Business News
Mobile Tech: Fast-Tracking Accounts Payable, Improving Cash Flow and Other Surprising Benefits
By Michael Smith
data means they no longer have to follow a paper trail or chase down answers when a problem or conflicting information arises. The ability to pay bills and invoices without delays improves cash flow, frees up accounting teams to work on other vital tasks and keeps projects moving. From Manual to Mobile For years, Texas-based civil contractor Great Basin Industrial (GBI) captured time and materials (T&M) in spreadsheets and transmitted them to the office, where the information was entered into its accounting ERP. The manual process of entering and transferring the data was incredibly time-consuming, taking around 30 days to consolidate T&M data into field tickets for owner submission. Many T&M dollars were unbilled due to complexity, with the sheer volume of tickets and spreadsheet-based tracking too overwhelming for their accounting team to keep up with. Work-to-billed-to-paid time stretched 50 days or more, which impacted cash flow. An outsized proportion of the accounting team’s time and resources were devoted to billing, and ensuring projects stayed on budget without daily cost data was a pain point for the company’s project managers.
Most construction businesses take on fast-paced projects–juggling tight timelines and thin margins. At the same time, the costs of debt and equity are rising, pressuring contractors to streamline sluggish accounting workflows that can hinder cash flow, strain relationships, and put projects behind schedule. Seeking to move away from paper and manual processes that hamper profitability, many contractors are adopting cloud-based mobile applications that accelerate invoicing and accounts payable (AP) processes by democratizing data and streamlining workflows. Connected mobile applications allow workers in the field to remotely access and capture data in real-time, alleviating the delays, errors, and costs associated with paper-based payments and invoicing. With integrated mobile applications, workers in the field no longer need to re-enter information from paper or spreadsheets into construction management software when they return to the office. With the ability to capture data in real-time, the risks of miscommunication, mistakes, and lost documentation are nearly eliminated. Storing data securely in the cloud gives accounting teams the information they need to generate invoices quickly. Access to accurate
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csengineermag.com
October 2023
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