Correctly estimating the costs associated with paying and managing employees is instrumental in ensuring a successful result. And if you don’t have accurate numbers, you’re eventually going to find yourself in trouble, as Penny McDonald, president of Tri-State Painting Co. understands all too well.
As a mid-size finishing contractor, located in southern Indiana, Penny found that old school time tracking was leaving the company open to errors and inaccuracies as well as directly impacting their project costs.
“In the finishing industries, we have so many one- and two-man crews who jump from job to job because they’re the painters, the drywall finishers, the floor coverers and the glazers, so we don’t have a central location for everybody to clock in and out.”
These constraints forced the company to use paper but Penny realized they needed a more modern way to track time. The one caveat, it had to be a solution everyone could get behind because it didn’t add to their administrative burden.
“We all want things to be easy, and we want it to integrate with our current systems so that our front office doesn’t murder us in our sleep when we say, ‘Hey, we’ve got this great idea’.”
The company had one more challenge to address. As a union contractor, Tri-State Painting must deal with different pay groups, cost codes and other nuances to pay.
“With the union, we had to make sure that all i’s were dotted and t’s were crossed,” she says. “But while the union says that we have to provide a time card, it doesn’t say it had to be on paper.”
Searching for a new solution, Penny heard about ExakTime from a fellow FCA member, of which she is board chair.
“He just kept talking about what a great success he had. I thought, there is nothing that is that easy but maybe this really is pretty good.”
ExakTime offers real visibility as to what the company’s workers were doing. Penny says ExakTime’s geofencing feature, which uses GPS to set a perimeter around the area where workers should clock-in, has given the company expanded visibility.
“You can see it in real time on the dashboard and these are all things, as business owners, that really matter.”
The real time visibility gave the team essential data they used to dial-in their labor costs.
“We had a 37% inaccuracy prior to ExakTime on project numbers. Now we can see exactly what project costs are supposed to be allocated to.”
But Penny points out the real cost goes beyond the initial error.
“It’s even more of a cost savings if you get it right the first time.”
And the fact that ExakTime smoothly integrates with Sage 100 reinforced it was the solution for them. Penny noted this point helped her sell the change to the office staff, because they weren’t going to have to deal with a system that caused extra work.
ExakTime helped solve Tri-State Painting’s biggest labor issues by offering clarity about what the workforce does daily, which directly added up to time savings.
“My project managers absolutely love the product,” she noted. “Every morning, I walk around and I see them in their offices, checking the dashboard and checking their projects to make sure people are clocked in so they don’t get that phone call at 7:30 a.m. from a customer saying, ‘I thought you were going to be here.’”
That type of data insight has proved essential for successfully estimating and running projects. But ExakTime also delivered something Penny never anticipated.
“Construction is the number three industry for mental issues and for losing people to death by suicide. That’s not one of the reasons why we ever thought we were going to need a platform like this, but we’ve been able to connect with so many of our employees.”
ExakTime allows users to add a note when they clock in or out, and that simple feature turned into an unexpected window into employee wellbeing.
“We have found out if employees had an unexpected personal issue, if they have to pick their kids up early from school, if their wife is in the hospital. We don’t want to be nosy, but those internal conversations allow us to check on them. ‘Hey, are you doing OK? You’ve missed a lot of work lately and you’ve had some notes where you left early. Everything alright?’ Because that mental piece in construction is so huge.”
For Penny, ExakTime is more than a timekeeping tool. It's infrastructure for running a better business. From reducing a 37% project number inaccuracy to unexpectedly strengthening connections with field employees, the solution delivered well beyond what she originally set out to solve.
And for anyone still on the fence? Penny’s advice is simple. She was skeptical once too.
“I drank the Kool Aid. I love this product. My project managers love it. We believe in it and we're already telling other contractors about it.”