Forefront Software Gives Missouri Company More Info in Less Time
Carney Excavating uses construction management system to complete accounting tasks.
With a few mouse clicks, Trisha Carney can find out exactly how much Carney Excavating spent on a specific phase of any project.
In the past, such a task was a painstaking, time-consuming process.
But now Carney uses Dexter + Chaney's Forefront construction management software to complete the earth-moving company's payroll, accounts payable and receivable and job-costing functions.
Carney said the program allows her to track all bills paid for a certain phase of a project and combine that information with labor costs for the phase to create a total segment price. That way project managers know whether each phase is on target to meet the overall project budget, she said. Systems the Kansas City, Missouri-based company used in the past allowed Carney to key costs to certain projects, but not to distinct phases.
"So when you get this job and it's over or under budget so much, you have to go back and trace down exactly where the overrun occurred," she said. "With this, you can see exactly which phase it was in."
As office manager for Carney Excavating, which recently finished dirt work on the Kansas International Speedway, Carney works with Forefront every day and says it's very user-friendly.
"I didn't have any problems," said Carney, who wasn't able to attend instruction courses in the software with project managers. "It wouldn't require much training because it's really simple to use."
The payroll module of the system is more detailed in tracking employees than programs the company has used before, Carney said. With those systems, Carney couldn't access information from a previous year after it had been closed out. But using Forefront, she can look at the hours an employee has worked and how much he was paid during the past two years - the amount of time Carney Excavating has been using Forefront.
Employees could also use the software to key in work hours at off-site job trailers. Forefront would bring the information to the main office automatically, Carney said. Even though the company doesn't use this feature now, the capability was a big plus when managers evaluated the software, she said.
The payroll module also traces a lot of information other systems don't, Carney said. "It tracks voluntary deductions, wage codes and workers compensation, which with construction we need; especially the voluntary deductions because we're a union company and most programs don't allow you to track all the union benefits and so forth through the system," she said.
In accounts payable, Carney said she not only keys bills to project phases, but also tracks subcontractor payments. They usually get 5 percent to 10 percent, and the system holds out that amount throughout the project so the company doesn't have to deduct it at the end of the job, she said.
The accounts receivables software keeps up with all change-orders. It can single out all payments from a certain entity or for a specific job as well, Carney said.
Her favorite aspect of the system is called "inquiries." She can leave any module to find a quick number or bit of information and return to the previous screen effortlessly. "Inquiries is basically where I live," she said.
The ease of travel between different modules, such as payables and receivables, also won Carney over. Moving between these two sectors took three minutes with the software the company used before, but with Forefront it take only two seconds, she said.
"Basically, as long as everything's been entered in properly, everything's at the touch of a fingertip," Carney said.
-- Olivia Grider
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