Building Financial Control: Flexible and Simple

Published on
April 1, 2022

If you’re in construction accounting, you can vouch for this scenario: Employees passing around a single credit card for project purchases, the end-of-month reconciliation nightmare. 

 

I have witnessed accountants not being able to track project expenses to the point where net profit cannot be fully established, it’s a cyclical process unlikely to change or improve due to the lack of control and visibility. Tracking each purchase becomes a time-consuming task that diminishes your potential to be productive and proactive.

When examining case studies, TheoBuild asked the question surrounding budgets, more specifically budget forecasting in construction and expenses control, the answers were shockingly vague, a distant aspiration to achieve accuracy in financial reports that are scattered between projects, employees, and crumpled receipts. 

Why Flexible?

Shared corporate cards are among the most common forms of financial ‘’control’’ construction companies have, the faux sense of spending autonomy combined with the time spend micromanaging every transaction, chasing employees around asking about every single purchase and trying to find where it belongs and which card was used for it, can we all just agree this is a nonviable practice? 

Individual cards for everyone is what actual spending autonomy and accountability look like. I know what you’re thinking, tracking purchases on 4 cards is already a hassle, try tracking purchases made on 20 cards. Well, here’s the secret: customized control over company spend through cards that are integrated into financial software.

 

Why Simple?

Implementing TheoBuild is a seamless process, empower your team to spend safely at no cost. If you ask me about a quantitative benefit, one of our clients saved $10,000 in transactions that were not approved, before the money even went out of their account. 

Transactions are updated by the second, memos are requested for purchases that exceed an amount of your consideration, this time your team doesn’t need to take a photo and email it to you, they can upload a receipt directly to your system, taking away the ‘receipt chaser’ title from you. 

What about employees that don’t require a card, but will eventually make a purchase? Provide them with a physical card that has no spending power, upfront authorization is required for any purchase and you can approve their purchase requests with the click of a button. 

Trying to forecast project budgets? Create a budget and assign a project manager to each one, visibility provides actionable insights, going over budget can be prevented. 

Flexible and simple is the way we like to do our financials, how about you?

 

Andrea Scott - VP of Client Success - andrea@theobuild.com