Latest / Contractor Business Builder Podcast / Stop Guessing: The Job Costing System Contractors Need to Scale (with Caitlin Brock)

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Stop Guessing: The Job Costing System Contractors Need to Scale (with Caitlin Brock) · Contractor Business Builder Podcast

• 0:00
  Welcome to another insightful episode of the Contractor
• 0:02
  Business Builder podcast. So job costing, it's not
• 0:06
  optional once you've passed 2 million in revenue.
• 0:09
  Without it, you're guessing on every bid, every higher and
• 0:12
  every yes to the next project. So today we've got Caitlin
• 0:16
  Brock. She's the finance manager at
• 0:17
  Apparatus Contracting Services. How you doing today Caitlin?
• 0:20
  Doing good, How are you? Doing great.
• 0:22
  Excited to dive into how contractors can learn how job
• 0:28
  costing and our accounting is so important.
• 0:31
  It's it's really kind of the dashboard, the gauges of like
• 0:34
  how you're doing as a business and making decisions.
• 0:37
  So, so, so important. You've been with apparatus for
• 0:40
  many years, been, you know, accounting world for many years.
• 0:43
  What does precision accounting mean for contractors?
• 0:47
  Yeah, absolutely. The, you know, 8-8 years I've
• 0:49
  been with apparatus has allowed me to see through quite the lens
• 0:52
  of what's normal, you know, what it looks like and what those
• 0:56
  goals really are at the end of the day, and what it really
• 0:59
  comes down to. You know, we like to think of
• 1:00
  precision accounting being a standard, you know, that's what
• 1:03
  every client aims for. But the precision accounting
• 1:05
  really comes into, you know, everything is accounted for all
• 1:09
  the time that, you know, nothing gets slipped.
• 1:11
  Nothing, you know, is, oh, we won't worry about that.
• 1:14
  We're just going to ignore that. It's not that important.
• 1:16
  Everything is important in the financial world.
• 1:18
  So precision accounting really does come down to everything
• 1:21
  being being accounted for all the time as well as just on
• 1:25
  time. So it's not helpful ever from a
• 1:27
  business standpoint to be looking backwards to not have
• 1:31
  true numbers until, you know, two months from when they were
• 1:34
  valid. So it's really having that real
• 1:36
  time data flow that everything is accounted for across the
• 1:40
  board in every account, all banks, all credit cards, you
• 1:43
  know, everything that might be business related, that it's all
• 1:46
  really in the books and knowledgeable about where it is
• 1:49
  in the books. Yeah, for sure.
• 1:51
  I, I think not having like that precision accounting up-to-date
• 1:55
  can often lead to bad habits for contractors too, where they just
• 1:57
  kind of like don't look at their numbers because they know
• 2:00
  they're not overly reliable. They've got, you know.
• 2:02
  If it's outdated or it's not, you know they know it's not
• 2:05
  real. Why would they make a decision
• 2:07
  off of a number that they know isn't true?
• 2:10
  Yeah, but essentially like that is what you need to be doing as
• 2:14
  a business owner to to make sound financial and and you
• 2:17
  know, strategic decisions in your company.
• 2:19
  So what do you find or something like blind spots for contractors
• 2:22
  in that like 2 to 6,000,000 stage of of business, things
• 2:27
  that they're not aware of, not looking at get forgot or missed.
• 2:31
  Or whatever. I would say big blind spot is
• 2:33
  indirect costs. So it's very, very apparent cost
• 2:36
  of goods sold. You know, contractors know what
• 2:38
  they bid, what it's going to cost them, what materials,
• 2:41
  supplies, vendors, you know, they, they very much know what
• 2:45
  that on-site job really costs. It's the unseen cost that really
• 2:49
  add up. So that's a big blind spot of,
• 2:52
  you know, using your equipment that then needs service, that
• 2:54
  needs fuel, that needs to be repurchased.
• 2:57
  All of those expenses are part of a job cost, but it's not as
• 3:01
  easily built into budgets and getting customers to understand
• 3:04
  that that's part of their budget.
• 3:06
  You know, those are kind of hidden then really add up on the
• 3:09
  bottom line if they're not taking into account labour
• 3:12
  burdens. So everyone knows, you know,
• 3:13
  they're paying their guys $20.00 an hour, that's easy to account
• 3:16
  for, that's easy to bid for. But what about liability
• 3:19
  insurance? You know, all the extra costs of
• 3:22
  employing a team that really do have to be part of the cost.
