Great Basin Industrial’s outdated billing process, capturing in spreadsheets time-and-materials data for work performed, was shorting the company’s pay, slowing payment and costing way too much to maintain. The heavy constructor with offices in Utah and Texas largely fabricates and installs pipes and tanks for the oil and gas industry, but also does electrical, coating, scaffolding and rail services in the mining, power and water industries.
Spreadsheets full of work data were transmitted to the office where the information was entered into the accounting ERP. The ponderous, manual process of consolidating T&M data into field tickets for submittal to owners took about 30 days. That complexity of that process, the volume of tickets and spreadsheet-based tracking meant many dollars of T&M work went unbilled.
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.
Before:
Inefficient spreadsheet-based T&M capture in the field
Accounting resources consumed by manual processes (30 days to produce a field ticket)
T&M work performed went unbilled
Cash flow impacted as work-to-billed-to-paid time stretched out to 50 days
GBI lacked real-time measures of productivity and job cost to keep projects on schedule and budget
Mobile app sets pace for project data
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 automated production of field tickets replaced manual entry and T&M consolidation.
The system provided project managers with daily cost data to compare against the estimate to keep projects on budget. Field supervisors got real-time over/under productivity data to keep projects on schedule.
After:
Streamlined field data capture in a unified mobile screen (labor, equipment, materials and production)
Real-time and integrated field ticketing and construction accounting solution
Billing T&M work that would have previously not been identified
Real-time over/under productivity reporting and daily job cost data
Better billing saves and makes more money
Replacing spreadsheets with software automation accelerated and simplified field ticketing.
“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, GBI finance director.
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.
Along with streamlined data capture, field supervisors are now 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.
Payoff:
Automated consolidation of field tickets has reduced production time from 30 days to 1 day
Preferred vendor status
Greater cash flow via a 50% reduction in work-to-billed-to-paid time
