No job costing
QuickBooks Online could not track costs by job.
Acumatica Construction Case Study
How Carma Group, a Las Vegas general contractor, moved from QuickBooks Online to Acumatica Construction Edition and connected it to Procore.
About Carma Group
Chris and Angie Rowe founded Carma Group to help Las Vegas restaurants, casinos, hotels and other venues upgrade their facilities. Each year the company builds the grandstand over the Fountains at Bellagio, which protects the fountains during the annual Formula One race in Las Vegas. Revenue passed $10 million in the second year and reached nearly $100 million within seven.
The Challenge
Carma Group started on QuickBooks Online. When revenue passed $10 million in the second year, the founders saw it could not keep up. It could not job cost, so nobody could see what a project spent on labor, subcontracts or site costs like dumpsters and fire extinguishers.
Project management ran in Procore, which had no direct link to QuickBooks Online. Finance moved Procore data across by hand, and getting an accurate picture of operations took hours of extra manual work.
Carma Group needed a cloud ERP built for construction that connected to Procore and gave answers quickly.
QuickBooks Online could not track costs by job.
Finance moved project data from Procore into accounting by hand.
An accurate view of operations took hours of manual data work.
Leaders did not want to manage costly infrastructure or hire IT staff to run it.
The Solution
CFO Bob Scott evaluated Sage, Viewpoint and Acumatica, and recommended Acumatica Construction Edition. It had job costing, change orders and commitments built in, and it was designed for the cloud from the start. Pay-as-you-go consumption licensing kept it affordable.
Financials, project accounting, retainage and compliance run in one cloud system. Scott filters and sorts data on screen, then sends it to Excel with one button, ready for subtotals. Construction data is a click away, which saves many hours a month.
Most project managers work in Procore, which now connects directly to Acumatica. They also have Acumatica access, and Scott has taught them how to pull information. Financial data no longer moves from Procore by hand.
Scott built a color-coded dashboard that shows past-due items each time he logs in, and a payables report that shows which bills are pending, on hold or balanced. Staff set up their own screens without a developer. A new project coordinator usually finds what she needs in under a minute.
Notes, work papers and spreadsheets attach to transactions, most often invoices. When Scott makes adjusting entries for the financial statements, the support sits on the record. He no longer has to remember why an entry was made.
The accounting team uses Velixo, which connects to Acumatica and adds spreadsheet formulas that pull its data for reporting and budgeting. Report and budget figures land in the cells where the team wants them.
There is no server to back up, power or network, and updates install automatically. Executives and project managers can connect from job sites, from home or on vacation. Carma Group kept operating remotely through the pandemic.
The Result
Scott sees room for more growth as Las Vegas casinos, sports venues and other entertainment properties keep upgrading. He gives project managers the data to limit margin fade and find chances to raise margins, which affects gross profit.
Job costing, retainage and compliance in one cloud system.
Procore connected to Acumatica, with data for every project manager.
Personal dashboards, drill-downs and one-click Excel exports.
No servers or backups to run, and automatic updates.