• 3:25
  You know that just because your jobs are profitable, if you're
• 3:28
  throwing all of that into overhead, now your overhead is
• 3:31
  significantly higher and you're not really building it into the
• 3:34
  profit margin of the jobs. So indirect costs, huge blind
• 3:38
  spot that really are part of job costing.
• 3:41
  Just as much as, you know, getting new drywall put in,
• 3:44
  flooring put in, you know, those are costs, so are the underlying
• 3:48
  ones that really add up. For sure.
• 3:50
  I find often when we have, you know, new clients come on board
• 3:54
  that does this structure of their accounts aren't even
• 3:56
  really set up that they're looking at, you know, cost of
• 3:59
  service goods sold, what, what whatever you have.
• 4:02
  And then their overhead where they've got things sort of mixed
• 4:05
  up. As you mentioned, there's,
• 4:06
  there's certain things where maybe there's voltage charges or
• 4:09
  something that are like for multiple sites and they just
• 4:12
  kind of get thrown in the mix and overhead.
• 4:14
  But really they should be, you know, Spencer jobs or vice versa
• 4:17
  or, or what have you. So having that sorted out, you
• 4:20
  know, very, very important. Now there's a lot of components
• 4:24
  that go into job costing. I know contractors who say, you
• 4:27
  know, we do job costing, we know how much expenses we have per
• 4:30
  project, but it's always a little bit Gray as far as like
• 4:34
  how accurate it is and how that information like where the
• 4:38
  information came from and what the process is.
• 4:40
  So what? What are some of the components
• 4:42
  to doing proper job costing and and keeping it accurate?
• 4:45
  Yeah, I would say the biggest component is having everything I
• 4:50
  consider having a home. So the biggest part of job
• 4:53
  costing is knowing that all expenses are related to jobs.
• 4:58
  You know that it if it has to be broken down further, you know,
• 5:01
  getting into those more detailed categories.
• 5:04
  So it's much harder to do job costing if you're doing general
• 5:07
  buckets. We use that in the accounting
• 5:09
  world, absolutely for P&L's and it's subcontractor labour,
• 5:13
  materials, supplies, tools and equipment.
• 5:16
  You know, those big buckets make a lot of sense in the
• 5:18
  overarching. But when it really comes down to
• 5:20
  job costing, the only way you can really refine those is for
• 5:24
  especially the team, mainly the team.
• 5:26
  So those project managers, those laborers that whenever they're
• 5:29
  making expenses, whenever they're running the card at Home
• 5:31
  Depot, you know, those getting to the much more granular
• 5:34
  buckets, drywall or framing or even just the miscellaneous,
• 5:39
  because that adds up. So really being able to put all
• 5:41
  of those buckets into job costing helps that bigger
• 5:44
  picture of if the jobs aren't as profitable, that helps focus in
• 5:48
  on maybe what is truly costing extra and what is expected cost.
• 5:53
  So that that's where I look at it being the most effective for
• 5:57
  job costing to get to the, the actual goal of that higher
• 6:00
  profit margin. Because big buckets saying, oh,
• 6:02
  my materials are over, OK, great.
• 6:05
  But where within those materials are over because you can't
• 6:07
  really make changes off of those larger numbers.
• 6:11
  It can be a refining cycle for a contractor where when they do
• 6:14
  have proper job costing by specific, you know, items of
• 6:18
  their, they're estimating. They can then look back at a
• 6:21
  project or even mid project and you know, we went over on this
• 6:24
  or under on that. And they can adjust their future
• 6:27
  estimating to continue to get more accurate numbers and
• 6:31
  realize where their profits or lack of profits are coming from
• 6:36
  and make adjustments as well as knowing which projects or client
• 6:40
  types and things like that are going to be most profitable to,
• 6:42
  to them pursue, you know, more of those or, or mitigate for
• 6:45
  them. I know there's definitely a big
• 6:47
  pain point around how do we get everything accounted for, as
• 6:51
  you've mentioned. So you've got site guys, maybe
• 6:54
  they're running to Lowe's or Home Depot, grabbing some
• 6:56
  materials here and there. You maybe have a guy, you know,
• 6:58
  getting deliveries dropped off, you got receipts hitting the
• 7:02
  inbox and, and all this kind of stuff coming in.
• 7:04
  And then how does that all ensure that things get tracked
• 7:08
  and categorized by project and an item?
