people that support our solution, the people that help you make the decisions on on what solution is right for you. So I know we're really invested in you. We're invested in the industry, and I think that's, something that shows, you know, day in and day out in our products and services. You know, it's certainly easy for me or or members of our team to to tell you all the great things about Computerease, but, certainly, you know, we're we're built on the trust that our customers put in us. You know, we have, you know, the the most g two badges in the industry. We have a large, very high retention rate, you know, customers staying with us, you know, for for year after year after year. And, you know, I certainly invite you to check out some of the great reviews we have on the g two site. Just a couple comments from some of our customers. I know we asked one of our longtime customers, you know, if you had to put a price tag on Computerease, what would it be? Said, I can't imagine not using Computerease. It's invaluable. You know? So that... That's... You know, I asked, you know, the the question was, can you put a dollar value on what computers means to you? And I said, no. I can't. It's invaluable. There there... It's worth so much. I cannot put a price tag on it. So, you know, it... I think that's something that goes a long way to support the, you know, the power that we bring both as a product and as a team to... Into your company, and it really is a partnership. You know, this particular company is one example of many of thousands that we have formed fantastic partnerships with over the years, and that's really what we do. It's not just, you know, it's not just our our product, but it's our people supporting the product, and we're joining your team, and we're building a partnership with you because we wanna make sure that you're that you're successful. And that... And that's really what makes us different. I think we have certainly, you know, I think we have a fantastic product. That that that goes without saying. But we have a great team of people that are construction industry experts. They're gonna help you take control of your construction accounting, clearly see your job costing, protect your margins, and help you make better day to day business decisions. You know, we have, as I mentioned, decades of industry experience. You know, we have our most senior people available on sessions like this, on our meet the expert sessions, working with our customers day in and day out. Since day one, that's all ComputeRees has done has been focused on construction, and we can get people up and running in in relatively short order and and because we have such a great team that is is used to doing this. So these are just some of the things I think that make us different, make us stand out in the industry, and I think that's... You know, we wanted to share some of that with all of you here today. So with that, I'm gonna open up to questions. At the same time, I'm gonna open up one last polling question here. So if you'd like to be contacted to learn more about computers, you can go ahead and check the yes box there. Certainly, if if not, that's fine. You'll certainly have access to all of our information and be able to to follow-up or reach out as needed. But I'll leave that polling question open for about fifteen seconds or so. And while we're doing that, I'm gonna jump in, and I'm gonna take some questions here. So I got some questions that have come in. Both... I had some presubmitted as well as some live questions. We're We're interested in moving from QuickBooks to Computorease. Can you give me an idea of price and how long it would take? So both great questions. One, we, you know, really need to have a conversation with you about your company, how many users, a few questions to be... That we would need answer before we could answer either one of those. But, yeah, certainly, we'll have somebody reach out and talk to you about that and be able to get you some information about potentially moving to Computerease. You mentioned payroll service earlier. Can you tell me a little bit more about that? So, yeah, that... That's the the... That's a great question. We have a number number of customers, over the years that always... You know, before we implemented the payroll service about fifteen years ago now, had always inquired. We we don't really wanna deal with some of the payroll compliance work, tax filings, etcetera. There's companies like ADP and Paychex and some others that will do it, but it's disconnected from our from our job cost in our accounting system. So that that, you know, got us thinking, well, okay. We can we can do that too. So we we spent a lot of time, built a, you know, a heck of a payroll... Construction payroll specific team, and are now able to offer that all as part of one solution. So there's no longer a disconnect between an outside payroll service provider and your accounting solution because it's all in one. It's all in the Computery solution. So great question. Thank you for that. As far as the work in progress report goes, how often do you recommend we prepare a WIP schedule? So once again, great question. I'm gonna go ahead and close the polling question, by the way, and I'll put up some just general contact information as we continue on with some of the questions. So, you know, for me, if you're doing the... A WIP schedule any less frequently than monthly, you're not doing it often enough. I think I think monthly is probably the, you know, the the right cadence for most. I certainly have some some contractors I work with that do it, you know, biweekly or even weekly. But if you're not doing it at least monthly, I'd say you're not doing it often enough. If you're not doing it at all, you're certainly not doing it often enough. And if you're only doing what somebody asked you for, you're doing it for the wrong reason. You should be preparing a WIP schedule because it's it's gonna be the most important report that you can use to help you manage your business, your job, you know, your job, jobs, and, ultimately, your business. And if you're if you're not doing it for that reason, you know, that... That's where you need to start. When someone ask you ask you for it, like I I mentioned before, the banker, the, you know, the