Five Ways Contractor Paperwork is Costing You Money

Contractor paperwork probably deserves much of the contempt that construction business owners heap upon it. It’s tedious, time consuming and so easily lost.

On the other hand, contractor paperwork is how you get paid. From contracts, RFIs, submittals, schedules, drawings, change orders, invoices and more, the construction industry is as much about the work you document as the work you do.

While digital alternatives are everywhere you look, it’s not easy to give up the documentation processes you’re familiar with and have served you in business this long. Knowing that a new software solution carries with it a large investment in time, money and effort, investment of time, it’s often easier to stick with the status quo.

But trust your instincts the next time you find your work held up by a search for the right document for trade contractors to consider: contractor paperwork is costing you money.

Do You Recognize These Paper Obstacles?

Below are five examples of how contractors waste time searching for information on paper documents. If you these sound familiar, you’re not alone. Many contractors put up with inefficiencies until reaching a critical stage. An invoice gets missed or worse – overpaid. Profits leak out of a project because of small problems that went unnoticed on paper that went overlooked. It happens. Sometimes it happens because business is good and you’re too busy. It’s not the worst problem to have but, when if you take the time to put a price tag on your contractor paperwork headaches, the status quo can start to like what it really is: a steadily draining flow of money. Here’s how it happens and what to do about it.

You & Your Employees Spend Too Much Time Searching: $

Finding the paper that you need in a file cabinet full of documents or the most current version of that Excel file you’re working on is frustrating and time-consuming, adding to your labor costs and shrinking your productivity. What else could you be doing with that time?

You Overlook Little Problems that Impact the Cost of a Job: $$

A job that is making money on the first floor can be costing you money by the 15th. Without daily digital reports of what is going on at the worksite, errors and overlooked costs can start to compound. Identify issues before they turn into big problems with project management software that streamlines your processes, workforce management and information with real-time insights into where things are going, right or wrong.

Freework: $$$

We all know that you don’t get paid for the work you do, you get paid for the work you document. Working with paper can be impractical in the field. Make it easy for your workers to document requests for changes or re-work in the field, in real time – before it becomes free work.

You Lack Documentation When Litigation Threatens: $$$$

Disputes, both real and threatened, is a routine byproduct of worksite miscommunication and errors. When you use the right project management software, you put yourself in position to resolve discrepancies quickly – with the documentation that shows your workers were where they were supposed to be, doing what they were supposed to be doing – or perhaps displaced by other workers doing unscheduled rework.

Whatever the situation, real-time job tracking provides you with the clarity you need to avoid or resolve disputes early in the process, before the really expensive paper starts flying.

You Lose Opportunities to Grow Your Business $$$$$

Using paper, Excel and other manual processes creates inefficiencies that can cost you customers, profits and the ability to grow your business. That’s the biggest cost of all. It’s made of up all the smaller costs you can’t recoup and the opportunities that don’t make a second appearance. Don’t let the fear of a switch keep your business on the slow-track, with profits leaking in ways you can’t even see.

The right project management software doesn’t have to be complicated, expensive or a major disruption to implement. At eSUB, we make it easy to digitize your current workflows, easy to use and easy to integrate with other software you may already have. And of course, easy to scale as your contractor paperwork shrinks and your business grows.

Switch Today for Software that Stops the Leak

If you are ready to make the switch, eSUB is one of the easiest project management applications on the market to use and support is never more than a click or call away.

Secure cloud technology seamlessly connects the field to the office and keeps you on top of the real-time status of your projects, your workforce and your documents.