• 7:11
  Yeah, a little bit of that is client dependent.
• 7:13
  So we we see certain things in practice where clients come to
• 7:17
  us where they just have that box on the desk and they really hope
• 7:19
  that everything has some scratch marks on it and it's got the
• 7:22
  right notes and it's, you know, hey, that was for the Main
• 7:25
  Street project for this. And we're going to just manually
• 7:27
  do all of that. You know that often we see
• 7:30
  obviously that does not work for us.
• 7:32
  We we are fully remote and need something sent over more often
• 7:35
  than not really to make sure all of that is cohesive is employing
• 7:39
  some third party platform. We've worked with a variety of
• 7:43
  them. So it's really employing the one
• 7:45
  we most commonly use is called adaptive dot build and that's a
• 7:48
  very high end expense and bill management process.
• 7:52
  So that's where either documents come via upload via e-mail
• 7:57
  forward and it parses that document to find out what the
• 8:00
  job was. If there is any sort of granular
• 8:03
  memo lines that talk about framing or plumbing or
• 8:05
  electrical, you know, pulling that information, but it always
• 8:08
  is linked back to different users.
• 8:10
  So that's the biggest thing is getting the team on board,
• 8:13
  whether they're including it in the notes or writing it on the
• 8:17
  document. But at the end of the day, then
• 8:19
  it is a matter of having that open communication line with the
• 8:22
  project managers, the guys that are running the Home Depot, that
• 8:25
  if they aren't sending it in, that there is a kind of be all
• 8:28
  end all. You still have to tell me.
• 8:30
  So if you avoided it the first time that receipt came around
• 8:34
  that you're going to get a copy of it and our team is going to
• 8:37
  bug you over and over again until we finally have a home.
• 8:41
  So it's not going to just say, OK, well, that was 2 weeks old,
• 8:44
  you're not gonna worry about it. It's still gonna be on the
• 8:46
  forefront of our needs a job cost and needs a project.
• 8:50
  So it's really just tracking it down in creating a system that
• 8:53
  works for our clients that says, you know, if it doesn't have a
• 8:56
  job, OK, here's the card it was used on it.
• 9:00
  Was it this laborers? Was it this project managers
• 9:03
  whose card spent it? So that's who we're going to
• 9:04
  chase down. But ideally getting into a
• 9:07
  workflow of uploading receipts, you know, it's going to fly out
• 9:09
  the window at some point. So let's just hope that they
• 9:12
  take a picture of it right when they do it.
• 9:14
  And that's more of a client, very client specific of creating
• 9:17
  those good workflow practices. So that comes down to kind of
• 9:20
  owner operators really making it a point to say, hey, do you have
• 9:24
  a company card? You have to be doing XYZ to be
• 9:28
  successful for us as a company. So then it's really just in
• 9:30
  getting into best practices from a management point of view to
• 9:34
  get the team on board. Yeah, definitely a bit of
• 9:36
  leadership and management and just good old, you know, making
• 9:40
  sure you follow up and getting, getting people on board.
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  As you mentioned, there is like an ideal way of that everything
• 9:46
  flows and people upload the receipts.
• 9:47
  But it, it really does come down to specific businesses, but as
• 9:51
  well as specific people. I know working with a company a
• 9:54
  while back where project managers responsible for proving
• 9:59
  all, you know, expenses and things like that.
• 10:01
  But the site guys were responsible for uploading them a
• 10:04
  receipt and least tagging which job it's for.
• 10:07
  And there's always one or two that either have like a stack of
• 10:10
  receipts in their truck from like 3 weeks back.
• 10:13
  And then at the end of the month when you know, count into
• 10:16
  whoever's going through it got to bug them.
• 10:18
  And and then they're sitting there for, you know, an hour
• 10:20
  just. Taking pictures.
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  Or whatever. And it seems to always be the
• 10:24
  same guys. But but yeah, you just, you have
• 10:27
  to help your people understand that this is what we're doing.
• 10:30
  Just if you take a picture, right, when the transaction
• 10:33
  happens, you know, you stay on top of it, it's easy instead of
• 10:36
  like having this backlog and then you got to catch up and
• 10:38
  just kind of waste everybody's time.
• 10:40
  But yeah, that's great. Now, as far as the owner of the
• 10:43
  company, how involved do they need to be?
