As construction companies grow, their accounting systems need to evolve right along with them. What worked in the early years may no longer provide the visibility or functionality necessary for your current work. Asking the right questions can help determine whether your current system is still serving your construction business well — or holding it back. Here are five insightful inquiries to raise with your leadership team:

1. Does it truly suit our projects? Taking on additional jobs, more complex ones or simply different kinds of projects puts greater pressure on your accounting system. In short, you may need more advanced functionality. Start by listing the types of activities and financial reporting your jobs require, then match those needs to your software’s features — from job-cost, retainage and change-order tracking to billing, invoicing, payroll and inventory control. For example, long-term projects often require percentage-of-completion accounting and work-in-progress reporting, while publicly funded jobs may demand certified payroll and other compliance reporting.
2. Do we have robust remote access? These days, remote access — whether from jobsites, stops in between or even from home — is a top priority. Your team members need to be able to view up-to-date project data from anywhere, at any time. This supports prompt reporting of many critical data points, such as labor hours by employee and job, as well as equipment usage by asset and location. You can then compare this information against budgeted amounts to catch potential overages and adjust as needed.
3. Does it “play well” with our other systems? For seamless data sharing, your accounting solution should support various forms of timecard entry and integrate with other platforms you use, such as your:

• Customer relationship management system,
• Project management system,
• Document storage system, and
• Communication suite.

Also, if you outsource payroll to a third party, your accounting system should ideally integrate with the provider’s so it can import the pertinent information in a timely manner with minimal manual input.

4. Is our vendor still supporting us effectively? The “X factor” in many accounting systems isn’t the software itself but the vendor behind it. Ideally, yours helped you both implement the system and train users. But from there, the vendor should offer ongoing assistance to maximize your accounting software’s functionality. If you haven’t done so recently, set up a meeting to discuss what’s working and what’s not — and see how your provider responds. Top vendors will address issues, provide new training or upskilling, and deliver timely tech support. If the relationship is less than satisfactory, it may be time for a change.
5. Could we use an objective opinion? For many construction businesses, evaluating an accounting system internally can be difficult — especially if your team has grown accustomed to doing things a certain way and adapted to workarounds. That’s why an external, unbiased assessment of whether your system is properly supporting job costing, reporting, compliance and decision-making is so useful.

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