Bids built by hand
Costing a quote took much of a day, and writing the bid took another.
Acumatica Construction Case Study
How Mid-States Companies moved from QuickBooks, JobBOSS and spreadsheets to Acumatica Construction Edition after the 2020 derecho.
About Mid-States Companies
Mid-States Companies is a family-owned group of firms serving agriculture operations and other industries. Its services include design and engineering, millwright work, buildings, material handling equipment, cranes and trucking. It started as Mid-States Millwright & Builders and spent its first 20 years adding related services, often after some suppliers fell short on service.
The Challenge
In August 2020 a derecho crossed 90,000 square miles of the Midwest and caused $11.9 billion in damage. It flattened grain silos, hay storage and barns, and the rebuilding pushed Mid-States toward a workload more than 50 percent larger than before.
The company ran its finances on QuickBooks, its manufacturing on JobBOSS, and nearly everything else on spreadsheets saved to individual computers. Only the outside accountant could open the QuickBooks file. Finding net revenue for the group meant running four reports and removing intercompany amounts by hand.
Mid-States needed an affordable cloud construction platform with project accounting, job budgets and inventory in one place.
Costing a quote took much of a day, and writing the bid took another.
Counting open bids or expected revenue meant asking each salesperson.
Only the outside accountant could open QuickBooks and run reports.
Progress against the estimate lived in one person's spreadsheet.
The Solution
Mid-States narrowed its shortlist to Sage Intacct and Acumatica. Acumatica covered the inventory needs of its manufacturing company with a module from outside the construction edition. It also prices by transaction volume instead of by user, so Mid-States has no reason to limit who works in the system.
The intercompany module links the books of 12 operational entities. The CFO can run a P&L for the group or any single entity, with net revenue and net profit after intercompany eliminations. Before, only two entities had ever been consolidated, in a QuickBooks file kept at the CPA's office. Consolidated statements now take one click.
Estimating and proposal workflows run in Acumatica. The project conversion report follows each opportunity from bid to win to project completion. Sales used to live on a Google Sheet, and rows were deleted once a deal dropped. The team saves more than a day on quoting and bid proposals.
Crews open the app, log a project issue, choose its class and answer the questions for that form. Dropdowns and project selection fill in the basics, and inspection reports go straight to the project manager and safety director. The CFO built dozens of these forms on about 900 custom attributes without writing code. Job safety analyses now come out as company-branded PDFs that can go to a customer, vendor or subcontractor.
An automation schedule emails project managers a daily report covering safety statistics, equipment utilization and employee utilization. Managers see field data every day.
Approval processes run automatically. Staff build their own reports and notifications, and the Velixo add-on extends reporting and budgeting. Automated approvals removed bottlenecks and saved time.
The employee login page shows Mid-States jobsites, and the browser tab carries the logo drawn by the company's in-house graphic designer. Customer-facing forms carry the same branding. A stronger brand image helps Mid-States compete with much larger firms.
The Result
The year after the derecho, revenue rose by $30 million as Mid-States changed its approach to labor, its work with subcontractors and its systems. Just over two years in, Acumatica is helping it run on processes instead of people, and new acquisitions can join the platform quickly.
Consolidated statements for 12 entities on demand.
Opportunities tracked from bid to completion.
Phone-based forms and a daily field report.
A modern, branded system that helps attract new hires.