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  Like for me, ideally the way I look at it, project manager is
• 10:48
  responsible for expenses for projects and anything that falls
• 10:53
  to the cracks they should be dealing with or figuring out.
• 10:56
  But obviously the owner needs to be involved to some degree.
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  How do you see that, that the roles there I guess between you
• 11:03
  know, owner or general manager and project?
• 11:06
  Managers, yeah, I would say kind of like you mentioned, it really
• 11:08
  is a little bit company dependent.
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  And I say that lightly because the larger scale companies that
• 11:13
  have an owner maybe in an office manager, it's unlikely we're
• 11:16
  even liaisoning with the owner that much because they're quite
• 11:19
  far removed because the office manager is the one getting us
• 11:22
  the information. They have access, you know, to
• 11:24
  log in and pull bank statements and pull all, you know, the
• 11:27
  vendor information. You know, so at that point the
• 11:29
  owner might not be as involved because it's really just, you
• 11:32
  know, coming in on, oh, OK, you know, the owner just has to
• 11:35
  approve budgets or something like that.
• 11:37
  But for smaller scale companies, you know, we might meet with the
• 11:40
  owner every other week, you know, because they're the ones
• 11:42
  actually approving bill pay and they're doing that workflow.
• 11:45
  So really just client dependent. Again, we can't force, I would
• 11:49
  say project manager wise as much.
• 11:51
  So that's really where the owner or the GM might be the biggest
• 11:54
  step in is if we're not getting the receipts, we're not getting
• 11:57
  the bills coded. If we're really having issues or
• 12:00
  pushback from, you know, those spending the money, if you will,
• 12:03
  that's really where we lean on the owner or GM to say, you
• 12:06
  know, you have to get your people on board.
• 12:07
  It's your money that's not being categorized, you know, so have a
• 12:10
  team huddle, have the meeting, you know, get get them on board.
• 12:13
  So again, a little bit more dependent if there's an office
• 12:17
  manager, you know, some sort of office staff that is handling
• 12:20
  more of that admin side, we may not be meeting with them near as
• 12:23
  much because they have somebody they can liaison.
• 12:26
  And if it's not that as big of a company, the owner might be
• 12:29
  quite a bit more involved because they want or they just
• 12:31
  like to be hands on. If an owner really wants hands
• 12:34
  in meeting with us every week and they don't just want our
• 12:37
  financial reports and packages, they want to talk to us about
• 12:39
  it, you know, get a little bit deeper understanding, you know,
• 12:42
  then they're going to meet with us, you know, as much as they
• 12:44
  desire. But if they'd rather just look
• 12:46
  at their monthly CFO tool set and happy there and let their
• 12:50
  office manager get us all the data, you know, then it can be
• 12:53
  as hands off as that. Yeah, that's great.
• 12:55
  Now, as the owner of the business or senior management,
• 12:59
  how often should they be kind of looking through the financials
• 13:02
  do you feel and what sort of the key numbers that they should be
• 13:07
  tracking on, you know, weekly or monthly basis?
• 13:10
  Yeah, overall, on a, you know, weekly basis, I, you know,
• 13:14
  depending on their reports on a weekly basis, you know, the
• 13:16
  owners should at least be keeping an eye on the AR and the
• 13:19
  AP just to see that flow of, you know, what is upcoming in the
• 13:23
  pipeline as far as revenue. What's upcoming is expenses just
• 13:26
  to keep eyes on it. There aren't really many big
• 13:28
  decisions made on a weekly basis, but it's seeing that in
• 13:31
  real time, seeing any anomalies or a large bill because we can't
• 13:36
  vet that information. You know, if we see a large bill
• 13:38
  come through our desk, we kind of take it at face value.
• 13:41
  We may know trends and we're going to, you know, say, hey,
• 13:43
  this is double what you usually pay this vendor.
• 13:46
  But you know, the owner is going to be the one that comes back
• 13:48
  and says, you know, we shouldn't be doing that much for that
• 13:51
  project. You know, that's unexpected.
• 13:53
  So it's looking at the overall picture.
• 13:55
  But the really important information is that monthly
• 13:58
  basis. That's where we're gonna look at
• 13:59
  cash flow forecasting really helps them get an idea.
• 14:02
  Do they need to pick up on sales?
• 14:04
  Could they buy a piece of equipment?