surety underwriter, the bonding agent, yeah, they're certainly gonna wanna see a whip schedule when when they ask for... When you go for a loan, when you're trying to get your... Get a bond on a job or get your bonding capacity increased, they're gonna wanna see a web schedule along with your financials. That's great. But you should already have that because you should be doing that because it's what you need to run your business. Don't do it just because they asked you for it. You should already have it. And you... And, like I said, I've... A lot of people have implemented a whip process after, you know, after we've talked, and they just... Wow. This is amazing, the information we're able to get and the real time information and the relevant information and the forward thinking information that we now have to make decisions, then, oh, yeah. By the way, when somebody... When the banker wants to see the WIP schedule along with the financial or the bonding agent does, yeah. Sure. Here it is. I I prepare that on a regular basis all... And already. So I think that's, you know, first, think about why you should do it, and you should be doing it for the health of your business. When someone else wants it, certainly, you'll have it. And then two, I think that to do that, you should be doing it on a monthly basis. And, you know, whether you're preparing, you know, financials monthly or quarterly, you know, ideally, you're... If you're doing it monthly, it goes hand in hand. But even if you're only doing your financials, you know, quarterly, I I I want the WIP schedule. I wanna do internal financials on a monthly basis, and I need a WIP schedule that corresponds to that. But that's a that's a great question. Thank you for asking. What rate do you recommend we charge for equipment that we own when we rent it to a job? So I always recommend you you charge a... The same or similar rate as if you had to rent that same piece of equipment or what I'm gonna call the street rate. You know? If I know that a bobcat goes for x per day, that's what I wanna charge our job even, you know, even for one that I own. And and then I can evaluate. Okay. What what what does it actually cost to me to own that versus what... How often am I using it and really manage it. You know, pretend like you're renting it to yourself and treat it as a... As an internal profit center. And I think if you do that, you're gonna get one. You're gonna get certainly much more accurate job costing reports. And then... And also l... Other relevant information about the equipment and when it's time to unload a piece of equipment, retire a piece of equipment. If you... Just because you own it doesn't mean it it may not be worth keeping it because you don't use enough. And, you know, when... And I've had a lot of people, once they got a handle on that, said, wow. This would make more sense for me for the the the few times I need one. I'd be better off renting one than incurring the cost to own the one I very rarely use. So if you have that information, it just allows you to make better decisions. Alright. Couple more questions here about pricing and timeline. So we'll certainly follow-up anybody that had questions around that. Got one here about payroll. So, yeah, here's one about payroll and multi state, multi local tax jurisdictions. Do you... And the question is, do you handle multi state and multi local payroll? We certainly do. The, you know, the job drives everything. The job job costing is at the center of what we do. The job is at is at the center of of of payroll because, you know, if we're working on the job, you know, that job, we know where it's at, what the pay rates need to be, what the tax rules are, you know, based on the location of the job. And one thing I would I would say to anybody, make sure that if you're going into an area for the first time, don't assume you know the payroll tax rules in a new area that you haven't worked in before because it could be quite different than what you're used to. And whether it's state or local, I mean, not all states have have local tax payroll withholding requirements, but a lot of... A number of them do. I think 18 or 19 today have have local taxes, as well as state tax, and some states don't have state withholding, you know, but but the majority of the states have state withholding, and, you know, and then within that, there's there's a lot of areas of of the country where you're also gonna run into local withholding. Not that it can't be done. It's not overly complicated, but But what the problem is if you don't... If you're not aware of it, you don't know that before you get there. So you're going into work in... Into a new state, into a new region. Make sure you understand the rules. That's all. You just understand what the payroll withholding requirements are. Because, remember, you as the employer are ultimately responsible for withholding properly. So you wanna make sure that, that you're doing that. Same way with the with the wage rates. You know? Don't don't wait till you start the job to realize, oh, I didn't realize this was a prevailing wage job, and these are these... This is the rate table, or I didn't realize what the rate table was for the prevailing wage job. That... That's your responsibility as the employer to understand what rates you need to pay on that job and what taxes you need to withhold from from payroll. Alright. Well, I think most of the other questions are similar about pricing, timing of of converting to Computerease, so we'll follow-up on anybody that, had questions around that. We're just about the top of the hour, so I wanna thank everybody for their time today. Anybody that, answered yes to the polling question, we will certainly be reaching out to. Or if you had a question around pricing or implementation or timing, we'll be certainly reaching out to you as well. So I wanna thank everybody for their time today. And once again, just note that you will get a link to the recording of today's session and encourage you to to watch that back or share it. And, also, visit our Construction and County University to take, advantage of some of the other excellent construction related content we have out there. So thanks thanks again, and we'll see everybody on a webinar in the near future. Have a great day.