• 14:06
  So really looking at those larger picture reports on a
• 14:08
  monthly basis help an owner make true business decisions versus
• 14:12
  saying, oh, you know, the P&L looks good or, you know, if
• 14:15
  things are tracking really well for the year, I'm I'm happy and
• 14:18
  that's important. We want to keep it in front of
• 14:19
  them. But those higher level monthly
• 14:21
  reports are really what it comes down to of decision making from
• 14:25
  an ownership standpoint. Yeah, wonderful.
• 14:28
  If you have let's say like a a newer client that comes to you
• 14:31
  and their profit margins are tight or they they're like I
• 14:35
  need to, you know, improve my profitability by, you know, a
• 14:39
  couple of percentage at least. What would be some of the things
• 14:43
  that you would look at from a numbers perspective or
• 14:46
  suggestions for them to improve profitability purely from like
• 14:50
  financial statements that they look?
• 14:51
  At yeah, I would say, you know, the biggest thing is making sure
• 14:55
  all costs are accounted for. So do you know, improve that job
• 14:58
  site profitability? Are there things that aren't
• 15:00
  being accounted for? Do you write things off because
• 15:03
  it. Well, that wasn't that much
• 15:04
  that, you know, we just grabbed that from the supply.
• 15:07
  We just grabbed it from the shop, you know, making sure that
• 15:09
  stuff is at least acknowledged. And then more than anything,
• 15:12
  it's I'd say the biggest thing is tracking overhead.
• 15:14
  A lot of clients will be surprised at how much things add
• 15:18
  up that they just put in the overhead bucket.
• 15:20
  So if the bottom line is it what it should be, it's, you know,
• 15:24
  twofold of looking at that profit margin.
• 15:26
  And then some clients will come to that say your, you know, your
• 15:29
  overhead is as lean as it can be, it looks great.
• 15:31
  And you know, your profit margins sitting at that 30%,
• 15:34
  which means if you want to bring home more money, if you want to
• 15:37
  do more owner draws, you just need more jobs.
• 15:40
  You know, we'll have those conversations with clients.
• 15:42
  You know, once things are lean and they look good and their
• 15:45
  margins are, you know, industry standard, then it really is
• 15:47
  talking through you need bigger jobs, you need more jobs because
• 15:51
  what you're doing is working. You just need more in the
• 15:53
  pipeline, but it really is, you know, tracking both sides of it.
• 15:56
  Is that cost of goods sold? You know, are you on budget?
• 15:59
  If you're doing, you know, is on budget, but are you
• 16:02
  underbidding, you know, looking at things like that, that just
• 16:05
  because you're on budget doesn't mean that it will, it was the
• 16:09
  right budget. So those are all things to
• 16:11
  consider to make sure that that profit margin is where it needs
• 16:15
  to be. Yeah, definitely.
• 16:16
  Now you guys work exclusively with with QuickBooks, what other
• 16:20
  software do you do you find needs to be in the mix for job
• 16:24
  costing or or have you used with with clients before?
• 16:28
  What's the kind of the software stack?
• 16:29
  There, Yeah, I would say the biggest couple that we work
• 16:33
  with, builder trend is a a large, large when we work with
• 16:37
  all the time and that one does lean a lot towards the custom
• 16:41
  builders large scale remodels. So it does have a lot of bells
• 16:45
  and whistles. We like the bells and whistles,
• 16:46
  but it's not always the right fit for all companies, but we do
• 16:50
  see that one often being used. Job tread is another big one,
• 16:55
  not as complex to get into. You know, the learning curve
• 16:58
  isn't as high. Jabber and Resia.
• 17:01
  Resia is a little bit of a simpler one, which we do like
• 17:04
  for our clients that are kind of up and coming and want to get
• 17:07
  something that can be customer facing and do a little bit more.
• 17:10
  You know, QuickBooks is pretty basic when it comes to any sort
• 17:13
  of customer interaction. You know, they're going to send
• 17:15
  an invoice, it's going to look basic.
• 17:16
  There's no sort of job tracking. So that's where those outside
• 17:19
  software especially get customer facing to make things look a
• 17:22
  little prettier, do a little bit better follow-ups.
• 17:24
  But those are some of the main ones you've worked with Procore.
• 17:27
  Procore is definitely on that more builder trend, the level of
• 17:30
  more complex. It can work really well for our
• 17:32
  clients, but it really depends on how how much they're willing
• 17:34
  to learn software wise as well as get their team on board.
• 17:37
  If their team has been doing manual handwritten invoices or
• 17:41
  on a spreadsheet, you know, getting them to join a software
• 17:43
  can be a little bit of a hurdle. So it's a matter of finding one
• 17:46
  that's going to work for our clients and you know, use what
• 17:50
  their goals. Are they looking for highly
• 17:52
  complex scheduling and change orders?
• 17:55
  Or are they looking for, you know, pretty basic job tracking
• 17:58
  and, you know, draw package invoicing?
• 18:01
  You know what are they going for to really help determine what
• 18:04
  software is going to be their best bet.
• 18:05
  OK. And what about the labour hour
• 18:08
  tracking for psych guys? Like that's a big part of job
• 18:12
  processing. We've talked about the expenses,
• 18:14
  materials, subcontractors, things like that.
• 18:16
  What about the labour hours on site?
• 18:18
  How? What would you suggest for that?
• 18:20
  Or how do you keep track of that?
• 18:21
  Yeah. So oftentimes that is paired
• 18:23
  with whatever platform. So most of them have some sort
• 18:26
  of time time clock feature. So a lot of our clients will
• 18:29
  just utilize that because a lot of the project managers, they
• 18:32
  already need a login to do change orders and to kind of
• 18:35
  have that, you know, photo upload, document upload for
• 18:38
  progress along the jobs. So oftentimes those have time
• 18:41
  clock features. QuickBooks does have a time
• 18:43
  clock feature that can work well if you know they want it to pair
• 18:46
  with that. And then some of the they don't
• 18:48
  usually work as well, but they're payroll providers.
• 18:50
  So we work with a variety of payroll providers, ADP, Gusto
• 18:54
  paychecks. Some of them do have inherent
• 18:56
  time clocking. Those don't get very job posting
• 18:58
  some most often we steer our clients back to whatever
• 19:02
  platform they're using for kind of the budgeting and job costing
• 19:06
  then is what we keep the hours in.
• 19:08
  So then that's where apparatus jumps in and we have kind of the
• 19:10
  view access to both of them. So that's where we take over and
• 19:13
  say, OK, we're going to pull kind of the time clock summary
• 19:16
  per job, you know what their hours are allocated for all of
• 19:19
  those jobs and then pivot that will pull all the payroll
• 19:22
  summaries. So you know, weight, gross
• 19:24
  wages, employer taxes, benefits, whatever else may come.
• 19:28
  So then we're going to combine all of that data to do that job
• 19:30
  costing into QuickBooks based on, you know, where we can get
• 19:34
  it from. But we do require a clients to
• 19:36
  make sure they're getting us the information, you know, however
• 19:39
  we need it because that's half the battle is we need to see the
• 19:43
  visibility to be able to put it in QuickBooks.
• 19:46
  Right on. Yeah, I know.
• 19:47
  I mean, obviously there are these kind of one-off solutions
• 19:49
  that can be good for specific contractors, but often the less
• 19:54
  software you need, the better. And the more you.
• 19:56
  Know streamline all because even if the office team is like.
• 20:00
  You know, used to using different softwares, it's the
• 20:02
  field guys you gotta think of, right?
• 20:04
  And if you're like asking them to use multiple different
• 20:06
  softwares in the field, they're, they're, it's going to be an
• 20:10
  uphill battle. Open it that way.
• 20:13
  So can you tell us a bit of like a client story, a client that
• 20:17
  got started with you, what the kind of issues or pain points
• 20:21
  they had, how you guys helped them and and the kind of
• 20:24
  trajectory and and stage that they got to?
• 20:26
  Working with you yeah, I one that sticks out to me and this
• 20:29
  is just it doesn't happen all the time, but a client that came
• 20:32
  to us that virtually was just running out of their checkbook.
• 20:35
  That does still happen. It surprises us a little bit,
• 20:38
  but you know, it's like my big balance looks good.
• 20:40
  Everyone's happy jobs are getting done, you know, so
• 20:43
  coming to us saying, hey, I've. I've never done really any sort
• 20:46
  of bookkeeping. I just, you know, come up with
• 20:49
  my numbers at the end of the year to file taxes and and
• 20:51
  that's how I've been operating. So, you know, they came to us
• 20:54
  like that. So we get them on QuickBooks
• 20:56
  online, you know, get get them going.
• 20:58
  And it was really cool to see the embrace of technology.
• 21:01
  So getting them into QuickBooks, they're running payroll just
• 21:04
  through a local firm cutting, you know, checks to their
• 21:07
  employees based on pay stubs. So it was a very basic, you
• 21:10
  know, functional, what is it funny term I heard recently was
• 21:13
  a cowboy construction set of books.
• 21:15
  So it's it's working, but it's not organized.
• 21:19
  And with that, you know, getting him to a point that, you know,
• 21:22
  using QuickBooks and they actually, you know, started
• 21:25
  using job thread because we were able to talk them through how
• 21:28
  that can benefit them and, you know, get their customer facing
• 21:31
  not using, you know, Excel spreadsheets, invoices, you
• 21:34
  know, and then we moved them to Gusto for payroll.
• 21:37
  So it's really cool to see them really be able to utilize
• 21:39
  technology and make decisions based on actual numbers versus
• 21:43
  whatever they've manually inputted in their information.
• 21:47
  That was a cool success story to bring somebody, you know, fully
• 21:49
  integrated with today's day and age of technology and what
• 21:53
  works. A lot of our clients we just see
• 21:55
  being able to get out of the number crunching.
• 21:58
  So a lot of our owners are, you know, they'll come through and
• 22:00
  they're really involved. They don't want to be involved.
• 22:02
  They don't like it. So a big part of the
• 22:04
  transformation is being able to trust apparatus.
• 22:07
  And we see this time and time again where now they just meet
• 22:10
  with us on a weekly basis. They do their month over reports
• 22:14
  and they're not worried about the day-to-day anymore.
• 22:15
  They don't have to, you know, put that extra brain power.
• 22:18
  They can focus on sales or managing their team or hiring,
• 22:22
  you know, whatever all the other things owners have to do.
• 22:25
  So a big part of, you know, being with apparatus is getting
• 22:27
  that bandwidth back of whatever allocation had to go towards
• 22:32
  what we do, whether it's managing the person doing it or
• 22:35
  doing it themselves. You know, we kind of take that
• 22:38
  holistically over and take that burden away from our clients.
• 22:42
  Yeah, wonderful. I'm a, you know, firm big
• 22:44
  believer in bookkeeping and financial help being like one of
• 22:50
  the first things that contractors hire out and get off
• 22:53
  their plate first because many of them just aren't trained or
• 22:56
  don't know how to do. I mean, that's not what they do,
• 22:59
  that's not what they like, that's not what they're good at.
• 23:01
  So you know, them doing it is just not realistic.
• 23:05
  Exactly, And then The thing is because it's usually not urgent
• 23:09
  necessarily so it gets pushed off right.
• 23:11
  There's because they've got, you know, multiple hats to wear.
• 23:14
  So the bookkeeping just sort of falls by the wayside.
• 23:17
  So hire it out, get in contact with with apparatus.
• 23:20
  If you, you know, aren't doing books or you know that they're
• 23:23
  not accurate, That's another thing too.
• 23:24
  When you know your books, as you mentioned, are inaccurate,
• 23:27
  you're unlikely to really pay attention to them or or trust
• 23:30
  that you can make this, you know, sound decisions on them.
• 23:32
  So for people out there that know they need help, their books
• 23:35
  get organized to, you know, be precise, what's the best way to
• 23:39
  connect with you and and the apparatus team?
• 23:41
  Yeah, absolutely. Our websites, you know, the the
• 23:44
  best place to go. So Apparatus team.com that talks
• 23:47
  about what we do, how we do it. There's a live link on there to
• 23:50
  book a meeting with me to talk more about our services and how
• 23:53
  they fit in with potential clients.
• 23:55
  And you know, what they're currently doing, what's not
• 23:57
  working, what's working and really diving into all that
• 23:59
  directly with me. So that get all my calendars is
• 24:02
  one of the best way to get in front of me so we can talk
• 24:05
  about, you know, the apparatus is a good fit to bring somebody
• 24:08
  gonna through through it and, you know, get him on the other
• 24:10
  side of the clarity. Wonderful.
• 24:13
  So yeah, reach out to the apparatus team.
• 24:15
  We'll put links in the description here to the website.
• 24:17
  Go check it out. Knology I use is your your
• 24:20
  driving your ship or your car blind essentially, if if your
• 24:23
  books aren't in the right place and you're gonna end up going
• 24:26
  off the road. So definitely get some clarity
• 24:28
  there. Thanks so much for coming on
• 24:29
  Caitlin and sharing your insights today.
• 24:31
  Yeah. So thanks for having me there.